Global Opinions
Opinion: Japan’s Olympics team is busting myths about national identity
Opinion by Baye McNeil
Today at 12:40 p.m. EDT
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Baye McNeil is an author who lives in Japan and writes a column for the Japan Times.
Articles about Japan tend to reinforce outdated platitudes to describe Japanese people, often using adjectives such as polite, shy, kind, traditional — and homogeneous. Imagine readers’ surprise, then, when they turned on the television to watch the Opening Ceremonies of Tokyo 2020, only to find that a country they’ve been told is a haven of homogeneity had selected NBA rising star Rui Hachimura as one of its flag bearers and had given the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron to tennis champion Naomi Osaka. Both are figures much of the Japanese public would classify as either “kokujin” (Black) or “gaikokujin” (un-Japanese) without a moment’s hesitation if they weren’t famous. Yet the Olympics are highlighting just how false such stereotypes are.
It didn’t take much of my 17-year tenure in Japan to learn that being Japanese has little to do with what country issued your passport. It’s actually about what I call the “ABCs”: appearing Japanese, behaving Japanese and communicating fluently in Japanese. And neither Hachimura nor Osaka can claim all these essential ABCs of being Japanese — because they’re both Black.
Even Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has asserted that Japan is “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture and one race”; he said words to this effect as recently as last year. And to my knowledge, aside from the recognition at long last of the Ainu as an indigenous people in 2019, there has not been an official nor unofficial shift from this position.
A survey of foreign nationals living in Japan found nearly a third of respondents say they have experienced derogatory remarks because of their background, while about 40 percent have suffered housing discrimination. Though there don’t appear to be similar surveys specifically of biracial Japanese, their experiences — caught between their Japanese identity and the country’s patterns of exclusion — no doubt come with their own challenges.
But there is increasingly a growing place for multiculturalism and “Blackness” in Japan in arenas such as music, comedy, beauty pageants and athletics. And for the purposes of the Olympics, Japan has decided to utilize the Black athleticism and excellence at its disposal. In doing so, the country stands to reap the benefit of appearing to the outside world as more open-minded and colorblind than it really is.
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All told, at least 35 members of the Japanese Olympic team are multiracial, many half-Black, and even though Osaka herself has been knocked out from the competition, others are medal contenders, such as sprinter Abdul Hakim Sani Brown.
This could be an opportunity for greater understanding and inclusivity. However, the decision to spotlight Osaka and Hachimura was done without acknowledging that Japan is not made up of just one race. That persistent belief marginalizes many biracial and untraditional Japanese and encourages the erasure of issues pertinent to them, such as racial discrimination, diversity and inclusion. Indeed, the prominence of Japan’s biracial athletes should not be used to lend legitimacy to the inaccurate belief that there is no racial discrimination in the country.
If the exploitation of the Olympics by governments to make political statements about race and nationalism — and the presence of athletes whose experiences counter these narratives — sounds familiar, that’s because this is part of a much larger history.
In 1936, when Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics, America’s great hope to counter the racist myth of Aryan supremacy was Jesse Owens. A victim of America’s own evil system of discrimination and segregation, Owens undoubtedly understood he was being used. But he also recognized that this was an opportunity to show the world not so much America’s greatness, but the courage and character of Black Americans. And this he did admirably, victoriously, despite being snubbed by both Hitler and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Then, amid the civil rights movement, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in the iconic Black Power salute in the 1968 Olympics. Their politicization of the Games, in protest of injustice in the United States and apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa, was penalized severely. They were expelled from the team and forced to return home, but their victory and message will never be forgotten.
I don’t expect any of the biracial Japanese athletes in Tokyo to overtly use this Olympic platform to speak out. I’d die of pride — and surprise — if an athlete said, “Just because Japan sees 20,000 biracial children born every year doesn’t mean we are treated as Japanese.” But I expect nothing of the sort.
However, by fully vesting themselves in what makes athletics so compelling in the first place — the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat and the humanity of it all — I expect these athletes, whether they medal or not, to win over the masses in the end. Simply letting their spirits shine through, they can’t help but break through some of the ignorance and stereotype-driven presumptions. And this will slowly reshape what it means to be Japanese, until notions of homogeneity are revealed to be what they truly are: asinine.
