I really don’t want this to come across as offensive to anybody – me and my wife are trying to have a child in Nagoya. I’m British and she’s Japanese. We want our children to go to a Japanese school (not international) but we are worried about our kids being bullied for being half Caucasian.
Are there any western parents in Japan (Nagoya or similar) who have had problems raising their children here? Is racism really a thing in Japanese schools?
37 comments
I’m British, and I live just outside of Nagoya. My daughter has only ever attended Japanese schools, and she’s in her third year at high school. She’s never had any problem.
Teacher here, not a parent. Really depends on the people. Some kids are fully accepted, and some aren’t. You can’t control those dynamics.
The only resentment I’ve ever seen was jealousy of better English ability and teasing for weaker Japanese one. This sometimes comes from Japanese teachers as well.
Some kids are assholes. Listen to your kids and take their complaints seriously if bullying arises. Otherwise love and support them. You’ll be fine.
I can only speak through a third person perspective as someone who teaches a few of my friends’ half children, a few in elementary and one in junior high right now. Actually been teaching them since kindergarten.
So anecdotally, and this might be unsatisfying, it really depends on the kids – both the half child and those around them.
The oldest boy? Yeah, there was a bit of shunning happening. It stemmed in large part from him being an annoying goof, but also from the “in” group of girls in the class deciding he’s a lazy student who’s dirty, and teased him accordingly. Which was actually true for most of his elementary school years but he’d really turned it around by the end. Still, the stigma stuck and went right through to graduation. It’s better now in JH, though, with a lot of different kids from different ESs.
The fifth grade boy, whose father is South African, absolutely looks the part and is definitely one of the cooler boys in class. Being outgoing, in a non-annoying manner, and smart as a whistle got him a long way.
The two younger kids, a daughter from a British/Japanese and the little brother of the former kid, are pretty much going through ES completely normal despite having extremely prominent European features. They were just more well adjusted and more “falling in line” compared to the older boy so they never had any problems. I know the girl gets teased sometimes early on for clothes, being chosen as an after thought by her British mom. But with the dad taking over and choosing more traditionally cute clothes that sorta stopped.
One thing I did notice though was, even when bullying happened it was never really about them being half. It was more directed towards how they acted then who they were.
I didn’t come here until I was an adult, so I have no experience with the schools, but from what I’ve heard from half Japanese people who grew up here is that it really depends on the school. I know one guy who had a really good time at a regular public high school in Tochigi, but others who got bullied in Osaka and Tokyo. Outside of school though, depending on thier appearance, they’re probably going to have to deal with people thinking they’re foriegn, being surpised they speak English, being treated like they can’t understand Japanese, and if you’re wife’s family is like my Japanese family, little remarks here and there implying they don’t belong in Japan.
I doubt it’s as much of an issue now, but my mom (hafu) experienced bullying in the early 60s. She’s also from Nagoya. She ended up changing to an international school.
I’m sure it happens, but would think it’s extremely rare in current times.
Depends, but I don’t think there’s anything specifically about halfs that would be likely to increase the chance. Suburban Osaka – my kids have never had any major problems, but I know others in similar situations who have.
It probably will be okay, especially since your kid is half-British and can probably already speak English.
Tokyo dad of 2 boys in public schools up until jr. high – absolutely zero issues. If anything, as they are athletic, tall and outgoing, they have done well. Our area has a fair amount of half kids, everyone is pretty blasé about it.
I have a hot take on this one. I’ve seen many Japanese parents who bully their children. The kids become bullies as well. I’m sure that it is common in other countries too.
There are plenty of videos on YouTube of biracial people being interviewed about their experiences growing up in Japan. You might find it more useful to hear a firsthand perspective.
Yes. But then bullying is rife in Japanese schools, period. Your child’s experience will depend on:
* Your child
* The school
* The cohort
My wife grew up half white in Japan. Honestly, you can’t really tell at all, but her last name gave it away (MacDonald). So of course people would laugh at her and say he runs a farm, makes burgers, etc. I think no matter where you are, there’s bullies. Her being half white wasn’t the trigger as much as a recognizable last name.
