Hafu2Hafu project creator answers questions on half-Japanese identity

Foreigners across the board who have ties to Japan tend to have strong opinions about the term “hafu.” These are voiced any time we post an article even remotely related to the word or cultural identity topics here, as evidenced by last year’s most popular article by far on the GaijinPot site.

Of course, hafu, or “half” in English, is the name sometimes used in Japan for people who have one Japanese parent and one parent of foreign descent. We thought readers would find it interesting to hear the perspective of someone who is not only half-Japanese but has dedicated the past two years of his life studying this subject.

Tetsuro Miyazaki, a photographer and the son of a Belgian mother and a Japanese father, is the creator of the Hāfu2Hāfu photography project. For his research, Miyazaki has been to 65 different countries to photograph and interview 90 Japanese people of mixed heritage. The result is a collection of portraits and questions that those participating would like to ask their hafu compatriots, their own family, their friends and you — the viewer.

We’ve previously covered the project  on GaijinPot and Japan Today and talked about Miyazaki’s ambition to feature all 192 possible combinations of nationalities mixed with Japan in his book. Today, however, we decided to turn that process around.

For this post, GaijinPot has selected eight questions to ask Miyazaki — taken directly from his own project — about what it means to be hafu.

Click here to read more.

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