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Fatwa CenterRuling on buying Japanese cultural-style items
Question
Is it considered imitating disbelievers and therefore haram to buy Japanese cultural-style items? For example, wearing a yukata at home, eating with chopsticks, or building traditional Japanese houses.
Answer
All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu 'alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.
As for the ways of clothing or the other customs that spread among Muslims, which are not specific to the non-Muslims, there is no problem in permitting them. Doing so is not regarded as imitating non-Muslims, even if these customs and ways of clothing were originally invented by them.
The points in question are the things specific to the non-Muslims, such as clothing, ways of eating, and other customs, and doing them without intending to imitate them. Scholars have differed concerning this issue. Some of them opted for the prohibition of doing so even if it is done without intending to imitate the non-Muslims. But most scholars considered it to be permissible, which is closer to the correct ruling.
At-Tahtawi – a Hanafi jurist - said in his commentary on Maraqi Al-Falah, “Imitating the People of the Book is not disliked in everything; we eat as they eat and drink as they drink. What is forbidden is to imitate them in what is impermissible and in what is originally done with the intention of imitating them. Qadi Khan also stated this in his commentary on Al-Jami` Al-Saghir”
Al-Haytami 
– a Shaf’i jurist - said in Al-Fatawa Al-Fiqhiyyah, “If one did not intend to imitate them – the non-Muslims - at all, then there is nothing wrong with him.”
Allah knows best.
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