The Ukraine-born winner of the Miss Japan beauty pageant has given up her crown after a tabloid report revealed her affair with a married man.
Karolina Shiino, 26, was crowned Miss Japan two weeks ago but her win sparked public debate due to her heritage.
While some welcomed the naturalised citizen’s crowning, others said she didn’t represent traditional Japanese beauty ideals.
Amid the furore, a local magazine published an expose alleging an affair.
The article in the Shukan Bunshun reported that Ms Shiino had engaged in a relationship with a married influencer and doctor. The man has not provided any public comment.
The fact we are talking about it now, means the context is important to many Japanese people to make a distinction between ethnically japanese and japanese citizen.
Well in this case there is no distinction, she is Japanese and ethnically she is eastern European/Ukrainian. So… Japanese? It’s cool that you like the distinction, but I responded to someone who said she is technically not japanese, which is technically incorrect. She is, just not ethnically.
We are in a busy restaurant and I ask you to drop water off to the japanese guest.
This might prove difficult in this instance because of the context around the word japanese. I would need to take time to explain the Japanese guest does not look ethnically japanese.
For ethnocentric cultures, which Japan (the people) very much is，they would want the context when talking about a Japanese citizen, who is not ethnicity Japanese, like in this article.
If japan opens up immigration and more non-ethnic japanese become citizens then it would be less and less important to make the distinction. But that depends on the frequency in the future
I agree that leaving out the destinction might cause you to need extra time to explain. This is a consequence of having multiple cultural and ethical backgrounds in your society. Or not, because why does the appearance of skin or face matter, who cares? You could call them dark skin or Caucasian japanese, but that is just a type of Japanese person, a dark skinned, or south American or middle European Japanese person is till just that, japanese. Which is what I said in the first place
Ethnocentricity should be about culture, but you applied it to race. Even while immigration services and the state agree: this person is naturalized and thus their nationality is now fully Japanese, you still feel the need to distinguish.