I have lived in Yokohama for 3 years now. My Japanese is okay, business-level speaking and writing ability. I understand that as a 190cm man who weighs 91kg, I will not “fit in.” My coworkers are nice and my wife has many western and Japanese friends. We are friends with all of our neighbors.
Our daughter is now of the age that she is making friends. We have had some Japanese specifically want their child to play with our child because she is white and others that won’t even let their child near her for that reason. Either way, it seems like she is being judged for her skin, not because she is just a nice girl. I even recently heard an old woman who didn’t know that I can speak Japanese tell her friend that it was good that my daughter is white and not mixed white/Japanese.
I don’t care about myself. I get “No gaijin!” occasionally when entering a bar with my Japanese friends. I’m just worried what the kids are saying to my daughter if the parents have these feelings. She should not be discriminated against.
This is less a question for advice and more for a discussion on how non Japanese raise their children in Japan. Any advice?
by Powerful-Log6967
21 comments
Not sure what your height and weight has to do with ‘fitting in’.
Unless you’re breaking tatami mats and cracking door frames with your head.
> We have had some Japanese specifically
want their child to play with our child because she is
white and others that won’t even let their child near
her for that reason.
I’m curious about how you had this conclusion.
Did they specifically say that?
Welcome to racism and xenophobia.
There was a study done on people with PTSD. They interviewed people who went through traumatic events but still managed to cope without severe anxiety, flashbacks, etc. They interviewed holocaust survivors and most adults who turned out okay said they had parents who were loving and nurturing. I think my advice would be that you hug and love your children and reassure them as much as you can.
Help her navigate these type of situations by preparing her with appropriate ways to react and respond. Build up her self-esteem. Assure her that she does not need acceptance from anyone who is disrespectful enough to judge others by their ethnicity.
“Heard an old woman saying that it’s good that my kid is white and not mixed.”
…oh boi, seems like we’re in for a really fun ride when the time comes. Any advice on how to cope with it?
Which part of Yokohama are you in? Have you considered moving to a more foreigner mixed area such as central Tokyo or sending your child to international school?
For what it’s worth, i lived in Shanghai for a decade, but left when our kid was 2. The issues you mention are exactly the same as those we were starting to deal with and had seen friends deal with.
As much as i liked living in Shanghai, we moved back to the UK because our kid wouldn’t grow up feeling different like she would do in Shanghai. Despite having a Chinese mother, she would always be a “foreigner” or a “laowai”, she would always be used by other parents to help their child learn english etc.
I’m not saying you should leave Japan or Asia, but it’s pretty shitty to let a child grow up thinking they are different to everyone else, especially when the long-term effects of it could be pretty severe.
My parents were like you, so I was like your daughter. It wasn’t so bad as a kid, and I basically was at peace with the heavily racialized worldview that is popular in Japan. I didn’t realize how bad it was until moving to the US, where the discussion around racism is much more advanced.
I do think it’s a bad investment to put too much time into such a small-minded society though. Even if you don’t count personal experiences, it’s just a fundamentally weaker system. I might have chosen to stay in Japan over some 3rd world shithole if that was my “home country”, but if the US or Europe is your other option Japan is a better place to visit than live. (that’s true for Japanese people too)
Don’t have any advice, just that it sucks. I’m white passing, my brother is Japanese passing. We get treated differently. It has to be a societal change that will probably take decades.
I have friends who raised their kids in Japan; I decided to move back to the states after my son was born. Each side has tradeoffs.
I think you’d do well to find a part of Japan that has more rather than fewer foreign or mixed families. It’s important to give children peers.
Since we didn’t raise ours in Japan I can’t speak from experience, but if you’re a mixed kid growing up in Japan I think it’s better to embrace your ethnicity.
That is, if your daughter grows up identifying as 100% Japanese, she will feel a disconnect because no one will treat her that way. But if she goes to (for example) American school, plays with a multicultural group, goes on to study international relations in university, her identity may better match the way J society will treat her.
I’m not saying you should force her to be something she’s not. There are certainly cases where leaving the country is the best option. And there are other kids who can handle feeling Japanese but looking different.
But as someone with 30 years in and out of Japan I think this might be a good way to support her. (As other have said, loving her, listening to her, and protecting her are the prerequisites, but you know that.)
Fitting in is easy.
First, be born in Japan to Japanese parents.
Then, grow up and go to school in Japan.
Finally, get a job with a Japanese company in Japan.
Done deal.
Was the old woman you overheard one of the parents or somehow connected to your daughter’s friends? If not, ignore them. There are jerks everywhere. If someone says something rude to you directly say something. People can be mean, but others are simply clueless. Ignore the mean (or tell them off a bit) and educate the clueless. I remember being asked by several mothers in the high school why our son went into the math and science course and not the literature course (which was heavy on English). ‘The university he wants to go to requires the science background’. ‘ it’s weird though, my kid’s in literature and yours is in math and science’. Hafu=English somehow. No malice, just fixed thinking.
