English | Japanese

I’m half English and half Japanese, but the English side of my heritage has always been dominant as England is my birthplace and home. After university, my Father worked in Japan for a while. My parents met whilst climbing Mount Fuji. Although they were in different friendship groups at the time, they were in the same tour group setting off from Osaka. Roughly a year after my older brother was born in Japan, my parents moved to England because of my Father’s job. I was born not long after. My Mother was focused on improving her English at the time, so she never spoke to us in Japanese when we were younger. As a result of this, Japanese became my parents’ language of secrecy. Although my brother and I could understand a few words here and there, we could never really understand the specifics of what they were saying. 

My English Grandparents belonged to a fairly conservative generation. Nevertheless, they welcomed my Mother with open arms. The only issue with them was with names. They probably wanted me to have a traditional English name, as they weren't readily approving when my parents gave me an almost unheard of first name and a Japanese middle name. Apparently, it took half a year for them to stop referring to me as ‘the baby’. 

A widely used term in Japan for those that are half Japanese is hāfu (literally meaning ‘half’). The homogeneity of Japanese society has meant there’s always been controversy around hāfus, particularly with regard to athletes like Naomi Osaka. Her success and the concurrent prejudice she’s faced has thrown into question what it really means to be Japanese in the first place. It's clear that not all hāfus are treated equally. Those with Caucasian blood like myself are often treated with undue reverence, flick through the pages of any Japanese fashion magazine and it’ll be plastered with European hāfus. Other mixes have a much harder time, particularly those with Black or Korean heritage. NHK's notorious mishandling of this year's Black Lives Matter protests showed just how deep these racial problems are in Japan.

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