“Too black for the white kids, and too white for the blacks.”
These are lyrics from the American rapper Earl Sweatshirt. I am not particularly familiar with his music, but the line has always been one I have remembered. As someone who is also biracial, I can recognise a much smaller version of the feeling behind it. There have been times when I have felt too Japanese for British people, and too British for Japanese people. Of course, my experience is nowhere near comparable to the racism, abuse and discrimination that Earl’s lyrics speak to. I am not saying that my life reflects what he is talking about in the lyric. I just recognise the feeling of being caught between different groups, albeit in a much less serious way.
You may therefore have expected me to write something closer to the original idea: “Too Japanese for the white kids, too white for the Japanese kids.” And that would not be completely wrong. Growing up, I often did feel too foreign for Japanese people, while also feeling too distant from my English roots to completely fit in when I returned to an English school. That, however, is not what I want to focus on here. This article is about what happens in global settings in Japan, particularly at university.
That is also why I have changed the wording for this article. Instead of applying Earl’s lyrics directly to myself, I have taken the idea and made it my own: “Too Japanese to Be Interesting, Too British to Be Relatable.” By “too Japanese to be interesting”, I mean that sometimes being Japanese means I am not the foreign person that a Japanese student in an international setting is looking to meet. By “too British to be relatable”, I mean that although I can speak English fluently and understand much of the culture that American students bring with them, I am still British rather than American.
Even that description is deliberately simplified. I have Japanese friends, American friends and friends from plenty of other backgrounds. I have also met many Japanese and American people who have treated me completely normally. I am not suggesting that these experiences apply to everyone, or that people are consciously sorting each other into categories before deciding who they want to talk to. What interests me is the possibility that these expectations can exist, sometimes without anyone really noticing them, and how they can affect someone who happens to sit somewhere between them.
When being Japanese makes you less interesting
One thing I have noticed is that some Japanese people seem to lose interest in me once they realise that I am Japanese too. This is interesting because it appears to contradict something that mixed-race people often describe: being considered “not Japanese enough” and therefore not fully belonging to Japanese society. In these situations, I have experienced almost the reverse.
Consider a Japanese student entering an international environment. They may want to practise English, meet foreigners, make international friends, or introduce aspects of Japanese culture to people who have never experienced them before. There can be something exciting about explaining Japan to somebody seeing it from the outside. Then there is another Japanese person. I understand the culture, the social standards and the references. I understand what they are trying to do without necessarily needing an explanation. In some situations, I may know exactly where the conversation is going before they have finished explaining it. It is not that I deliberately present myself as knowledgeable or try to show that I am “one of you”. I often do not engage with the conversation at all while they are talking, nor do I try to insert myself into it. But there have been occasions when the change in someone’s interest is noticeable once they realise that I already understand the Japanese side of the interaction. I can therefore feel like an awkward presence in what was supposed to be a simple “Japanese person meets foreigner” interaction.
Perhaps they were not looking to make another Japanese friend. Perhaps they specifically wanted the experience of being accepted by foreigners, practising their English, or introducing Japanese culture to somebody who sees it from the outside. And when I already know the culture they are trying to introduce, it can change how they interact with me. There is also a possibility that this is not unique to hafu people at all. If two fully Japanese people enter an international group, they may naturally compete for the attention of the foreigners or both want to be the person engaging with them. Being hafu can simply add another layer to how I am perceived: I am Japanese, but not necessarily the Japanese person they had expected to encounter.
