Once
marginalized and mocked, Black athletes,
musicians and celebrities of Japanese descent
are changing the game in Asia and in America. In
a country perceived as homogeneous, where
everyone supposedly looks alike and is pressured
to conform, there is an old
proverb that says “the
nail that sticks out gets hammered.” But
things are changing, and people of African
descent are showing that Japanese and
East Asian people do not all look alike. And
Black people are making spaces for themselves in
places where they were once excluded and
invisible.
Tennis
star Naomi
Osaka,
who was born in Japan to a Haitian-American
father and Japanese mother, is a high-profile
example. Osaka, who has matched her prowess on
the court by challenging cultural and racial
norms in Japan, called out a Nissin
noodle commercial that
depicted her as an anime character with white
skin and brown hair.
In
professional sports, there are Black Japanese
heroes like Rui Hachimura of the Los Angeles
Lakers. An Olympic athlete who has been active
in Black
Lives Matter activism,
Hachimura became the first
Japanese player in
an NCAA Division I tournament, and the first to
make it as an NBA
first round draft pick.
In
2017, Ariana
Miyamoto became
the first mixed-race (or hafu,
meaning
“half” in Japanese) Miss Universe Japan, helping
to chip away at traditional Japanese beauty
standards that have valued light skin and
shunned melanin and African features. Ariana
faced racial abuse as a child, and decided to
compete after a hafu friend
committed suicide. In 2020, both the winner and
first runner-up of the Miss Japan pageant -
Aisha
Tochigi and
Raimu
Kamanishi -
are of Afro-Japanese ancestry.
Looking
at the Japanese entertainment industry, Black
artists have graced the music scene, names such
as R&B singers Crystal
Kay,
Aisha and
Thelma
Aoyama;
Japanese-Jamaican rapper Daicihi
Yamamoto; J-pop
singers Nesmith and
Chris
Hart,
and Jerome
“Jero” White -
who is an enka or
“Japanese blues” singer.
And
the collective of J-pop groups known as Exile
Tribe have
Black members, in an industry where some
Japanese groups only a few decades ago performed
in blackface to mimic Black folks.
As the YouTube channel, The
Black Experience Japan has chronicled, Black
people are making moves and living their lives
in Japan. Somewhere in Tokyo, there are Black-owned
barbershops and Black-owned
restaurants. Black people still face racial
discrimination in that country. But they are
leading, making their presence known and
changing the game.
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