Your mileage may vary. It all depends on environment, your kid, the kids around him or her, etc. There’s too many factors in play to determine whether they’ll be bullied or not. As for getting a job/career in Japan – that could be a different matter. Most Eurasian-looking Japanese people would be an automatic slot in for modelling work and gigs in the creative industry. Working in a traditional trading/financial/law firm might be more difficult given the conservativeness of those industries. Anyway, just have your kid, love and nurture him/her with your wife and enjoy the ride. No need to worry about things beyond your control.
It probably won’t help your kid’s morale if their own parents keep referring to them as “half” their whole lives.
When I was an ALT I had a half kid in a lot of my classes and some full on foreign kids. Egyptian, Indian, Pakistani, American, Brazillian. All in different schools. For the most part, no I didn’t see any deep bullying. They all had their friends groups and generally got a long with their classmates, and honestly were usually some of the best students as well as generally the most cheerful. Some of them were in 3rd and 4th grade and for the foreign students who came from another country it took them some time to be able to communicate, but by the end of December or their first school year they were usually playing and making jokes with all the kids like everyone else.
I see people mention bullying a lot in regards to foreigners children, but it’s not something I’ve seen happen to half, and foreign kids. Maybe this is a Tokyo thing? I live in Ibaraki.
I have however seen bullying happen to some of the “strange” kids, or mentally unstable kids who seem to have a rough home life or very little social skills. It sucks because as much as you try to teach kids not to bully, or try to help the kids cheer up, it just doesn’t work out all the time.
I usually ask about this and I’ve heard mostly positive things. However, at the school I work at, we had a student transfer in mid term because she was being bullied at her middle school. Then after a few weeks with us, she just started staying home. Months later I heard from a JTE that her mother had issues with an ‘apparent’ case of bullying that the teachers investigated thoroughly. When they spoke to her previous teachers it seemed the mother was creating problems wherever they moved to. We all felt so sorry for her because she was really starting to open up and smile and talk more in class. The students liked her and never even questioned why her skin was darker. (a claim the mother made). She returned in second grade for a bit then was gone again.
Other than that, I have only heard as everyone else in the sub has mentioned, that it really depends on the child’s personality and is rarely if ever about them being half.
Lots of my other students of mixed heritage are fine as well.
japanese kids will be more harsh towards black half’s because of skin color. you shouldn’t have to worry if your child will be white. saying this from experience.
When I was teaching in a small town in Gunma, I never heard/saw anything like that with the handful of half kids we had (IIRC, Filipino, Korean and Taiwanese). If anything, the Taiwanese-Japanese girl was the most popular kid in school.
Not teaching anymore, but currently in Aichi-ken and I’ve seen a lot of Brazilian-Japanese and Indonesian-Japanese kids hanging around with Japanese kids.
Does bullying still happen? Probably. Seems like it’s better now than 15-20 years ago though.
Kanagawa…my kid was relentlessly and violently bullied until he dropped out of school in 6th grade. Other half kids were fine, so it depends on confounding factors.
American dad, Japanese mother, 10 year old daughter.
She seems to be doing fine so far. Has good friends who come over to play sometimes. Enjoys school.
We are looking into a “dual diploma” JH/HS (Private) as to keep her options open for Univ. (she says she wants to be a Univ. English Teacher like her papa…. Awwwwww).
Here is hoping things continue to be good for her in the rest of her schooling.
I’ve only lived and taught in more rural areas. Perhaps because these kids grow up in small communities and have long-term cohorts, the bullying is pretty nonexistent from what I picked up on. in my smallest placement, there were two half-Pilipino boys who were both super smart and popular. I have noticed other kids making a big deal about the language abilities of their half peers. One boy was half Chinese and everyone, including the homeroom teacher, put him on a bit of a pedestal for knowing Mandarin. Another girl was half white American and sort of teased herself (with the classmates playing along) for not already knowing English.
I’m hoping this holds true for our family. We are expecting a baby this year, and plan on raising them mostly in my husband’s smallish town.
Elementary school eigo no sensei here: The only asshole kids I’ve ever seen are boys without proper structure. . . which is kind of how it goes for anywhere? I’ve taught maybe 900 or so children since I started and there have been ten that were genuinely awful kids. All boys. Of the half children I’ve taught, or full on Pakistani and such, all are well liked and have good friends.
