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. My Father is from Lancashire and my Mother is from Osaka. After university, my Father worked in Japan for a while. Being in the deep end meant he soon became proficient at speaking Japanese, so he made lots of friends there and had a great time. 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. The trip involved a one-night stay in a mountain hut in which everyone slept head to toe like sardines. My parents just happened to be next to each other. Before lights out, my Mother jerked her head up as she was keen to join in on a conversation. In doing so, she apparently set in motion a Rube Goldberg-type chain of events that led to a broom being knocked off its hook. As luck would have it, the broom toppled onto my Father. He was charmed by my Mother’s clumsiness and still is to this day.
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. It would have been so much easier to learn the language in those early years when the brain is so sponge-like, but I understand that my Mother needed to prioritise her own studies. In hindsight, she’s admitted that laziness may have also played a part. 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 parents both enjoy cooking, so food has always been paramount in our household. Although we grew up eating a lot of Japanese food, basic ingredients used to be much harder to come by, so we still had a predominantly Western diet. This is largely representative of our upbringing in general: primarily Western but with some Japanese influences.
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’. Being the child of an interracial marriage has been the source of much amusement over the years. When eating out as a family, more often than not we’re asked whether we’re paying together or separately. According to one member of staff at a cafe we visited in Japan, we look more like a book group than a family. The most absurd occasion was when we bumped into a distant family friend who we hadn't seen for many years. He assumed that my brother and I were the pen pals of my Father’s children.
It delights me when people approach me and express their enthusiasm for Japanese culture. More often than not it's something do with the films or the food. Japan’s been in the spotlight over the past few years due to the build-up to the Tokyo Olympics. Major sporting events like these are all the more enjoyable as I have two teams that I feel I can root for. Ever the fan of the underdog, however, I tend to opt for the Japanese jersey. I've actually got this strange fixation with searching for niche Japanese football shirts. I say strange because I'm not even a huge fan of football. I suppose I like wearing them as they're an easy way of showing that I'm proud of my Japanese heritage. They also remind those around me that I'm not fully English.
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, however. 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.
When I was at school, there was another boy in my year who was half English and half Japanese. We naturally bonded over this similarity. Unlike me, however, he grew up in Japan and could speak fluent Japanese. It was curious to see how a lot of people regarded him as Japanese but me as English. Without a doubt, I was the much better treated of the two. I was well aware of this at the time, yet I remained a silent bystander on all occasions. Like many, I've recently looked back on such instances from the past with a fresh perspective. Although it wasn't that long ago, I think I'm better informed now. We were and still are good friends, but I ultimately would have been a better friend if I had responded properly.
I continue to wonder what growing up in Japan as a hāfu would’ve been like. Of course, my brother and I would have ended up being very different people to how we are now if we’d been raised there. Family friends in Japan still tell me that I stand out as much as all the other foreigners when I’m there. They're not lying either, as they’ve manged to pick me out from the rush-hour crowds of Osaka on several occasions.
I was rarely teased for my Japanese heritage, but on the occasions when I was it was almost always to do with the Asian-eyes stereotype and the go-to generic Asian accent. During my early teenage years, when I didn’t know any better, I would sometimes try to be the first one to ‘joke’ about my Japanese heritage so as to pre-empt someone else from doing so. I can vividly recall the feeling of guilt this would cause me; it would’ve been so upsetting for my Japanese friends and relatives to have seen me acting in such a way. I was always proud to be half Japanese, but I think it just took a while for me to start relating to it in a sensible way. On a few occasions I would even make attempts at overstating just how Japanese I really was.
My Mother introduced me to Studio Ghibli films from a young age, and in the past year or so I've fallen deeply in love with Japanese cinema. I always wonder just how big a part my heritage has to play in this. Would I be so fascinated otherwise? Whenever my Mother goes back to Japan, there are always a few items of food I ask her to buy as well as the latest issue of Popeye magazine. I study Japanese for a few hours every day and hope to take the proficiency test at some point. My progress has plateaued quite dramatically, though. I occasionally practice by speaking Japanese with my Mother, but the convenience of English always prevails. NHK have a website where they write up the major daily news articles in simple Japanese, so I try to read a couple of those every morning. It's really inspiring to see Will Sharpe drawing on his own Japanese-English heritage in shows like Giri/Haji and Flowers, and it just goes to show how powerful it is to see someone like yourself on the screen.
I'm really lucky that my parents are in a position that's enabled me to make several trips to Japan over the years. In an attempt at rebalancing my hereditary scales, I spent a few months learning Japanese at a language school in Osaka two years ago. It was intense but effective. I was soon able to have a conversation with my Japanese Grandmother, something we’d never been able to do before due to the language barrier. I then put what I’d learned into practice by working in the kitchen of a traditional Japanese inn, which was run by the most wonderful family. I helped them prepare and serve these elaborate multi-course dinners known as kaiseki-ryōri. The hours were long and I was essentially a glorified pot washer, but it’s an experience I cherish dearly.