The Spectacle of the Biracial Celebrity: Mixed Race and Media in Japan.

Abstract

In the last ten years Japan has seen the rise of the so-called “hāfu boom”: biracial celebrities, which had been present in the media since the 1970s, started gaining exposure on fashion magazines and television (Iwabuchi, 2014). Their rise in popularity may seem paradoxical since Japan has been noted for commonly perceived as nearly “mono ethnical”, where notion of a single national identity exerts a big influence on the national image (Mouer and Sugimoto, 1986). However, this phenomenon is deeply related to the self-orientalistic (self) othering dynamics (Iwabuchi 1994) which emphasize the uniqueness or homogeneity of the Japanese race/culture: Iwabuchi dubs them complicit with “Western” hegemony, as they implicitly underline “whiteness”-privileging dynamics, insofar that having a Caucasian-looking face and a good command of the English language are seen as an advantage and are especially linked to the image of an increasingly globalized elite class (Yoshida, 2014). Inquiring into the representations that the Japanese media offer of mixed race celebrities (tarento, models, actresses) might contribute to some new insights on the way that “mixed race” identity is constructed and performed in the Japanese context. It might also shed some light on the effects that the concept of “mixed-race” has on the formation of Japanese national identity. By thoroughly analyzing these topics, I would like to expose the dynamics of interaction of this somewhat liminal category with the ruling majority, focusing on both the ways in which they might reinforce the status quo as well as the potential challenges that they pose to it.