{"id":42655,"date":"2015-09-11T01:50:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T01:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42655"},"modified":"2015-09-11T01:50:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T01:50:34","slug":"being-hafu-in-japan-mixed-race-people-face-ridicule-rejection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42655","title":{"rendered":"Being \u2018hafu\u2019 in Japan: Mixed-race people face ridicule, rejection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2015\/9\/9\/hafu-in-japan-mixed-race.html\" target=\"_blank\">Being \u2018hafu\u2019 in Japan: Mixed-race people face ridicule, rejection<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\" target=\"_blank\">Al Jazeera America<\/a><br \/>\n2015-09-09<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/roxanasaberi.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Roxana Saberi<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"AJAM-video--embed\" src=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/watch\/embed.html\/content\/ajam\/watch\/shows\/live-news\/2015\/9\/miss-japan-challenges-the-norm\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Among Japanese, the perception of pure ethnic background is a big part of belonging to the culture<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tokyo\" target=\"_blank\">TOKYO<\/a> \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ariana_Miyamoto\" target=\"_blank\">Ariana Miyamoto<\/a> was born and raised in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Japan\" target=\"_blank\">Japan<\/a> and speaks fluent Japanese. But she said most people in her homeland see her as a foreigner.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy appearance isn\u2019t Asian,\u201d she said, \u201c[but] I think I\u2019m very much Japanese on the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Miyamoto, 21, was born to a Japanese mother and an African-American sailor who left Japan when she was a child. In Japan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hafujapanese.org\/eng\/bg02.html\" target=\"_blank\">she\u2019s considered a <em>hafu<\/em><\/a>, or half-Japanese. Some people prefer the term <em>daburu<\/em> to signify double heritage, but Miyamoto said she\u2019s not offended by the word <em>hafu<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t think the equivalent word for <em>hafu<\/em> exists overseas, but in Japan you need it to explain who you are,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>In March she became the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=100008558142819&amp;fref=ts\" target=\"_blank\">first half-black, half-Japanese woman to be named Miss Universe Japan<\/a>. Many people in Japan cheered, tweeting messages such as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ArianaMiyamoto\" target=\"_blank\">She represents Japan!<\/a> Being <em>hafu<\/em> is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But others complained on social media that she didn\u2019t deserve the title&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/america.aljazeera.com\/articles\/2015\/9\/9\/hafu-in-japan-mixed-race.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Being \u2018hafu\u2019 in Japan: Mixed-race people face ridicule, rejection Al Jazeera America 2015-09-09 Roxana Saberi Among Japanese, the perception of pure ethnic background is a big part of belonging to the culture TOKYO \u2014 Ariana Miyamoto was born and raised in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. But she said most people in her homeland see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,16,33,8,394],"tags":[15078,19675,1793,21020],"class_list":["post-42655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-asia","category-census","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-al-jazeera-america","tag-ariana-miyamoto","tag-japan","tag-roxana-saberi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42655","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=42655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42656,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42655\/revisions\/42656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}