{"id":52701,"date":"2017-03-21T01:10:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T01:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=52701"},"modified":"2017-03-21T01:10:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T01:10:44","slug":"two-halves-of-a-whole-on-japans-habitual-labeling-of-bicultural-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=52701","title":{"rendered":"Two Halves Of A Whole: On Japan\u2019s Habitual \u2018Labeling\u2019 Of Bicultural Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Halves Of A Whole: On Japan\u2019s Habitual \u2018Labeling\u2019 Of Bicultural Kids<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Savvy Tokyo<\/a>
\n2017-03-15<\/p>\n

Louise George Kittaka<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Half Or Double, It’s About Time We Let Them Speak For Themselves<\/em><\/p>\n

In Japan<\/a>, Japanese are nihonjin<\/em><\/a> and foreigners are gaikokujin<\/em><\/a> and never the twain shall meet. But what does this mean for our bicultural offsprings?<\/p>\n

The term hafu<\/em> (literally, half) is commonly used in Japan for anyone who has one Japanese parent and one from another cultural background or nationality. The term grates on many foreign parents because it implies that the non-Japanese side of their background somehow renders them \u201cincomplete.\u201d<\/p>\n

I certainly disliked the term when I became a mom for the first time following the birth of my son. I spent a lot of time and energy earnestly asking people, friends and strangers alike, to refer to my child as \u201cdaburu<\/em>\u201d or \u201cdouble.\u201d I even wrote an article for a bilingual magazine, entitled \u201cPlease Don\u2019t Call My Baby a \u2018Half\u2019\u201d and advocating for the use of the term \u201cdouble\u201d instead.<\/p>\n

Looking back at the article now, I cringe inwardly. By the time the second of my two daughters arrived to complete my trio of kids, I was beginning to tire of the \u201cwhat to call bicultural children\u201d conversation. I began to think, \u201cWhy do we need to label them at all? They are kids who just happen to have parents from two different backgrounds. Get over it already!\u201d Older and wiser, I now know that it isn\u2019t that simple…<\/p>\n

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

Half Or Double, It’s About Time We Let Them Speak For Themselves<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,414,125,8],"tags":[1793,15326,3957,26598],"class_list":["post-52701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-japan","tag-louise-george-kittaka","tag-megumi-nishikura","tag-savvy-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701","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=52701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52702,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701\/revisions\/52702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}