If I were Japanese, I would not necessarily be pleased by my country being represented by a woman who’s half-black.
If I were Nigerian, I would not necessarily want my country represented by someone who’s half-Japanese.
People have a right and incentive to prefer their own kind.
The reason Japan has long been immune to ethnic conflict is that it is homogeneous. Wherever you have racial and religious diversity, you have conflict.
NYT:
Biracial Beauty Queen Strives for Change in Mono-Ethnic Japan
The child of a short-lived marriage between an African-American sailor in the United States Navy and a local Japanese woman, Ms. Miyamoto grew up in Japan, where she says other children often shunned her because of her darker skin and tightly curled hair.
That experience has driven her to use her pageant victory as a soapbox for raising awareness about the difficulties faced by mixed-race citizens in a country that still regards itself as mono-ethnic.
“Even today, I am usually seen not as a Japanese but as a foreigner. At restaurants, people give me an English menu and praise me for being able to eat with chopsticks,” said Ms. Miyamoto, who spoke in her native Japanese, and is an accomplished calligrapher of Japanese-Chinese characters. “I want to challenge the definition of being Japanese.”
Her self-proclaimed mission has raised eyebrows at a time when race relations are receiving new scrutiny in Japan, which had long seen itself as immune to the ethnic tensions of the United States…
With outright immigration still restricted to a trickle, much of Japan’s new diversity comes from the ethnically mixed children of marriages between Japanese and foreigners. These hafu — a term that comes from the English word “half” — have gained increasing social prominence, especially in sports and on television.
Japanese of mixed race also account for a small but growing portion of the overall population: According to the Health Ministry, some 20,000 children with one non-Japanese parent are now born here annually, about 2 percent of total births…
But experts on pageants said it was precisely because she is half black that she has gotten so much attention. They said her victory had overturned an unspoken hierarchy among hafu, in which those with lighter skin color have long been celebrated as the most beautiful.
