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No One Believes That I’m Japanese
Mixed race people don’t often get the acceptance that everyone else takes for granted
I knew when I started my degree in Japanese and International Relations that I would spend a year in Japan. Although I didn’t grow up speaking my father’s native tongue, I still imagined that as soon as I landed, fluent Japanese would flow from my mouth. Sadly, that’s quite far from the truth. For me, as someone caught between being Japanese and British, returning to my father’s homeland has been a complex and challenging experience.
While the friends I’ve made have blissfully enjoyed Tokyo’s many thrills and sights, my identity issues have bubbled up to the surface. This is not to say that I haven’t enjoyed my time here. I’ve spent endless nights singing my heart out in karaoke bars, dancing underneath the pulsating lights of Tokyo nightclubs, and tucking into food that sizzles off my tongue. However, I don’t have the privileged ignorance of viewing Japan as a complete outsider. Even though my father is Japanese, I am not proficient in the language or the cultural customs. I am someone halfway (or ha-fu [ハーフ], as they say in Japan).
Even among the other half-Japanese people I’ve met here, I feel like an outsider. Every time I hear them launch into fluent Japanese, I feel ashamed. Whenever I have to speak Japanese in front of them, I feel the strings in my stomach tighten. It terrifies me that they might think I’m not truly one of them, because my father didn’t gift me the language that runs through our bloodline. If I cannot even identify as half-Japanese, then what am I, truly?
Many mixed race people are familiar with this question. We ask it of ourselves and field it from others. Those who ignorantly ask, “What even are you?” to racially ambiguous people should know that this is a question that has plagued us for our entire lives. We do not need you to remind us of the pains of being othered. Our experiences have already done that job for you.
In the U.K., I don’t feel like I am “enough” of a person of color to participate in the current discourse. In Japan, the othering of mixed identities is more structural. Most important is the issue of nationality. The supposed homogeneity of Japan is reflected in its stringent laws…
