Turning Japanese

Whenever people ask me where I’m from, I tell them the truth: I’m from Japan. Most of the time though, they don’t believe me.

You’ve probably glanced at my name to check to see if it’s Japanese, and it’s not. And now you’re probably thinking that maybe my mom is Japanese, but she’s 100 percent gaijin, an “outside person,” a non-Japanese, as well. Both she and I, though, were born in Japan, and all my life I’ve considered Japan to be my home. But I have never gotten the sense that Japan considers me to be a native daughter.

Not that this bothers me in any way—I don’t suffer from any sort of identity crisis. A lot of people have asked me whether I consider myself Japanese or something else and then wonder what that “something else” might be. After all, when I say I’m from Japan, everyone knows I’m not ethnically Japanese. I do hold a Canadian passport, but I feel very little connection to Canada. And I come from an Iranian background, but no one in my family has been to Iran since we—and many other Bahá’ís—were thrown out after the 1979 revolution. So when people ask about where I’m from, my answer is always that I consider myself human. I like how that’s the most straightforward and honest answer I can give.

Here in the states there are people from all over the world, but Japan is quite different. The nation is ethnically near homogeneous, and perhaps it even prides itself on that. Therefore, the fact that I don’t look Japanese automatically makes me stand out in the streets, even today. Granted, there are many more gaijin roaming the michi now than there were when I was born, and larger urban centers like Tokyo and Osaka have more foreigners than the relatively small city in which I lived. But I still get stares on the train or in the convenience store.

In the last few years, though, I feel that things have suddenly started to change. When I went home over the winter, I switched on the television, and to my surprise, I saw an African-American singing enka. Enka is a form of Japanese music that was popular in the 1960s but that has lost much of its appeal today. Needless to say, I was intrigued to see a fellow gaijin on Japanese TV performing a dated Japanese art.

Jerome Charles White Jr., or “Jero,” as he is known, has become a major success in Japan and has been attributed with reviving enka. While he’s not the first foreigner to be successful singing Japanese-style popular music, he is unprecedented in his fusion of Japan’s past and future, blending authentic Japanese sounds and styles with hip-hop and modern street fashion. And the fact that he’s been featured on kouhaku, the annual New Year’s Eve singing extravaganza that is a major part of Japanese culture, testifies to the degree to which Japan is leaving its insular roots behind. The picture of a guy in a crooked Pirates cap and oversized hoodie sitting next to lady in a kimono is at first pretty startling. But it’s an image to which my neighbors in the town of Ashiya and I are suddenly growing accustomed.

I believe that Jero represents the Japan of today and tomorrow. With Japan’s economy in a nosedive and a birth rate that is dangerously low, many have become even more open to the idea that Japan must open its doors to immigration in order to stay afloat. This would mean that it would need to say goodbye to the idea of a homogeneous country, attract more Jerome Whites, and become more like Columbia and New York City.

So Japan has begun to show that it is willing to embrace the model of heterogeneity in the 21st century, and it has inadvertently proved why Columbia’s dedication to diversity is our generation’s Way. After all, with people like Jero defining Japanese popular culture, it’s only a matter of time before I, too, won’t get strange looks when I say I’m from Japan.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures and concentrating in Russian Literature.

Tags: Opinion, Mary Ghadimi, Wendan Li, International students, Japan