We shouldn’t have to have those kinds of talks with our kids but its really important to let them know that some relationships are worth having and others aren’t. We can’t control kids without structure. We can control how we help our child and what we prepare them for. Give them ammunition to prepare for genuinely unlikable people doing unlikable things. I haven’t met administration yet who didn’t take bullying seriously or try their best to tackle these kinds of issues. Most of the time, at least in public school here, we’re in it together. Kouchou all the way down to the volunteers.
Nagoya halfu parent here, so far so good. My kids are considerably taller than their peers, so they stand out
The inverse happened where kids think they are cool and some of their friends feel more encouraged to study English. My kids are very outgoing, probably because we started them early in Hochien and we focus a lot of play at parks with random kids, so they are socialized well and roll with the punches. The playground is the war zone, and I’m monitoring that for such problems. So far so good. I figure if they can get along with many kinds of random people at the park, they’re going to do OK later in life
The only time I’ve ever had an issue was at a family restaurant where a group of high school boys were looking at us and one clearly said something like “their eyes are different” which I took as more of a curiosity thing than outright bullying, but I do wonder and worry how things like that may eventually add up
The education system seems to take care of things really well if the kids homogenize. No issues with teachers or other parents so far, too
We decided against International School because we primarily speak English at home, and intend to do some Summers overseas
I live in a city next to Nagoya and have two half caucasian kids (both with light colored hair so they do stand out).
My oldest (2nd grade elementary) started to have a bit of trouble with this for the first time recently – some kid in his class started calling him gaikokujin about a month ago in a derogatory way. We contacted his teacher about it and she gave that kid a good talking to. That stopped it pretty quickly, and the kid’s mom even sent us a letter of apology. My son took it all in stride and he’s still a happy kid.
We are pretty lucky that our son has a good teacher, I don’t know if they would all respond so effectively but we are quite grateful.
My sibling who‘s going to a regular public school in japan did go through some minor bullying from about the first grade. She’s well liked otherwise, but this small group of boys in their class would make fun of her for having a foreign dad and saying that kids who speak English weren’t allowed to play with the rest of them. Said some stuff about her being stupid for not learning kanji as quickly as the rest of them (she is struggling with kanji, seeing as she is also learning to write in English at home so give her a break). However, as she’s well liked, majority of the kids in the class came to her defense and ignored him. She has shown a lot of interest in potentially being homeschooled or transferring to an international school since. Kids can be racist dicks.
I just want to say that a lot of the teachers here saying there isn’t bullying, probably just don’t realize it’s happening. If you are a teacher going from class to class as most English teachers do, then when are you going to see it? Kids don’t outwardly bully in the middle of class. They may act like they don’t want to work with someone or something but not full on bullying. The bullying happens in between classes, during recess, NOT in front of the teachers.
5th grade at one of my schools is only one class, so they have the same classmates every year. I’ve taught them for 3 years and they get along great and are all so sweet. Or so I thought! I overheard some kids talking upset and asked what’s up. Apparently someone had wrote down (in a secret notebook being passed around the class ) that this girl should go DIE!!! and I was so shocked!! One of my sweet kids wrote that?? I was like we need to tell the main teacher about this as she didn’t even know about it.
But anyways japan is known for bullying, your kids may not get full on bullied but will probably be made fun of at some point. I still remember being called a Jap on the playground in america, but that was only one time. Your kids may run into a xenophobic person at public school (whenever we do the foreign country lesson there’s always some kid whose like “I hate foreigners!”) but it might be better to teach you kids how to face that kind of stuff head on.
I’ll also add I think half Caucasian will be less likely to be bullied! People loveeee mixed white people here.
You have limited control when it comes to your kid being bullied or not, and that’s a fact that will be difficult to accept if things ever go bad. Simply being half white doesn’t greatly increase the chances of being bullied compared to other factors. If your kid is growing up in Japan, speaking Japanese and getting exposed to the norms and behaviors of Japanese society, the worries are not too dissimilar from a kid with two Japanese parents.
There could be a risk of teasing if your kid looks mostly white and can’t speak a word of English, but hopefully your home life would allow for some degree of bilingualism.
My husband half Japanese / half Peruvian got bullied a lot, to the point that nobody can take pictures from him even up to this day (he’s almost 40) and a very handsome man.
