{"id":34965,"date":"2013-12-07T16:32:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-07T16:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34965"},"modified":"2013-12-07T16:32:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-07T16:32:46","slug":"in-japan-will-hafu-ever-be-considered-whole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34965","title":{"rendered":"In Japan, Will Hafu Ever Be Considered Whole?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Japan, Will Hafu Ever Be Considered Whole?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Diplomat<\/a>
\nTokyo, Japan
\n2013-10-03<\/p>\n

J.T. Quigley<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Editor<\/p>\n

Mixed-race individuals and their families seek acceptance in a homogeneous Japan.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSpain! Spain!\u201d the boys shouted at her and her brother, day in and day out at a summer camp in Chiba prefecture<\/a>. The incessant chanting eventually turned into pushing and hitting. One morning, she even discovered that her backpack full of clothes had been left outside in the rain.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the worst two weeks of our lives,\u201d recalls Lara Perez Takagi, who was six years old at the time. She was born in Tokyo to a Spanish father and Japanese mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen our parents came to pick us up at the station, we cried for the whole day. I remember not ever wanting to do any activities that involved Japanese kids and lost interest in learning the language for a long time, until I reached maturity and gained my interest in Japan once again.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the year 2050, 40 percent of the Japanese population will be age 65 or older. With Japanese couples having fewer children than ever before, Japan is facing a population decline of epic proportions. However, one demographic continues to grow: Japanese and non-Japanese mixed-race couples. But in one of the world\u2019s most homogeneousous countries, is Japan ready to accept their offspring?<\/p>\n

Biracial Japanese nationals like Takagi are an increasingly common sight in Japan. The latest statistics from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare indicate that one out of every 50 babies born in 2012 had one non-Japanese parent. Additionally, 3.5 percent of all domestic marriages performed last year were between Japanese and foreigners. To put those numbers into perspective, the earliest reliable census data that includes both mixed race births and marriages shows that fewer than one out of 150 babies born in 1987 were biracial and only 2.1 percent of marriages that year were between Japanese and non-Japanese.<\/p>\n

Takagi is one of a growing number of hafu<\/em> \u2013 or half Japanese \u2013 who have grown up between two cultures. The term itself, which is derived from the English word \u201chalf,\u201d is divisive in Japan. Hafu is the most commonly used word for describing people who are of mixed Japanese and non-Japanese ethnicity. The word is so pervasive that even nontraditional-looking Japanese may be asked if they are hafu.<\/p>\n

Rather than calling someone mixed-race or biracial, some believe that the term hafu insinuates that only the Japanese side is of any significance. That could reveal volumes about the national attitude toward foreigners, or perhaps it\u2019s just the word that happened to stick in a country where mixed-race celebrities are increasingly fixtures on television…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Japan, Will Hafu Ever Be Considered Whole? The Diplomat Tokyo, Japan 2013-10-03 J.T. Quigley, Assistant Editor Mixed-race individuals and their families seek acceptance in a homogeneous Japan. \u201cSpain! Spain!\u201d the boys shouted at her and her brother, day in and day out at a summer camp in Chiba prefecture. The incessant chanting eventually turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,33,8],"tags":[16510,1793,16509],"class_list":["post-34965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-census","category-media-archive","tag-j-t-quigley","tag-japan","tag-the-diplomat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34965","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=34965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}