But I am not American either
Foreigners in Japan, particularly Americans in the university environments I have experienced, can create the opposite situation. Many seem to gravitate towards either Japanese friends or people from their own country. Japanese friends provide access to the experience they came to Japan for. They can talk about Japanese people, Japanese culture, their experiences living here, and all the unfamiliar things they have encountered. Other Americans, meanwhile, can provide a different kind of familiarity. They can discuss their experiences in Japan with someone who already understands where they are coming from. They can compare Japanese and American culture, talk about something that happened to them, discuss Japanese social norms, or simply speak without having to explain every cultural reference. Whether they come from the same U.S. state or completely different ones, many seem to find common ground while they are here. There is nothing odd about this, as people naturally gravitate towards those with whom they have something in common. There are also, of course, some people who seem to come to Japan primarily to meet other Americans and leave having barely engaged with Japanese people at all. But that is probably a subject for another article.
The problem for me is that I can fit neither category particularly well. I am Japanese, but I am fluent in English. I understand the culture they come from, but I am not American. I also understand the Japanese side, but I am not necessarily perceived as simply Japanese in the way they might expect. If they see me as Japanese, I may not fit the idea of the Japanese friend they were hoping to make. If they see me as another Westerner, I am still not quite the same as them. I am British. And this is not really about the familiar British-versus-American differences that can make for an easy joke. The social norms can be different: the way people approach conversations, the way they express themselves, the assumptions they make about other people and even the way they present themselves in a group. So although I can speak to Americans as another English-speaking Westerner, there can still be a feeling that I am not quite ‘American enough’ for the interaction to feel completely natural.
Sometimes I find myself adjusting how I speak or behave because I am conscious of these differences, as I try to find the version of myself that will fit the situation. I am not trying to make myself more American, nor do I particularly want to change who I am to fit in with them. I simply become more conscious of how I come across and make small adjustments so that I feel more comfortable in the conversation. Feeling the need to make those adjustments in order to convince people that you belong in the conversation can be tiring.
Somewhere in between
This is why international environments in Japan can sometimes feel strangely isolating for me. Not because Japanese people or Americans reject me, they don’t. I have many Japanese friends and have had many American friends. It is more about the assumptions that can exist before people really get to know one another. It is more about the assumptions that can exist before people really get to know one another. If I were fully Japanese, I might provide exactly the Japanese perspective someone was looking for. If I were American, like the majority of the exchange students I encounter in Japan, I might fit more naturally into the English-speaking foreign community, simply because I would share more of the cultural background that many of them have in common. If I were completely foreign to Japan, perhaps I would be more interesting to someone who wanted to explain Japan from their own perspective. Instead, I can understand several sides at once.
And that is where the title comes from: Too Japanese to Be Interesting, Too British to Be Relatable. Of course, there is always another possibility. Maybe there is no deeper cultural explanation at all, and I am reading too much into a conversation that lasted five minutes. Maybe I am just equally awkward in every culture. Or I could just be overthinking things again. Wouldn’t be the first time.
And I certainly have a role to play in all of this. People cannot be expected to immediately understand every part of my background, just as I cannot expect everyone I meet to know exactly how to approach someone who sits between cultures. Sometimes I need to make the first move, explain myself, or simply accept that not every interaction is going to develop into a friendship. That does not mean, however, that the cultural element is irrelevant. Growing up between cultures has made me increasingly aware of how much we rely on assumptions when meeting people in supposedly “global” environments. We often approach somebody based on what we think they will know, how we think they will behave, or what we think we can share with them.
At the same time, being between cultures gives me something valuable. I can understand multiple sides of a conversation. I can move between languages and cultures. I can understand the Japanese person who wants to experience something international, while also understanding the foreigner who wants someone familiar to talk to. Sometimes, though, understanding both sides means neither side immediately feels fully like yours. That is one of the strange things about growing up between cultures. You can spend years wishing you could belong completely to one side, only to realise that your experience is that you don’t quite fit either.
That doesn’t have to mean being excluded from both, however. It can just mean noticing boundaries that other people don’t always see, or picking up on why certain interactions happen the way they do, even when you’re slightly outside of them. I may not fit neatly into the categories people expect in an international environment in Japan. I can understand where different people are coming from, even if I do not always feel completely part of either side. Maybe that is simply one of the stranger parts of being between cultures.
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