Friday, September 23, 2016

Miss Japan 2016 and Being "Hafu"



Recently 22 year old Priyanka Yoshikawa won the title of Miss Japan 2016.  Her title win has been in the news quite a bit as her father is Indian, so she is considered "hafu" or half Japanese.  Critics complain that a "pure" Japanese should have won.  This follows last year's Miss Universe pageant winner who was the first mixed-race person to win a major pageant in Japan. Only 3% of babies born in Japan every year are biracial.  


A few years ago, we went to the screening of a film called Hafu, which illustrated the difficulties and prejudice biracial Japanese face.  If you are interested you can find clips of it on YouTube. 

4 comments:

Miranda said...

Sounds pretty similar to the 2014 Miss America, who was of Indian descent:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/a-lot-of-people-are-very-upset-that-an-indian-american-woman

Anonymous said...

Hi Pamela she is very beautiful,wow it all very interesting and shouldnt make any difference if she is "hafu" but sadly these things do exist xx

Carol- Beads and Birds said...

This is a VERY interesting post. We in the US as so used to disdain shown certain mixed marriages, while others are not given a second thought. But it appears the Japanese disdain ANY mix. Very interesting and I wonder why. Perhaps I'll be spending time on Google today.
Hope you are feeling up to snuff!
xx, Carol

kiwikid said...

Interesting how anti mixing race the Japanese people are. A friend here married a Japanese woman and her parents never accepted him into the family. They accepted but were not happy with the two children. Sad isn't it.