“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.
If someone were to look up images of a Japanese person, they would be very confused to find pictures of a white person. Yes they are Japanese culturally, but not physically or genetically. These are what the pageants are about, not everything needs to be inclusive of all aspects. It ruins the intents of it.
What the heck are you talking about. Beauty pageants aren’t about ethnicity. This is farrrrr from the first time that a pageant winner is a different ethnicity than the predominant ethnicity of a country.
Yes everything gets whitewashed and entire culture gets forced out again.
Why is it that native Americans had to go and make their own pageant so they weren’t forgotten?
“Japanese” means something, unlike American. When you hear Japanese, you don’t think white person, same with (Native) American. See how I had to specify so you know which? Same thing is happening with these pageants.
Oh fucking get over yourself.
The Japanese are hardly an oppressed people, at least by outsiders. They’re a first world country. With their own customs and culture.
The only dangers to their identity has been those of their own societal making.
Japan’s native population has been in critical freefall for a long time not because of any white person interference, but because their culture has become increasingly incompatible with family life for a significant amount of their population. If you thought America had an out-of-whack work culture, your jaw would hit the floor when you see what salarymen and salarywomen over there go through.
It’s not like they’ve been pushed out by a colonial force with some manifest destiny bullshit. The problem here simply isn’t whitey.
Ah yes, the futile desperation to maintain “racial purity”, because that’s never turned out badly for anyone ever… 🙄🙄🙄
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.
Only by racists like you who actually think they no longer exist.
Thanks to wilfully ignorant asswipes such as yourself who refuse to actually learn it, let alone learn from it…
Their pageants no longer exist…. They had to go and remake their own and call them “native” since they aren’t Americans since they are white washed by people like you.
I love how I’m apparently racist for pointing out white washing…. And no I didn’t say I forget them, I was pointing out people like you did, and yet you latch onto that as your fallacy. Fucking despicable attitude.