Why some critics think Japan’s Miss Universe contestant isn’t Japanese enough

By most of the rest of the the world’s standards, Ariana Miyamoto is thoroughly Japanese.

The 20-year-old model is a Japanese citizen, a native of Sasebo in Nagasaki prefecture with an advanced mastery of the art of Japanese calligraphy, according to RockeNewst24, a Tokyo-based news blog. Have you heard her speak Japanese, the language spoken by the people occupying the volcanic archipelago known as “Japan”? She does it really well — like a native speaker, without a trace of a foreign accent, because she is, in fact, Japanese.

And yet, Miyamoto made a point of preemptively, if politely, defending herself during her first meeting with the Japanese media after she was crowned Miss Universe Japan last week. The biracial beauty queen — the daughter of a Japanese woman and an African American man — said she may not “look Japanese” on the outside, but on the inside, her soul is replete with Japaneseness, according to the blog Kotaku.

In Japan, Miyamoto is known as hafu (or haafu) — a word that refers to multiracial or multiethnic half-Japanese people. And there is a pervasive feeling in Japan, which is considered one of the most homogeneous places on Earth, that mixed-race people are not fully Japanese, according to NBC News.

Those feelings were reflected on social media after Miyamoto was selected as Miss Universe Japan.

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