Miss Universe Japan facing backlash at home

Mar 24, 2015

Miyamoto Eriana is the first Afro Asian to be crowned Miss Japan.

Tokyo - Miyamoto Eriana is the first Afro Asian to be crowned Miss Japan. Eriana is a Japanese citizen, born and raised.

Eriana was born to a black American father and a Japanese mother in Nagasaki.

She briefly studied abroad in the U.S. and has a 5th degree of mastery in Japanese calligraphy.

The reigning queen will go forth as the first Afro Asian representative of the country in the Miss Universe pageant.



Nervous about how this would be received, she even voiced her apprehensiveness on acceptance as a contestant in the pageant.

‘I wonder if a hafu like me would be okay.’  ” “Hafu” is the Japanese term for biracial.

Although, Eriana made history with her win, there were some very outspoken folks on twitter in Japan who felt she should not represent the country because of her cultural background: “It makes me uncomfortable to say she’s representing Japan.”

Some even went so far to proclaim that they desired a “pure blooded Japanese” to represent them.

It doesn’t help that despite growing numbers of foreign residents in Japan, the nation remains among the most culturally homogenous in the world, with less than 2 percent of the country identifying as non-Japanese.

About 5.5 percent of all marriages in Japan were of mixed race in 2004, and a majority of those were marriages between Japanese and other Asian nationalities, according to The Hafu Project, which advocates dialogue about race, culture, and ethnicity in Japan.

By comparison, 14.6 percent of US marriages in 2010 were interracial, according to a Pew survey.

CSM

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