Biracial people are not a homogeneous group. Whether your child will get bullied or not depends on his/her appearance and whether they can assimilate or not. From my experience, light skin biracial kids don’t experience as much bullying when compared to dark or brown skin biracial kids. Overall, whether your kid is biracial or not bullying in school is sadly prevalent in Japanese society.
It really really just depends if your kid is cool/fun/confident/good looking or not. Same as every other kid. If they’re the cool hafu it’ll be fine, if they’re the weird hafu, you might have some problems. Can’t control it really
I worked as an English teacher for 6.5 years. The white or half white students were actually extremely popular at my school. It was the half black, half Chinese, half Vietnamese, etc. students who had bullying problems.
For context, I am African American and Japanese, and just graduated high school.
I would say, if your child is half white and half Japanese, they’ll be fine- I think once your child’s colleagues get “used” to them, they won’t be mean at all.
Even someone like me, who looks much different than a native Japanese person, was able to live perfectly happy in the Hiroshima countryside! I wouldn’t say there will be 100% zero issues, your child may be bullied or excluded, especially at the younger ages, but I think it really depends where you live. Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama etc. will definitely have more diversity and I doubt anyone will bat an eye. Good luck!
I remember people would poke at my curly hair and while it was mostly curiosity instead of maliciousness, it really made me feel like I should straighten my hair or try to fit in more. I do think Japanese society values not standing out a lot, so mixed people may struggle with this a bit as they grow up. But regardless, I think that’s just what comes with puberty, and my teen experience here was overall great 🙂
Two kids, no bullying. We have raised them to be self confident and able to get along with others. I’ve also been actively involved in their schools. All things we would do whether we lived here or my home country.
I’ve seen bullying here, but it was towards natives and not on how they looked, but more how they acted.
Before bringing our oldest here to begin schooling, I had worried about the bullying based on ethnicity. Kids can be awful anywhere. Just raise them with love and be there for their activities. If a problem arises, deal with/worry about it then.
According to my oldest, their classmates and friends say being half is: lucky/great/an enviable thing.
I am not a parent, nor do I have extensive experience here. I am a university teacher and don’t interact with many people outside of school other than my fiancee, so take this with a grain of salt:
Every ‘hafu’ student I have taught has told me about being bullied and feeling excluded throughout their lives. In my reading & writing class, one of them wrote several times about it. Another one posted a series of Instagram stories imploring foreigners coming to work & live in Japan to do some serious thinking before marrying a Japanese person and having children, on the basis that those kids will have a rough time (actually, she pretty much said, ‘Don’t do it’). While I have never considered having children, the sheer distress in that student’s delivery gave me pause.
This is just a personal anecdote and I don’t intend to contradict all the parents chiming in here. That being said, have you considered that your children haven’t completely shared their experiences with you? When I was bullied in middle school, my parents freaked out and made the issue far worse. Perhaps they are trying to avoid something similar.
Again, this is anecdotal, so take it as you will.
Yes. It’s far worse if you’re half Korean, Chinese or Filipino.
As a teacher and a parent of half-japanese kids, I have noticed one thing: if kids are able to join the school culture, bullying rarely happens.
My kids were in Japanese schools since nursery school and any problems they had were due to personality rather than heritage.
At my school when kids with mixed heritage join in grade one, they have fewer problems. The kids all enter together and learn the school culture together.
It’s when kids enter the school culture in the middle that problems are more likely to arise. It sometimes takes time for everyone to get used to each other. Grade Three and Four tend to be the hardest.
I did a study on this. I asked more than 100 Japanese college students about their experiences and perceptons of half kids who went to high school with them. it turns out
-Most haafu kids dont experience bullying or discrimination.
-It also depends on whether they are male or female, females experience these problems less.
-It depends on if they “look” very non-Japanese or little non-Japanese. If they look more Japanese most often people presume they are Japanese. Please remember that the Mongloid gene is older and more dominant than the younger European or Euroasian genes.
-It depends on their non-Japanese parent is white or Black/hispanic. it looks like if they look black or Hispanic there may be a higher chance of experiencing bullying or discrimination.
-It depends on their personality (e.g. does this person act like a Japanese? -Does this person act independently? -Is this person extrovert?).etc. If they act like a typical Japanese then they experience bullying/discrimination less/