Photo/Illutration Children at the AmerAsian School in Okinawa Prefecture (Asahi Shimbun file photo) 

“Whole,” a 2019 Japanese film directed by Bilal Kawazoe, has a scene in a ramen shop where a rude Japanese patron keeps pestering a fellow customer, a young biracial man, with questions.

“Which country are you from?” the man asks. The young man, visibly annoyed, responds curtly, “I was born in Japan.”

“Wow, you’re a ‘haafu’ (half), eh?” says the man, to which the youth retorts, “I’m not a half. I’m a ‘double.’”

The man changes his tack: “But hey, you’re good with chopsticks.” The youth remains silent.

The man persists, “You like Japanese food?”

“Yes.”

Then the man mumbles to himself, “We’ve got many ‘gaijin’ (foreign) customers today.”

Director Kawazoe, 33, was born in Hyogo Prefecture. His father is Pakistani, his mother is Japanese. The film is based largely on his own experiences and inner conflict, as well as those of his younger brother and many other biracial young people, who have lived all their lives in Japan but are still not seen as Japanese.

Today, two out of 100 babies born in Japan have one non-Japanese parent. But some people still shock me with their deep-rooted prejudice that makes them treat such children as foreigners just because of how they look.

And it is those same people who, when a biracial person becomes a superstar in sports or any other field, gush over them as “the pride of Japan.”

We need to be honest enough to admit that such a tendency does exist.

The Asahi Shimbun recently ran a comment, sent in by a biracial junior high school student in Osaka, who recalled being told by a classmate, “It’s yucky when a ‘half’ speaks the Kansai dialect.” The student had grown up since infancy speaking the dialect “as a matter of course,” but the classmate’s words caused the student to avoid speaking it anymore.

I was saddened by this account.

“If you don’t know the other person and don’t even care to know, you’ll probably hurt the person,” said Kawazoe.

I examined my conscience, wondering if something I said could have inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings. I need to use more imagination.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 3

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.