I want to take a moment to think about a quote by Gushiken Emiko, an Okinawan woman interviewed in Murphy-Shigematsu’s The Invisible Man and Other Narratives of Living in the Borderlands of Race and Nation. She said that “…when I was growing up, people threw rocks at you, they spit at you, called you a murderer and yelled at you to go home. Go home, what does that mean? I am home!” Throughout the readings for this week, I was thinking about the charged identity of mixed-race Japanese and how reactions to them – both in the way they are treated and the language used regarding them – are heavily loaded with social context. One example of this is how the military presence in Okinawa which brought with it an increase in Japanese-American babies became a social context that defined the treatment of mixed children like Gushiken Emiko. The derogatory slang used to identify mixed-race Okinawans was a means of otherizing them and taking out frustrations of militarization in a situation where tensions surrounding the U.S. military base were high. As time has carried on, the slang used to describe mixed-race Japanese has changed – from aimoko to daburu – reflecting changing social circumstances. Historically, and even up to today, mixed-race Japanese are symbols of the non-homogeneous nature of Japan, as well as the increased intermingling of non-Japanese with Japanese, which can be uncomfortable ideas for the Japanese public. However, they are also increasing seen as symbols of international education and global know-how, which are respected by many Japanese individuals. No matter how they are viewed, mixed-race Japanese people are regarded as symbols of internationalism and international relations, loaded with historical and social context simply by existing. And, until society changes, the image and identity that the public forces onto mixed-race individuals will not change.
Another thing I’d like to note is the importance of format in weaving a narrative of the mixed-race experience in Japan. The readings that we have done, like the Murphy-Shigematsu reading referred to above, benefit from the inclusion of personal stories and individual accounts. Identity, especially as a mixed-race individual in Japan, is fraught with complexity and instability. There is no one way of “being.” Hearing the diverse ways in which identity becomes a working part in a person’s life from the individuals themselves is important to understanding this. Sometimes individuals know who they are and are that uncompromisingly; other times, individuals do not know how to define themselves, and feel lost without an understandable identity. Often, the story seems to be that society forces an identity onto an individual who understands themselves in a different way, and the two (or more) sides start a persistent crisis of identity within the individual. Understanding that identity does not always work the same in each person helps imagine a society more flexible towards identity than present-day Japan is. I think that realizing that identity is not a dichotomy of “Japanese” versus “not-Japanese” will be an important step towards become more open to mixed-race individuals in Japan.
Comments