Mr Hachimura’s selection as a flag-bearer reflects how attitudes about race and identity are in flux in a country where the idea of racial homogeneity has long held sway. He belongs to a cohort of prominent mixed-race athletes who are forcing Japan to reckon with its diversity—from the Haitian-Japanese tennis champion Osaka Naomi to the Ghanaian-Japanese sprinter Sani Brown Abdul Hakim and the Iranian-Japanese baseball star, Darvish Yu.
To this day, racism remains a big problem. That is why the celebration of champion athletes can smack of hypocrisy. Mr Hachimura has said he receives hateful messages on social media “almost every day”. Nissin, a noodle-maker, lightened Ms Osaka’s skin and hair in a commercial. Some on the right still question whether the two are truly Japanese. The situation is even tougher for those without powerful forehands or smooth jump shots.
There are also more foreigners in Japan than at any time in its post-war history. A stealth immigration campaign to make up for Japan's shrinking population has seen the numbers of foreigners living there grow from some 2m a decade ago to nearly 3m today. That amounts to just 2% of the overall population, but the share is much higher among city-dwellers and the young: at least 10% of 20-somethings in Tokyo are foreign-born.
The stigma around marrying foreigners is fading: in 1993, 30% of Japanese approved of international marriages, while 34% disapproved; by 2013, the last year for which data are available, 56% approved and 20% did not. One in every 50 babies is now born to a mixed couple, up from one in every 135 in the late 1980s. As Mr Hachimura and his peers show, their potential is enormous.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "The changing face of Japan"
Japan is fine the way it is, leave it the f*ck alone.
Stop pushing this globohomo diversity interracial miscegenation bullsh*t you fuck*ng 1nbr3d k1k35.
Yeah! 👍
horrible
And here’s why 🙌🙌🙌
There was already half Romanian Murofushi as a Japanese jockey. At the time of the Atlanta 1996, Yvonne Kanazawa was the representative of Japan for women's track and field, and there was no day when she was not seen on the Olympics AD.
Racism in Japan has a historical development process & reasons. The primordial fact goes back to the fact that they weren’t the original owners of the Japan & Islands. & they chose to rely on the 'closed society' model as a method, choosing to be more tightly organized...
The women's track and field representative for the Atlanta Olympics was Yvonne Kanazawa Wade. Many African athletes have participated in Ekiden, which is popular in Japan. I would like to know the political intent of why TE has now posted such an outdated article.
I'm Japanese, but I've never met anyone in Japan who says something like this on him. But, We know many foreign journalists who believe these Japanese are ugly racists. After the war, Pro-China Socialist/Communist Party re-established a press club they belong.
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