Gwen Stefani Says She's Japanese Despite Zero Ethnic Ties To The Country

Italian American singer Gwen Stefani said that she has been so inspired by the culture of Japan that she considers herself Japanese.

Stefani, who was born to an Italian American father and Irish American mother in California, repeatedly said in a new interview with Allure that she's Japanese despite "having absolutely zero ethnic ties to the country," Page Six reported.

Stefani made the claim while addressing longstanding accusations of cultural appropriation pertaining to her Harajuku era.

In the interview about her new beauty line, the singer looked back on her work inspired by Japan's Harajuku subculture, including her 2004 album "Love. Angel. Music. Baby.," its track "Harajuku Girls" and her 2008 fragrance line Harajuku Lovers.

The controversial fragrance collection included five scents, and each was housed in a bottle shaped like a doll caricatured to look like Stefani and her four "Harajuku Girls," the Japanese and Japanese American backup dancers she employed and named Love, Angel, Music and Baby for the promotion of her album.

Stefani told Allure that her father had traveled between their home in California and Japan for 18 years for work and would tell her stories about the vibrant streets of Harajuku.

"That was my Japanese influence and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic [with] so much attention to art and detail and discipline and it was fascinating to me," she said.

She then explained that she visited the district of Harajuku herself and realized she's apparently Japanese.

"I said, 'My God, I'm Japanese and I didn't know it,'" Stefani told the interviewer, who is actually Asian. "I am, you know."

After doubling down on her claim that she's Japanese, the "Rich Girl" singer said there is "innocence" to her relationship with Japanese culture, referring to herself as a "super fan." She also defended herself from critics.

"If [people are] going to criticize me for being a fan of something beautiful and sharing that, then I just think that doesn't feel right," she explained. "I think it was a beautiful time of creativity... a time of the ping-pong match between Harajuku culture and American culture. [It] should be OK to be inspired by other cultures because if we're not allowed then that's dividing people, right?"

Elsewhere in the interview, Stefani also said she was "a little bit of an Orange County girl, a little bit of a Japanese girl, a little bit of an English girl."

The "Hollaback Girl" hitmaker also told Allure that she identifies with the Hispanic and Latinx communities of Anaheim, California, where she grew up.

"The music, the way the girls wore their makeup, the clothes they wore, that was my identity," the singer said. "Even though I'm an Italian American — Irish or whatever mutt that I am — that's who I became because those were my people, right?"