‘Hafu’: Problematic or not?
Differing Views Within Biracial Japanese Community
With a documentary named after the word, a plethora of youtube videos offering insights into very specific individuals’ experiences, who find no problem with the word, and quite a few biracial Japanese individuals writing in English about their own individual experience one cannot be blamed for getting the wrong impression that this word — hafu — is not problematic. While not ethnically Japanese myself, as an academic interested in media, culture, and human rights, I find myself reading about these issues in both the Japanese academia and media as well as the English media.
In doing so I have discovered an apparent disparity of experience and belief between those raised abroad as biracial Japanese and those raised domestically. Domestic biracial Japanese tell a tale of bullying, ostracisation, discrimination, and casual microaggression, while those who were raised abroad seem to often mute the experience or downplay or outright (rarely) invalidate the discriminatory experiences of their peers.
This is not a criticism of those individuals expressing their own experiences (unless, of course, they are actively invalidating others). This is rather a call to remind ourselves that without data and critical analysis even 30 videos of “hafu” saying they never experienced discrimination does not constitute the whole picture.
The data according to various researchers and NPOs is clear; discrimination is widespread ranging from bullying and discrimination in schools and daily microaggressions to blatant racist denial of their Japanese identity as well as, sometimes, as horrific as random targeted attacks. Those raised in Japan find this bullying as a forced severing of their identity by a negation of their Japanese identity via a lack of acceptance of their full biracial personhood. Certainly, some of the wealthy are sheltered from this because their parents could afford to send them to international schools or were fortunate to have supportive communities. However, this is not the norm.
Japan-born and raised Miss Universe Ariana Miyamoto as well as basketball stars, Rui and Aren Hachimura, have spoken openly about these issues. Priyanka Yoshikawa, a model and entrepreneur in Japan who is of South Asian and Japanese descent, in an English interview encourages people to use “mixed” (ミックス mikkusu in Japanese.) Miyamoto lost a childhood friend to suicide because the bullying for being biracial was so terrible. The NIKE commercial highlighted this issue and got the typical backlash from right-wing netizens and willfully ignorant “protect Japan’s image” type nationalists. A young girl at a youth conference I attended here in Gifu said it with tears of hurt and anger; “I hate this word (hafu). I am not a half person. I am a full person.” Yet there are those raised abroad who invalidate this idea directly. (See here.)
Unfortunately while the claim that it is not used derogatorily is common, it is just plain incorrect. In truth, just as Japanese people say gaijin and do not realize nor consider its othering affect, hafu is not often intentionally used derogatorily. If I may be so bold as to propose a reasoning for this discrepancy, it is as follows. The geographic location of their formative years constructed how they defined, interpreted, and formed themselves in response to experiencing Japanese society’s gaze upon them. Furthermore, as one who was raised abroad one is more likely to forgive the unnecessary, hurtful microaggression of “where are you from?” or “にほんごじょうず！（nihon-go jouzu!) because in fact expressing one’s past life abroad is a form of self-expression, not self-explanation that barters for the interrogator’s acceptance. The worst bullying happens in elementary or middle school according to the data and these individuals lived abroad at that time in their lives.
Conversely, the biracial Japanese raised in Japan have most likely not only experienced bullying at the hands of their fellow Japanese in their formative years but also been subjected to the daily questioning and thereby invalidation of their Japanese identity.
Lastly, I have noticed that domestically-raised biracial Japanese do not often claim that Japan is a homogeneous nation or single ethnicity nation; however, as a way to explain away or rationalize their experiences with these microaggressions, those raised abroad or living abroad often make this point. Again, this is a problematic difference. The assertion of Japan’s homogeneity is the very basis for the systemic racism around the treatment of biracial or multiracial Japanese. Furthermore, Japan is in fact not and never has been a monoethnic state. Various cultural studies academics, such as Harumi Befu, have thoroughly analyzed the sociopolitical myth of homogeneity, its invalidity, and ideological utilization for decades.
Japan’s colonial policies of forced assimilation of Korean, Chinese, Ainu, and Okinawans as well as the fact that the government does not track naturalized immigrants’ ethnic backgrounds have hidden the actual depth of Japan’s multi-ethnicism.
Avoiding using hafu will not solve Japan’s social issues of discrimination but its replacement and soft encouragements to avoid it to our peers can increase awareness of and the public discussion of the experiences of our multiracial and biracial peers.
