Japan inspired things in Warcraft

Pandaria has some good options for that if you’re a plate-wearer.

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Oh nice, I might have to look in them for an alt. Thanks for the heads up.

No problem. You’ll have a harder time with a hakama look, but you can pull it off with some of the gear in the game if you’re not terribly picky about the actual decals. There are a small number of leg slot items that have the appearance of robes. If you’re even less picky, you might also try some of the DH gear that distinctly lacks chest-covering, which could go particularly well if you’re going for a ronin look that lacks armor. Hide the shoulders and wrist/gloves, equip appropriate hakama-esque item and desired shoes/sandal model, spice with hanzo sword and eyepatch as desired.

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Just to be clear, this is a pretty severe oversimplification. As I said earlier, no race in this game falls neatly into one little cultural box. Much of Night Elf architecture has Asian roots, and those roots are largely Korean and Japanese. In general, this is because Iron is a generally rare metal in Japan (and what’s there typically isn’t very high quality) and as such the carpentry there had far fewer nails to join wood with, forcing them to rely on wood-joining techniques that relied on the wood itself holding the joint together, often with very intricate joints.

That all-wood architecture works well for a people who magically grow their homes out of trees.

You can see some dead-on similarities between Night Elf structures and Japanese ones, like Torii Gates.

This fits pretty well with Night Elves’ nature-loving aesthetic, and Korean architectural themes similarly involve harmony with nature.

However, as another person said, the world tree concept comes from Nordic groups, and further, Druidism itself is a practice that originated in Europe.

Interestingly, Druidic society appears to have been fairly egalitarian for the time, with female druids able to hold roughly equal status with male druids, which mirrors Night Elven theocracy pretty well.

The name Elune probably comes from the Roman goddess of the moon, Luna.

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I mean until WoW, night elven society was mostly gender segregated. Male druids, female priestesses. Theres even an archaeology item that talks about it: https://www.wowhead.com/spell=90493/druid-and-priest-statue-set

You’re not wrong, but from a functional standpoint, Druid and Priest don’t have much of a distinction from a real world historical context. Druids in Gaelic culture were the priesthood.

I just noticed a few things from classic. Going through Moonglade towards the furlbog cave in the south there is a tree wrapped in the shinto tradition with prayer flags / and the gate to Darnassus for sure Japanese tiered construction themes going on.