“There have been racial barriers, and it has been challenging to be accepted as Japanese.”

That’s what a tearful Carolina Shiino said in impeccable Japanese after she was crowned Miss Japan on Monday.

The 26-year-old model, who was born in Ukraine, moved to Japan at the age of five and was raised in Nagoya.

She is the first naturalised Japanese citizen to win the pageant, but her victory has re-ignited a debate on what it means to be Japanese.

While some recognised her victory as a “sign of the times”, others have said she does not look like what a “Miss Japan” should.

  • DessertStorms@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    9 months ago

    Ah yes, the futile desperation to maintain “racial purity”, because that’s never turned out badly for anyone ever… 🙄🙄🙄

    • Schmidtster@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      47
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      How well did that work out for Native Americans…? They were so overtaken they were forgotten lmfao.

      Not everything needs to be whitewashed, just look at native Americans, they’ve already even forgotten and this happened to them. History repeats itself….

      They can always go and make their own inclusive pageant, instead of the reverse happening in every country. Since they are more or less forced to be inclusive and give up their heritage so they aren’t protested by people who don’t understand.

        • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          9 months ago

          Removed, rule 5, and yeah, I’m removing the other comment too.

          Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!

          • 520@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            9 months ago

            Have you considered maybe that the Japanese are nothing like the Native Americans, and that what’s happening in Japan has nothing to do with racism against the Japanese?

            • DessertStorms@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              9 months ago

              Right? They invoke the genocide of Native Americans to defend the idea of Japanese racial purity being threatened by a single beauty pageant contestant, and I’m the one whitewashing… 🤦‍♀️

              • 520@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                9 months ago

                It’s absolutely insane, especially when it comes from those who claim to want to preserve ethnic identities.

                If they’re gonna invoke other national identities in conversation, the least they could do is learn about them. If anything drawing comparisons to ethnic cleansing over a fucking beauty pageant is more insensitive than pretty much anything else in this thread.

                Other than their connotations that someone cannot be a real Japanese because of their skin colour, that reminds me a bit about America’s history of treating black people.

                • Schmidtster@lemmynsfw.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  9 months ago

                  I didn’t bring ethic cleansing Into the conversation…… that was their stretch and half from me talking about Native American pageants having to be presented that way.

                  Since American pageants are about non-native Americans now.

                  How you came to ethnic cleansing from that… fuck if I know, but it’s fallacious at best.

                  • 520@kbin.social
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    9 months ago

                    Right but the history behind Native American beauty pageants takes place in the aftermath of ethnic cleansing and subjugation. You simply can’t divorce the two subjects because they affected everything in their culture and way of life.

                    Ethnic cleansing, put simply, is the form the whitewashing took form of, and it took everything from the Native Americans. Their homes, their land, their history, their identity, their cultures were either all gone or held on by a thread.

                    It has taken so fucking long for them to rebuild even a fraction of what they had, and the pageants were part of that process, an attempt to rebuild an ethnic identity from the ashes.

                    Japan never had that history. The Japanese were not nearly wiped out by European colonialists, they were not hunted to the point of extinction and cultural death. Their issues right now stem from their own societal failures.

                    So when you invoke native American history as a comparison, you should consider the context. In your example, it would be understandable that people might be offended if a white person won a native American beauty pageant because their entire race and culture was pretty much completely wiped out by white people, and this could be seen as someone trying to take yet another thing from them.

                    Japan doesn’t have that history with white people, so that comparison with Native Americans simply does not stand, and trying to make it stand is kinda belittling to the native Americans.

            • Schmidtster@lemmynsfw.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              9 months ago

              If you whitewash their culture as well they will be. Of course it’s different… until it isn’t anymore because of whitewashing….

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            9 months ago

            Removed, rule 5, and yeah, I’m removing the other comment too.

            Rule 5: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (perjorative, perjorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (perjorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect!