I was born as half Japanese and half Australian. I spend a hard childhood thinking that “Am I Japanese?”.
At school, sometimes teacher categorize us as Japanese, and each time I ask myself “Am I Japanese too?”. Some children said to me “You are not Japanese. Your hair is not black. Your eyes are not black. You are different from us”. Since then, I wished to be “Japanese”. I wanted to be same as others.
I think Japanese hate the differences. They try to find the difference and point out. I learned many thing from this class like what is Japaneseness and what is not. I realized that my way of thinking was very stereotyped. Now, I can say I’m “Japanese”. There are many way to be “Japanese”.
Honestly, it’s still difficult for me to find the collect answer for this topic, but I think I’m getting close to it.