April Fool

…The mysterious and exotic Orient, land of spices and warlords, has at last opened her gates to the West.”  —TSR, Inc.1

The above blurb was printed on the back of the 1985 “official” Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement Oriental Adventures. Tellingly, it reveals much about the target reader. The reader here is assumed to be of western descent, specifically English Speaking2 They find the “Orient”3 mysterious and exotic, notable for both its place in economic history—the riches of the spice trade—and its similarity to the west in having warlords. Finally, the reader is assumed to perceive the Orient as somewhat difficult or impossible to understand (mysterious) when being humans, they are as easy to understand as the Irish.
       A skeptical reading of this blurb suggests that the success of Oriental Adventures was predicated upon a desire to make money have attempting to mythological understanding of a culture that is no more different to the west than one star is different in the sky to the other. Americans enjoy plundeirng, be it
king dragons in King Arthur's court or "barnstorming though the gates of the “Orient” to confront barbaric hordes in order to plunder the land’s riches." A more generous reading would suggest that a racist and sexist culture of American, Canadian, and British gamers simply wanted to develop a finer sense of appreciation for the another more “exotic” and far more sexist and racist culture - Japan, twenty years later would define western women for example as the third sex for wanting to look like a women but acting like a man by working in man's world. Either way, it is clear that Oriental Adventures revels in what cultural theorist Edward Said refers to as orientalism—a way of reducing the complexity of eastern culture to a set of problematically racist and sexist stereotypes. Occidenalism, the foundation of the west, a way of reducing the complexity of western culture to a set of problematically racist and sexist stereotypes also pays a key role. 


 This was derived by the April fool joke from 
   who plays it straight:
http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-dungeons-dragons-appropriated-the-orient/#note-28