Our son is in his 40’s now. We lived out in the countryside and he went through the Japanese school system, and Japanese university. I’ve seen a lot of families do a lot of different things, but one thing I can say is think about goals, now. Do you think you’re here for good? Do you not see yourself growing old here? My husband is the chonan so when I married I knew I’d likely be here permanently. As a result, we did not go the international school route. Classes are in English, and Japanese is taught a couple times a week, at least in the schools near us. Becoming literate enough to pass a university entrance exam is nearly impossible without outside supplementary education. We spoke English at home, read plenty of English books to him and did other things for his English ability, and he got the full in depth Japanese reading /writing education at school . We had no idea whether he’d go to university in Japan or the US, but wanted both options open for him.
Father of three here, living in a small town up north – best advice I can give is to let your daughter do what other girls her age are doing. Immersing her in English language media and games seems like a good idea from an educational perspective, but it is a huge cultural block for the kid.
Second, as soon as she is old enough and finances allow, get her on a sports team or other group activity. This puts her into a peer group outside of school, and that leads to more connections and relationships and so on.
Third – as parents, you need to both be involved. If your daughter is experiencing something awkward at the park, time for mom to step in and chat with the other mothers. If she’s being bullied, I can tell you from experience that visiting the bully’s house around 8pm to have a friendly chat with the bully’s father goes a long way in smoothing things over for your kid.
Yeah, my advice is to get out of Japan. The Japanese simply will not accept foreigners beyond a certain point and you will always be a “gaijin” and nothing can change that. It is a mistake to try to raise a family in a world where your children will be shunned and never really accepted.
Lise weight
It seems strange to me that the admins of this sub are not deleting your post. They want it to fit their experience in Japan. Maybe because you are white.
Don’t worry Im sure the teacher is teaching the kids moral studies.
I have been raising two daughters abroad and in Japan and, in my experience, the fitting piece came from family bonding.
It is crucial to have an understanding family that treats children fairly and shares moments with them. This actually worked for myself as well, being part of my in-laws inner circle helped me feeling at home over time.
Not saying this is the only way to fit in, that’s just what worked for us. Feeling deeply connected through generations before us.
There will always be people around judging, being interested, being scared, no matter where you live. The only thing you can do is be nice and choose the right people. Yes some people will only befriend you because you are a foreigner, but that’s no different from people befriending you because you look nice or speak nice IMHO.
“We have had some Japanese specifically want their child to play with our child because she is white and others that won’t even let their child near her for that reason.”
Can you elaborate on some instances where this happened? Some context.
I can see it happening once in a blue moon, but I have never been aware of it happening to my daughter, and never heard any of my friends say anything like this.
Is there a chance you are reading too much into a situation? I can see parents wanting their kids to hang around with a potentially English speaking kid, but I have never heard of people wanting it for their skin color. The opposite as well. I can understand if a parent is hesitant to let the kids hang out with the foreign family after school, because they themselves do not know how to navigate the situation socially (as a parent to parent relationship), but I have not heard any discussion about skin color.
Of course, if you get “No Gaijin” occasionally, it seems like it must be a very different area than any place I have lived in recent years. The only time I have heard that in decades is when booking an inn in a small town of village – and even then once they know I speak Japanese they are fine. It has never been a skin-color / racial issue.
As for the old lady telling her friend that it is good that she is mixed, that is just natural. People all over the world say it about all types of mixed race children. It is not a negative thing. I say similar thing about my niece and nephew whose mom is blond. It is good that they got her blond hair and not my brother’s bland brown hair. I also feel the same way about my own daughter – she is lucky to be mixed. It gives her a distinctive look. It says nothing more or less.
As to how to raise the child. Just raise the child. Understand and accept that they will grow up experiencing their life through their lens and they will learn to navigate it. Don’t expect or hope for them to grow up experiencing their childhood the way you did yours.
Its not like it effects her safety – like you don’t have to sit her down and have the talk that black parents do with their kids in the US (as I know only from social media, not first hand) about interactions with the police or what not.
When my daughter was young, I didn’t bring it up and no one treated her especially differently. I have worked in Japanese kindergarten schools and there are plenty of mixed-nationality children and no one treats them differently. The kids don’t even notice. The teachers are young, more progressive and not old ladies making old lady comments.
Now that my daughter is older, the most we talk about it is with regards to her English class, and if it is challenging enough for her, or if the teacher gives her special treatment or assignments. I also ask if there are any other kids with English speaking households in her classes, etc. She is indifferent to all of it so far as I can tell, other than she grew up knowing that her dad is not from Japan, and that I am different in how I interact, but she does not put my identity onto herself. She will scold me if I do things that she feels are not “the Japanese way”.
Japanese old people or not are really racist and misogynistic so dont need to worry, just teach you kids to be strong and dont pay attention to peoples like that.
Japanese people are meaning to anyone how dont fit on his standards… even if you are japanese so, dont worry about it