Ariana
Miyamoto hadn't planned to enter a Japanese beauty contest because she figured
her multiracial origins meant she couldn't win. Then a close multiracial friend
committed suicide.
So Miyamoto, the daughter of a Japanese
woman and an African-American man, whose bronze skin and height of 1.73 m (5.7
ft) are unusual in Japan, where she was born and brought up, took part in the
pageant and won, becoming "Miss Japan".
"I thought that, for my friend's
sake, if there was something I could do to change Japan, I should,"
Miyamoto, 20, a dual Japanese and U.S. national, told Reuters.
"He always felt unaccepted by
Japanese ... and that made him unable to accept himself," she added, in
perfect Japanese.
Miyamoto's selection last month as
Japan's representative to the "Miss Universe" contest set off an
internet firestorm, despite a push to welcome foreigners ahead of the 2020
Summer Olympics.
"That big mouth, that gaudy face.
This is Miss Japan?" one social media commenter wrote. Another said she
resembled an ant.
The carping was not new for Miyamoto,
who attended a Japanese public school where children would refuse to touch her
because "my color might rub off," she said. Fed up, she attended a
U.S. high school.
But the pull of her birthplace was too
strong and she returned, though she said she is handed English menus and
otherwise treated like a foreigner every day.
It's a frustration shared by a growing
number of multiracial Japanese, who may look different in an extremely
homogeneous nation. Some have won fame in entertainment, but others lack
acceptance as the Japanese they feel they are.
In 2013, international marriages made up
3.3 percent of the total, government figures show, or four times the 1980
figure. Mixed race children were 1.9 percent of those born that year.
Miyamoto's victory was
"refreshing", said Greg Dvorak, a researcher in Asian and Pacific
culture and history at Hitotsubashi University, adding that Japan's reputation
as closed to diversity is overblown, despite instances of xenophobia.
"My sense is there is a growing
shift among younger generations to accept that people with all faces can speak
Japanese and function successfully in Japanese society," he said.
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