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Baye McNeil: The whitewashing of Japan’s Naomi Osaka was no accident
Opinion: The whitewashing of Japan’s Naomi Osaka was no accident
Opinion by Baye McNeil
January 31, 2019
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Baye McNeil is an author who lives in Japan and writes a column for the Japan Times.
This week, Naomi Osaka became the face of Japan to the world. By capturing the 2019 Australian Open, she has raced to No. 1 in the tennis world rankings, becoming the first Asian to ever achieve that honor.
But even as this exceptionally talented biracial, multinational and (as she phrased it) obviously tan woman was displaying why she’s a champion, one of her sponsors, the Japanese food brand Nissin, released an anime-style advertisement portraying Osaka as essentially white. The company would spend most of the end of the Australian Open apologizing for the backlash over its whitewashed depiction of the athlete.
In her response to the controversy, Osaka said, “I don’t think they did it on purpose to be ‘whitewashing’ or anything.” But I disagree. In my 15 years in Japan, I have seen the same racialized carelessness when it comes to people who are not traditionally Japanese on many occasions.
Nissin might not have intended to offend, but the company’s executives likely believed that a commercial campaign targeting Japanese consumers would be well-received if it featured a light-skinned talent — and that they could get away with replacing Osaka’s Haitian features with more typical Japanese anime characteristics.
Unfortunately, Japan has a track record of squandering opportunities to embrace the country’s growing diversity. As with Osaka, the Japanese public has often discounted the Japanese-ness of mixed-race people — but hypocritically claims their successes when they rise on the global stage.
Osaka is not the first brown woman who has risen to prominence in a country that unabashedly worships “bihaku” (skin whitening). In 2015, Ariana Miyamoto, the daughter of a Japanese woman and a black American man, was crowned Miss Universe Japan. The following year, Priyanka Yoshikawa, another brown-skinned woman of Japanese and Indian descent, was crowned Miss World Japan. Both women faced unreasonable criticism on social media for not appearing “Japanese enough." Courageously, they both used their platforms to speak out about their identities and concerns. With their wins, even those of us with biracial, multicultural families and friends living in Japan began to feel more optimistic that our voices were finally being heard.
Yet time and time again, our optimism was eroded by disturbing instances of narrow-mindedness and insular thinking. For example, blackface continues to be a recurring issue. In 2015, the groups Rats & Star and Momoiro Clover Z decided to team up and perform on national television in blackface. Though there was a successful petition that preempted its airing, it failed to make inroads into public discourse.
But, when another disturbing blackface incident occurred in 2017, something changed. Instead of the criticism being ignored, there was finally public discourse on blackface on television, in print media and on the Internet. The Tokyo Broadcasting System even invited me to teach the staff and executives about the history of blackface in Japan and to counsel them on what measures the company could take to increase diversity and representation in the media. These were positive steps forward.
Now, after Osaka’s win and the response to the Nissin ad, I’m hopeful that there will be an even stronger response. The consensus, even on Japanese social media, is that Nissin deserves at least some of the criticism it has received. Osaka herself gently rebuked the company when she said, “I definitely think that, next time they try to portray me or something, I feel like they should talk to me about it.” Her rise and dignified response to this incident has elevated the issue and catalyzed an important conversation.
Japan is at a critical juncture in its history. It must decide how the country will face the future. Will it move forward and acknowledge with respect the vast array of races, ethnicities and cultures that call this country home? Or will it move backward and continue to maintain the myth that it is homogeneous?
The reality is that Japan has an expanding biracial population. With more than 20,000 international marriages per year and an estimated 36,000 children with at least one non-Japanese parent born per year, the country is changing — and it’s time to recognize and embrace that.
The days of hiding behind notions of homogeneity are numbered. Japan is a multicultural country, and its diversity — exemplified by women such as Osaka, Miyamoto and Yoshikawa — is rising to the top. The rapidly approaching 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, which will spotlight other nontraditional Japanese athletes, in addition to Osaka herself, will present numerous opportunities for Japan to show which direction it has decided to take. And the world will have front-row seats.
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