A decade ago, pop-punk performer Avril Lavigne came to Tokyo — and drew widespread anger. In hindsight, she simply found herself at a crossroads of how the world viewed Japan.

April 24 marked the 10-year anniversary of the Canadian pop star’s music video for “Hello Kitty.” The clip, backing a stadium-rock-meets-big-field-EDM track that had come out on the singer’s eponymous 2013 album, found her dancing around Harajuku with four mostly emotionless Japanese dancers. They hang out in sweets store Candy-A-Go-Go on Takeshita Street, perform some choreographed moves inside clothing boutique Candy Stripper, and walk around the greater Shibuya area. Lavigne also makes a pit stop at a restaurant for some sake and sushi.

Almost immediately after “Hello Kitty” appeared online, Western netizens reacted with a fiercely negative response. Part of the outrage stemmed from the general awkwardness of seeing the lumbering dance-pop song (partially written by Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, then Lavigne’s husband) realized visually — today, Gen Z calls that vibe “cringe.” Yet the majority of the backlash, which spilled off Twitter and into major online publications, accused Lavigne of cultural appropriation and outright racism.

“RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!! I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan,” Lavigne wrote on social media as the uproar grew. “I flew to Tokyo to shoot this video specifically for my Japanese fans, WITH my Japanese label, Japanese choreographers AND a Japanese director IN Japan.” And, well, she was right. Not only did Japanese people respond to the video with muted amusement (as opposed to taking offense), but Sony Music Japan gleefully posted the video on its official site, noting how Lavigne had the initial idea and drew inspiration from the fashion she saw at the Shibuya 109 department store — but it was the Japanese crew that handled everything else. “A true Avril and Japan collaboration has happened!” the post said. But, nobody cared about that.

Looking back at “Kittygate” feels delightfully nostalgic — even innocent — now. Microblogging site Tumblr was in its prime, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement hadn’t started, and Doge was a genuinely funny dog meme — not a bitcoin stunt. And the top priority for many Western writers was investigating how “problematic” pop culture could be (hey, I did it too, we all had bills to pay). Lavigne’s skewering followed reckonings with Gwen Stefani over her “Harajuku Girl” backup dancers and a kimono-clad Katy Perry performance at the American Music Awards that seemed to mix up Japanese and other Asian cultures. The internet moved slower back then, too, so these controversies stuck around for longer than a single day.

There’s no point revisiting the nitty-gritty of whether “Hello Kitty” was a problem or not — the strongest argument against it is the use of the robot-like dancers, which dips into classic Orientalist tropes and draws easy comparison to Stefani’s now-pilloried Harajuku phase. More interesting about the whole brouhaha is how it somewhat predicted where online discourse is at present.

A major complaint found across takes written about “Hello Kitty” in 2014 harped on how the video doesn’t “represent Japan” in an accurate way, as if Lavigne was filming a documentary. A more precinct observation buried in some articles was how the singer seemed to treat Tokyo as her own personal playground.

Lavigne isn’t the first Western pop star to use the capital as a backdrop for content. The Police bugged people on the subways all the way back in the 1980s for “So Lonely,” and the Beastie Boys ran around the city for 1998’s “Intergalactic” — even, and get ready to clutch your pearls, shooting on a Yamanote Line train.

“Hello Kitty” also arrived right as Japan — and specifically Tokyo — was experiencing a tourism boom. According to JTB Tourism numbers, more than 13 million people visited the country in 2014, the year the video came out. By the end of the decade, that number would more than double. And, as we now know, many of those visitors approached Tokyo as their playground — captured in YouTube videos, Instagram reels and TikTok uploads. The land of the rising viewcount saw a boom in activities like the fake Mario Karts zipping around the busy streets. Lavigne’s work looks absolutely reverent in comparison to YouTuber Logan Paul’s controversial buffoonery or more recent “nuisance streamers” like Johnny Somali.

This content farming carried over into mainstream entertainment, too. “Hello Kitty” was actually a little late to this new era of tourists in Tokyo — numerous music videos had already been shot at the now-shuttered Robot Restaurant in Shinjuku, while a year prior to Lavigne, U.K. dance-pop act Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be” video celebrated everyday Japan (and featured the group annoying people on public transportation). From Puerto Rican reggaeton star Ozuna to American rapper Ski Mask The Slump God, Tokyo was the ultimate set. These clips all offered as distorted a view of Japan as “Hello Kitty” did, but no major uproar followed.

Maybe what Lavigne had that those other artists lacked was celebrity. Non-Japanese people who live in Tokyo go through a bit of a struggle to fit in here if countless social media posts are anything to go by (or my own experience). Because of that, there’s a bit of a sense of ownership when it comes to Japan. To see “the popular girl” come in and portray something you hold dear in a way you don’t agree with can be infuriating, and with tourism numbers set to soar past 32 million annual visitors by 2025 — among them millions of influencers armed with cameras to capture Tokyo’s “best-kept secrets” in exchange or clicks — well, Lavigne was a bit of a pioneer in that sense.

The controversy did little to shake Canada’s pop-punk sweetheart in the Japanese market. Lavigne has toured Japan in the years since, and even appeared on popular Japanese YouTube channel The First Take. Personally, I’ll never forget seeing Lavigne perform at Summer Sonic 2014 in Chiba. A packed baseball stadium of fans — primarily women, who presumably developed a deep connection to the singer in growing up with songs like “Complicated” and “I’m With You” — burst into tears as she took the stage. The song playing behind Lavigne during this emotional moment? “Hello Kitty.”