Jakarta –
When Carolina Shiino recently received the crown and sash that marked her as “Miss Japan 2024” at a hotel in Tokyo, the 26 year old woman actually cried with emotion. However, she was the first woman born outside Japan to non-Japanese parents to win the title.
After his enthronement, Shiino, who only received Japanese citizenship in 2022, said it all felt “like a dream.”
“I often had to fight against obstacles that prevented me from being accepted as Japanese, therefore I am very grateful to be recognized as Japanese in this competition,” he said.
Apart from that, debate on social media spread throughout Japan, questioning whether Shiino really deserved to receive the “Miss Japan” crown.
Most of the positive comments focused on the fact that he is now a Japanese citizen, while others opposed Shiino’s victory and emphasized the issue of ethnicity.
“The person chosen as ‘Miss Japan’ is not even half Japanese, but 100% Ukrainian. Doesn’t that make her ‘Miss Ukraine?” wrote one user (@iwaimichiko) on social media X, previously known as Twitter.
Judged by physical appearance
In Japan, status as a Japanese person has traditionally been considered a matter of physical appearance and not nationality.
For example, like many other half-Japanese people, tennis player Naomi Osaka, with a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, is considered Japanese because she “looks” Japanese, even though she does not speak Japanese well. and only got a Japanese passport at the age of 22.
On the other hand, some Japanese people feel it is unfamiliar, if a foreign citizen who has no Japanese origins at all, like Carolina Shiino, actually becomes a Japanese citizen through naturalization.
This is despite the fact that thousands of people receive Japanese passports each year, including foreign nationals who are not from Japan. Marti Turunen, for example, a Finnish citizen who came to Japan as a missionary and took Japanese citizenship in 1979, then changed his name to Marutei Tsurunen, and even became a member of the upper house of the Japanese parliament from 2002 to 2013.
Shiino’s story: migration from Ukraine to Japan
Carolina is the daughter of Ukrainian parents, who was born in the city of Ternopil in western Ukraine in 1998.
After Carolina’s parents divorced, her mother married a Japanese man with the surname Shiino, which made Carolina move to Japan at the age of five and grow up in Japan.
He speaks Japanese without any accent and says that he has completely absorbed Japanese culture, even feeling like he is Japanese in both language and thinking.
However, his physical appearance, which looks far from the physical appearance of Japanese people in general, often attracts the attention of the surrounding environment.
Miss Japan Grand Prix organizer Ai Wada told British broadcaster the BBC that the judges had chosen Shiino as the winner “with great confidence.”
“Shiino spoke and wrote Japanese beautifully and politely,” Wada said. “He’s even more Japanese than us.”
Unfortunately, not all users of X, Japan’s most important discussion forum, are convinced.
“As a Japanese woman with one-eighth Japanese blood, I feel that she should be at least half Japanese to represent a homogeneous country like Japan in the ‘Miss Japan’ competition,” wrote one user (@0xkarasy). “This is an identity issue.”
User Ajisai Natsuko (@ajisainatsuko07) also wrote, “I am Japanese and I am not at all satisfied with this choice of ‘Miss Japan’. Japanese beauty standards are different from Western beauty standards.”
An old debate is resurfacing
Shiino herself has stated that she entered the competition for the Miss Japan crown with a message of “creating a society where people are not judged by their physical appearance.”
The controversy that ensued over Shiino’s win did not surprise him, especially considering the fact that there had been similar discussions nine years ago.
Ariana Miyamoto was also selected as “Miss Universe Japan” as the first mixed-race woman to win the title. At that time, there was also criticism that the 20-year-old woman did not look “Japanese” enough.
Miyamoto also has an African-American father. There was even a debate about whether a dark-skinned Japanese woman could become “Miss Japan”.
But now, people in Japan have to get used to a “Miss Japan” who doesn’t look Japanese, but is Japanese at heart.
(kp/cellphone)
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(ita/ita)
2024-01-29 10:37:13
#Ukrainian #Japan #Sparks #Controversy
