Today, we started the day back in classroom 415! It felt like it had been a long time since we all met together in the classroom, and it was a refreshing change of pace.
The theme for this day was a discussion about who is Japanese – a social construction of race. Prior to class, we read about Naomi Osaka, an Olympic tennis player. She was met with a lot of criticism for representing Japan in the Olympics, despite being a Japanese citizen and half-Japanese. Her mixed-race identity led to harsh backlash from both the US and Japan about who she is “allowed” to represent, and this backlash got worse when she lost a match she was predicted to win. As she presented the torch during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, many individuals wrote, “Why is it her? She’s not purely Japanese”.
This reading, along with the Murphy-Shigematsu about mixed ethnicity, prepared us to watch a documentary educating us about the experiences of “Hafu”, or mixed Japanese individuals living inside and outside of Japan. The name of this documentary is “Hafu: The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan”. This documentary was very impactful, as it guided us through a range of stories from individuals who identify as Hafu. From a young boy who struggled with bullying due to his mixed identity as Japanese and Mexican, to an older adult exploring his Ghana half and raising money in Japan to contribute to building schools in Ghana. The main theme of this documentary was “identity”, and what this means as a mixed-race individual in Japan. In Japan, many mixed individuals always feel the need to prove their “Japaneseness”, and face prejudice for not being 100% ethnically Japanese. However, we learn about the community they built for each other and the communities they are able to find. Only 3.4% of babies born in Japan are mixed race, contributing to the stigma that surrounds the few mixed-race individuals. However, this number is growing, and I am really interested to see how this, as well as the increased amount of immigrants coming to Japan due to the lowering population size, will impact Japan’s culture and acceptance of people outside the standard.
I want to share 3 impactful moments from the documentary that I wrote down:
When David as a child cut his leg playing and the other children were surprised to see that his blood wasn’t green, it was the same color as theirs.
When Alex recounts how he was bullied, saying that he was tripped, called names, and looked down upon.
When Fusae recounts when she found out that she was half Korean and her mom telling her, “Be prepared someone might not want to marry you because you are half Korean”
After the documentary, we got into small groups (counting off was surprisingly challenging!) and talked about our experience watching the documentary and the parallels of this to our own life. In my group, we talked about our experience of being mixed culturally. To expand, I am 100% Indian, but I was raised in the US, making me feel half Indian and half American. We talked about how this experience of multiculturalism compares and contrasts with being biracial.
Following this interesting class period, we were free for the day! After chilling in the AC for a bit, a few of us went to a mini-pig cafe in Harajuku. It was so interesting and fun to play with the pigs – what a unique experience. I reflected on how the pigs had humanistic qualities, where they were jealous when another pig got more attention, and they enjoyed cuddling up to people they met. If even pigs and humans share qualities, how can we discriminate between humans of different races?
After this, I went to Karaoke with a few more people from our program, as well as some Japanese friends we had met on this trip (that also go to UW). It was so much fun! We talked about what we learned, and we found out that one of the Japanese friends we made was also biracial, and he resonated with what we told him we learned.
Overall, such a fun day. I look forward to learning more about underrepresented groups in Japan, and how this compares and contrasts with minority groups’ experience in the US.
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