The Legend of Mimitan

by Peter Blinman for The InductiveMy older daughter has light hair and eyes despite being half Japanese, and this makes strangers here really notice her.  It pisses me off, and it pisses my wife off too.  It's unfair to our daughter, who is treated as a foreigner in the only country she's ever known.    

We put up with this kind of discrimination for two reasons.  First, it is usually well-meaning and born of failure to empathize; second, we're planning on moving to America next summer.  Were we to stay in Japan, we would continue to have to deal with smart-ass teenagers greeting my daughter in English, strangers coming up to my wife out of the blue while I'm at work and she's shopping with my daughters to ask if she's married to an American or if my daughter can speak Japanese, a school system and culture that encourages the bullying of those with physical abnormalities such as light hair and eyes, and an effective glass ceiling for half Japanese children on all jobs outside of the tabloid entertainment industry. 

Dave Spector, a longtime American resident of Japan and talking head, puts the glass ceiling problem in a suitable light:

Making foreigners cuter takes away the threat of foreigners being more powerful, or having more know-how, or more sophistication. So definitely, they use that in a way to make themselves more comfortable. So I've done things on Japanese TV that are totally silly, or ridiculous. I mean like jumping rope with French poodles. Doing things like the lowest Bozo, circus kind of stuff. But it doesn't bother me at all. A lot of times the foreigners on TV, models and what-not, are compared to pandas. They use that term here - pandas - because they're cuddly, you can go and have fun with them, and throw a marshmallow and that's about it. And you don't get involved any more deeper than that. But...since I'm making half a million dollars a year, I'm very happy to be a panda. I'd be a much lower animal. I'd be like a sloth, or something, or a hedgehog, you know, for that money. So it doesn't bother me at all.

Many permanent Western residents of Japan consider Spector to be a sell-out, but I sympathize with his premise: I am a guest in Japan, Japan has been very kind to me, I have a home and culture I can go back toif I want, and Japan is not made and shouldn't be made solely for my complete satisfaction or the satisfaction of other Westerners living here.  The nation has absolutely no obligation to go out of its way to make me feel loved or included.  Despite this, I generally love living here, the people are kind and extremely hospitable.  They do go out of their way to make me happy, and I certainly don't mind being treated as an ignorant foreigner since I... like... am one.  I have no reason to be upset about extremely rare acute or common chronic discrimination directed against my person. 

But my lack of a right to fair and equal treatment does not extend to my daughters.  I don't want them growing up considered foreigners in their own land, trained as children to jump through hoops, socially isolated, spoiled in some regard, and forced to accept unsatisfying and shallow senses of self-worth. 

In Japanese the word haafu - from the English word "half" - is used to describe the children of mixed parentage living here (This term excludes the offspring of marriages with other Asians.  Those children are usually just "Korean" or "Chinese", kind of how Barack Obama is "black").  There is a movement to relabel the children of international marriages daburu, or "double", but I find this goofy on several levels; and it is fundamentally elitist, counterproductive to my ideal of equality of opportunity and judgment of individual character. 

My father-in-law wonders whether his grandchildren will face discrimination in the United States.  I imagine they will, but everybody in the U.S. is of mixed ethnicity to a certain point; so no one would really notice if two half-Japanese girls were interested in something they weren't supposed to be interested in.  At least for non-Muslim, Eurasian minorities, America affords the kind of racial anonymity that would allow my girls to be judged principally on the contents of their characters.    

Nevertheless, an interesting scenario presented itself this Christmas when my white parents presented my older half-Japanese daughter with an Asian doll.  I wondered at the time whether they too saw my children primarily as foreigners or minorities.  "We really had to look to find a doll with an Asian face," my father said proudly on Christmas morning.  "You wouldn't believe how hard this was to come by."  The optimistic dreams I once had of my daughters growing up fully Japanese and fully American seemed to be shattering: they would be forever isolated, neither Japanese nor American; always just "other".  Perhaps this explains the independence or aloofness of many international children I know.

Despite my overbearing concerns, this (Asian) doll has turned out to be the perfect gift for my older daughter.  It has helped her to develop her senses of responsibility and empathy, and it is something which she values and takes good care of.  My older daughter "feeds" her doll when we parents feed my five-month-old younger daughter; she changes her doll's clothes when we change my infant's clothes; she makes sure that her doll is comfortable whenever she puts her down to go play with legos or draw on the windows; she takes her doll along when we go for a ride in the car; in conversations with her doll she practices some of the new words she has learned; and she even named her doll: "Mimitan". 

girl's character indeed!As Mimitan travels everywhere with us now, we took her to Toys R Us two weeks ago.  Here my older daughter enjoyed setting Mimitan down in toy carriages and introducing her to other dolls. 

The dolls that Mimitan met in this Japanese (American) toy store all had round eyes, like Westerners; and most of them had blonde or platinum blonde hair; none had black hair; none had an Asian face.  This was in striking contrast to Mimitan, who has realistic Asian features.  Mimitan - the doll which my parents had bought in the United States - was the only Asian doll in the entire Japanese toy store! 

Noticing this made me think of Toni Morisson's The Bluest Eye, about a young African-American girl named Pecola who thinks that if she could somehow get white skin and blue eyes, she would be beautiful:

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights-if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.        

Thinking about the ways many Japanese women try to make themselves look like Westerners - either with makeup or cosmetic surgery (the latter link is absolutely shocking) - reminds me of this book's theme.  

Loving ourselves for who we are starts with childhood, with our childhood role models, including our dolls and action figures.  Since I want my daughter more than anything to love herself for who she is, both Japanese and American, and I see Mimitan as a role model for her, I have come to love Mimitan as well. 

The fact that Japanese popular culture simultaneously discriminates against my daughter's being Western and fetishizes white America continues to baffle me, but it also makes me appreciate the full implications of my parents's Christmas present.  My older daughter has lived in Japan for the entirety of her short life: she eats Japanese food, watches Japanese television, has Japanese friends, speaks Japanese as a first language, and has Japanese dolls.