Politics & Power Quote by Nobuo Uematsu

It lands like a polite dodge that accidentally becomes a tiny ethnography of America. Uematsu is asked for an “impression” of Los Angeles, a city that practically begs to be summarized, and he sidesteps the postcard answer. Instead, he routes the question through family: his older sister’s husband is American, so he can extrapolate “Americans in general.” The intent is diplomatic self-protection. It’s safer to generalize from a personal relationship than to judge a place you might only know through visits, press, or stereotypes. That move reads as humility, but it also quietly exposes how cultural impressions are often built: not from deep immersion, but from a single vivid data point that feels trustworthy because it’s intimate.

The subtext is even more interesting in the phrasing. “Per se” and “perhaps” function as verbal shock absorbers, signaling that he knows the risk of overreach and is trying to soften it in real time. The slightly tangled English (and the slip of “and American”) adds to the sense of someone translating not just language but social expectation: give an opinion, but don’t offend; be specific, but speak broadly enough to satisfy the interviewer.

Context matters because Uematsu is a Japanese composer whose work helped define a global pop-culture canon through games like Final Fantasy. He’s speaking from a position where “America” is both audience and industry gatekeeper. The careful generality isn’t just courtesy; it’s an artist navigating the politics of international fandom, where one loose remark can become a headline.