{"id":20916,"date":"2012-02-27T17:56:41","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T17:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=20916"},"modified":"2012-02-27T19:17:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T19:17:51","slug":"my-transnational-hapa-identity-in-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=20916","title":{"rendered":"My Transnational, Hapa Identity in Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyshigematsu.com\/2012\/02\/19\/my-transnational-hapa-identity-in-question\/\" target=\"_blank\">My Transnational, Hapa Identity in Question<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyshigematsu.com\" target=\"_blank\">Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu<\/a><br \/>\n2012-02-19<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyshigematsu.com\/about\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Stanford University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I like to say that I have a transnational, multicultural, multiethnic identity. I am <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=329\" target=\"_blank\">hapa<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hafu\" target=\"_blank\">haafu<\/a>, I am both\/and, Japanese AND American. But I know that many others still see the world in dichotomies, as either\/or, Japanese OR American.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI know what I look like. I\u2019ve seen my face in the mirror before. But I forget that others might see me differently than I see myself. And I know who I am. But I am aware that others usually do not know me.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nI was reminded of this while riding in a taxi with my 108 year-old grandmother in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Matsuyama,_Ehime\" target=\"_blank\">Matsuyama<\/a>, a city on the island of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shikoku\" target=\"_blank\">Shikoku<\/a>. Incredibly, she still likes shopping and chatted excitedly as we drove downtown to Mitsukoshi, her favorite department store. The taxi driver eyed me for a while in the rear view mirror before asking the inevitable question, \u201cWhere are you from?\u201d I tried to dampen his curiosity. \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tokyo\" target=\"_blank\">Tokyo<\/a>,\u201d I answered curtly. But he was not easily discouraged, \u201cI mean which country?\u201d \u201cCountry?\u201d I repeated, as if it was a dumb question. \u201cI think Tokyo is in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Japan\" target=\"_blank\">Japan<\/a>, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nHe looked at me strangely before laughing nervously. He was puzzled. He expected me to say America. Of course I could say America. My father was American and I lived there half my life. But I could also say Japan. I was born here, my mother, wife and children are Japanese and I have lived the other half of my life here. Then again, I could also say that I am multicultural, multilingual, multinational, transnational, international or a global citizen, not just a citizen of any one country&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyshigematsu.com\/2012\/02\/19\/my-transnational-hapa-identity-in-question\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Transnational, Hapa Identity in Question Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu 2012-02-19 Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu Stanford University I like to say that I have a transnational, multicultural, multiethnic identity. I am hapa, haafu, I am both\/and, Japanese AND American. But I know that many others still see the world in dichotomies, as either\/or, Japanese OR American. \u00a0 I know [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,8],"tags":[1793,512],"class_list":["post-20916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-japan","tag-stephen-murphy-shigematsu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}