Celebrating AAPI Heritage month with Nile Matsuda

Did you know that May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage month here in the US? We, at Little Creature, are proud of the diverse experiences we bring to the studio and reflect in our work.

Given the month, we want to take a moment to highlight the heritage of co-founder and producer, Nile Matsuda.

Nile in her belated Seijin-shiki (Coming of Age Ceremony) furisode, 2019.

Who is Nile Matsuda?

Nile Matsuda (also known as Nile Wilson) is a Black and Korean-Japanese queer woman leading Little Creature, producing the sports anime-inspired party card game Tournament Arc™. Outside of Little Creature, Nile works in the realm of data science—with a PhD in bioengineering—and professional harp recording for soundtracks.

Growing up with a Black father and Korean-Japanese mother, Nile didn’t know many others like herself but has spent decades discovering herself and becoming comfortable and confident in what it means to exist in the intersection of such different identities.

Baby photo of Nile.

Despite living in Okinawa surrounded by her Japanese family in early childhood, Nile did not retain nor gain Japanese fluency once moving to the US. Luckily, she was able to pick up on the sounds, food names, and basic phrases here and there by hearing her mom speak Japanese with visiting friends and on the phone with family back in Japan.

Even though she couldn’t really speak the language, Nile still grew to adopt many Japanese mannerisms and habits from her home environment and from visiting family abroad. To this day, she feels a close connection with her Japanese heritage.

In preparation to travel back to Japan to visit family for the first time since moving, Nile independently taught herself how to read and write in two of the three writing systems of Japanese (hiragana and katakana) around the age of 11. It was an exciting summer but realizing that she couldn’t really communicate well with her family motivated her to learn.

Nile visiting Okinawa as an adult.

Years later, Nile enrolled in Japanese classes in college, sought and received the opportunity to study abroad for a summer, and intensely studied the language to achieve JLPT N2 proficiency while getting her bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. By the time she saw her extended family again, everyone was surprised to be having natural conversations without having to break out the notepad to draw pictures to assist in communication.

Nowadays, Nile stays connected with her heritage by cooking homemade Japanese dishes, consuming Japanese media in Japanese (e.g., anime, games), and connecting with and visiting family and friends when she can.

The Power of Names

The name is one of the first things you learn about a person, whether interacting with them personally or hearing about them in passing. While given names can provide insight into a person’s background, it is not always representative of where they come from, what influenced them, and how they see themselves now. Some may also choose to go by different names in different contexts.

Nile is no stranger to one having various names. Growing up, she would hear her own mother context switch and change her preferred name based on what group she was interacting with. Nile’s own mother, born and raised in Kyoto to Korean parents, had a legal Korean name that didn’t match how she identified having grown up Japanese.

“Nile Wilson” as a name does not reflect both aspects of Nile’s heritage. To better represent her own identity, Nile has chosen to keep her first name as it has direct ties with Africa via the river and take on her mother’s Japanese maiden name (Matsuda) for all business with Little Creature going forward.

To herself, “Nile Matsuda” feels much more identity-affirming and is more informative to others upon first glance. She is looking forward to increasing both Black and Asian women representation in the tabletop game developer/producer/publisher space.

For the curious Japanese speakers out there, she has chosen to write it as 松田ないる, with the Matsuda family kanji remaining unchanged and her first name in hiragana to remove the foreign connotations of the standard katakana (given ナイル is a proper noun because of the river).

Tying in her heritage

Tournament Arc™ is a sports anime-inspired party card game being developed by both Skyler Badalament-Tirrell (game designer and artist) and Nile Matsuda (producer). Given that the theme and inspiration of the game is heavily tied into Japanese culture, Nile has been bringing her personal experience and knowledge to the table throughout development.

From small things like ensuring Mr. Bear has a randoseru instead of a JanSport or making suggestions for an in-world regional happi design, Nile provides tips and points of inspiration for Sky as he designs the 40+ character cast of Tournament Arc™.

She also came up with the Japanese names for all 40 Athletes, ranging from normal and normal-ish names to wacky, on-the-nose types of names you only ever see in literature, games, and manga/anime. Players familiar with Japanese may get a kick out of seeing both the original Japanese (sub) and localized English (dub) names on the Athlete cards.

Conclusion

Whether this is your first time hearing about AAPI Heritage month or have been celebrating for years, we hope you enjoyed this feature on Little Creature co-founder Nile Matsuda!

If you would like to learn more about this month, please check out the Library of Congress’s page on it.