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Haafus’ Small Stories of Belonging: Claiming “Japaneseness” in Japan

Oleksandra Shaitan · 8 Oct 2026

Summary

Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5

This thesis looks at how seven self-identified haafu (mixed-race Japanese) adults describe their identity through short stories told in interviews. Participants described being made aware of difference in childhood, struggling for acceptance in adolescence and youth, and moving toward self-acceptance in adulthood. The author adds a fourth stage, in which identity is seen as a life-long process that is never settled. Participants used their stories to resist common ideas about being 'half'. Results varied with family background, appearance, type of schooling and contact with non-Japanese relatives.

Key points

Participants described three stages: enforced awareness of being different (childhood), a struggle for acceptance or identity crisis (adolescence/youth), and self-acceptance with an assertion of interracial identity (adulthood).
The author adds a fourth stage to Kich's framework: identity as a life-long, fluid navigation.
Participants described living between worlds, with a sense of 'status-less-ness' at various life stages.
Some participants who could pass as Japanese described a 'chameleon ability' that gave them temporary freedom from being 'both' or 'neither'.
Experiences varied with family racial makeup, phenotype, Japanese vs. international school, group affiliations and contact with non-Japanese family.

Limitations

The study has only seven adult participants and uses interview narratives, so it cannot show how common these experiences are. It focuses on adults looking back on childhood, not on children's well-being directly or on any intervention.

Abstract

Over recent decades, the issues of Japan’s multi-racial identity and society have piqued both lay and academic interest. Whilst the majority of studies have focused on early life stages: childhood/adolescence (Kamada, 2010; Nakamura, 2020; Seiger, 2019) and young adults (Murphy-Shigematsu, 2008; Oshima, 2014; Yoshida & Oikawa, 2012), research on haafu adults - the so-called first generation of mixed-race Japanese - is comparatively limited (e.g., Kich 1982; Shaitan & McEntee-Atalianis, 2017). This thesis addresses this lacuna by investigating the small stories (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008) participants tell about their biracial identity/identification. Drawn from ethnographically informed semi-structured interviews, their small stories reveal how haafu adults construct, contest and navigate their identities in interaction when discussing dominant discourses circulating in Japanese society about being ‘haafu.’ The study seeks to extend Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of chronotopes (literally, “time space”) to an empirical analysis of narratives told by seven self-identified haafu adults (three female and four male). It illuminates the connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships in any discursive event and how “spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole” (Bakhtin, 1981: 84). In addition, the notion of chronotopes foregrounds the inseparability of time and space between the narrated (story) and narrating event (storytelling) where participants address and at times coalesce the past with the present, thereby framing instances of discursive expressions, deictic indices, and agents described in the story from a distant ‘there-and-then’ to the ‘here-and-now’ storytelling event, as if the events were occurring at present (Perrino, 2007; 2015). Analysis found that informants oriented to three developmental stages as they described turning points in their identity formation. Parallels to Kich’s (1982; 1992) stages of biracial/bicultural identity development were found. Informants described: an enforced awareness by society of being different (relayed as being experienced most keenly in childhood), a struggle for acceptance/ a declared ‘identity crisis’ (most salient in adolescence/youth) and a conscious movement in adulthood to self-acceptance and a preferred assertion of interracial identity. Based on the data, Kich’s framework is extended by adding a fourth stage articulated by all in their tellings, i.e., identity as life-long navigation, as unresolved and forever mobile and fluid. Informant accounts resonated with Turner’s (1969) notion of liminality, i.e., haafu individuals described living between fixed and ‘floating worlds’, accompanied by ‘status-less-ness’ at various stages in life. In addition, some participants whose phenotypical makeup did not mark them as different from the majority of Japanese and/or the country of their non-Japanese parent, displayed a ‘chameleon ability’ to negotiate a temporary sense of freedom (where they could pass as a Japanese) from the restrictions and ambiguities of being ‘both’, ‘neither’ and/or ‘between’ and ‘betwixt’- of being neither fully Japanese nor other. Overall, results revealed that all participants deployed small stories to provide salient accounts of their lived experiences as bi-/multiracial individuals across their life course. These were deployed to justify, contest and resist dominant discourses and master narratives circulating in society about being ‘half’ and used to negotiate their status in ‘real time’ interaction in response to questions. Findings also revealed variation across informants, associated with individual characteristics/circumstance: family racial makeup and background (e.g., Caucasian, Asian, Black), phenotypical features, types of education (e.g., Japanese school vs. international school), group affiliations and the extent to which informants had maintained contact with their extended ‘non-Japanese’ family. Contrary to Kich (1982) and Turner (1969), participants in this study did not reach a stable, and ‘achieved identity’ (Ping & Ong, 2007). Rather, their identities were subject to ongoing negotiation in different contexts and interactions, whilst their sense of agency was reported to develop with maturity.