Naomi Osaka won back-to-back Slam titles, the US Open 2018 singles title and the Australian Open 2019 singles title. Following the AO last year, Osaka struggled professionally and personally. Even though she had been working and toiling in relative sports obscurity for years before then, it seemed like a case of “too much too fast.” The hype was out of control, she suddenly got massive sponsorships – she’s currently the highest-earning woman in sports – and her game suffered some pretty deep lows. Naomi is currently in New York for American tennis’s attempt at Bubble Life, and we’ll see if the pandemic time-off did her game any good. In any case, Naomi covers the new issue of WSJ. Magazine, where she talks about Kobe Bryant and race. Some highlights:
Kobe supported her when she didn’t even know he was watching: “There would be some really tough losses. I didn’t even know he was paying attention, but he would text me positive things and tell me to learn from it. For me, it was definitely helpful.”
How people treated her as a half-Black, half-Japanese woman: “It’s a general way people treated me, but also I was representing Japan. So it kind of came from everywhere. … I might get in trouble for saying this, but eventually I’m going to have to talk about it. The issues of America don’t really translate that well in Japan, so sometimes they do blackface and things like that, and it’s a bit ignorant. … It’s not really a hate thing.”
Racial microaggressions within Japan: “I’m just trying to put a platform out for all the Japanese people that look like me and live in Japan and when they go to a restaurant, they get handed an English menu, even though it’s just a little microaggression.”.
One incident: Osaka recalled a tennis match at age 10 when her Japanese opponent referred to her as “that Black girl.” “She was talking with another Japanese girl, and they didn’t know that I was listening [or that] I spoke Japanese. Her friend asked her who she was playing, so she said Osaka. And her friend says, ‘Oh, that Black girl. Is she supposed to be Japanese?’ And then the girl that I was playing was like, ‘I don’t think so.’ I remember that specifically because, yeah, I sometimes feel like a lot of people think that way about me.”
I found the racial conversation more interesting than the Kobe Bryant stuff, honestly. Kobe was somewhat well-known for befriending many female athletes in a wide variety of sports, and he was a big tennis fan too. But the race conversation is fascinating to me. Osaka was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and Haitian father, but she’s lived in the US most of her life, and she decided early in her career to “play for Japan.” That same multi-ethnic background which makes her so attractive to sponsors has also been a MAJOR conversation in international tennis, specifically in Asian sports and Japanese tennis. Many of those conversations have been racist AF, including this year’s debate in Japan about whether or not Osaka should support or speak about Black Lives Matter. Within Japanese media, her actual skin color is discussed and dissected constantly, with is part of the larger colorism seen writ large in Asian societies. What Naomi says here will 100% be discussed within Japan.
Cover & photos courtesy of WSJ. Magazine.
I realise this is shallow but she’s gorgeous!
And I can’t imagine how emotionally exhausting it would be to navigate racism as a public figure. Especially in a Eurocentric sport like tennis where even someone as successful as Serena Williams is subject to so much toxic misogynoir.
I’m impressed by her eloquence. And I hope we build a more inclusive world where no womxn has to experience racism.
Growing up “Hafu” myself, being half Japanese and half Indian, I have to say she’s being pretty generous, respectful and realistic about her heritage and her place in Japan as a country and as a culture. I always say I am half-Japanese and half-Indian, because it makes peoples brain panic less than if I said I was Japanese. My passport is Japanese. But it would be easier to avoid questions if I said I was Indian, because I am, much like Osaka, dark skinned, and the positive is that in India we have many people who come from places closer to Tibet/Nepal who look much like I do, brown skin but the almond or slightly asiatic eyes, not the classic “round eyes” lol.
When you are Hafu, no matter what, its always going to be a challenge, because almost like talking about death, people have a hard time finding the words in discourse in Japan. Japan is a very closed society, people watch what they say and to be different, even if you are pure japanese, you are considered on the fringe of society. Its important for everyone to tow the line.
Having lived in Japan for a few years, I am glad I don’t anymore. It was a lonely life, and honestly, although I love every visit to Japan (pre pandemic I would go at least a few times a year) I wouldn’t be so sure about living there because, again, lonely.
Still…she is right, we cannot apply US standards of race views to Japan. They are xenephobic, but they still have place for “others” and maybe their perceived racism is just more of a cagey tolerance. Many hafu’s are seen as TV personalities, and I would say, speaking Japanese fluently certainly makes a huge difference! I never got that far because I grew up in India, spoke english all my youth, and tried (with not great success) to learn Japanese at University.
So yeah, I can relate. I went to university with a whole load of Hafu students in Tokyo, the english stream was full of half japanese/half carribean or african students, half indian, half pakistani, half filipino, half chinese, halfs of every possible kind where it was almost always the dad that happened to be of the other race, much like in my family.
My belief was always that women in Japanese society are not treated as equal, so if anyone were to “jump ship” they would be the strong willed women who went out there to seek their own destiny, much like my mum, even if it all went to shit, they were willing to try. My parents just had their 50th anniversary! So I would say, ups and downs aside, they made it.
thank you for this!
Lisa,
That was fascinating, thanks! 😊👌
Osaka‘s lived experience is valid, AND her view of anti-Blackness (and diaspora issues) is developing. Both are true.
Being inured to anti-Blackness does not mean that it is not “hateful.”
Discussions like this, about the roots and expressions of racism and colorism in American and Asian cultures come up a lot in my academic esl/toefl prep classes. Blackface is particularly hateful here in the states because of the immediacy of the legacy of minstrelsy but many Japanese students whose culture received minstrelsy in a very second- or third-hand way can’t distinguish it from, say, cosplay.
When I went to Japan on my honeymoon, I had to go clothes shopping because hello? Life long dream. The malls there divide clothing into styles – and one of them is ‘black style’ which is basically urban streetwear? But the models wear dreads, braids and brown makeup 🙁 for them I guess it’s just a style choice?
Yes they (some Japanese people, I’m assuming a minority amount) cosplay hip hop (including darkened or tanned skin), Marie Antoinette type looks, sexy goth, geisha, and more. And they’re incredibly serious and detail oriented about it. People go and take pictures with girls dressed up. I don’t know where they find the time but the results are amazing.
I think she would look great in vintage clothing/ styling, circa 1930s or so.
She’s right in that there is a lot of ignorance there. There is racism of course, but in historically closed societies with one ethnicity and culture, the 21st century has come as culture shock. I feel like English speaking countries are very different from the rest of the world (due to colonialism) because they have been multi-ethnic and diverse for a while. But the rest of the world hasn’t really been that. So to see people who do not look traditionally like you can come as a shock to many people. What she’s describing is basically most of East Asia and Eastern Europe. There just hasn’t been that many people who look differently in those regions. So of course ignorance is rampant even today. It’s not just for black people, white people are also stared at and given English menus in Asia. And they’re shocked if they meet a white person and they don’t speak English. Ask any Japanese or Korean if a white person is what pops into their head when they think of their country and they would laugh at you. I have friends who were born and raised in Korea to Russian parents and who never got treated as Korean because they don’t look Korean. Sure they are part of the society but they’ll always be “fluent immigrants”, never Koreans. Because Koreans are just not used to seeing a non Asian looking person as “Korean”. And I think many other countries are like that still.
Good thing for Osaka whose fame and exposure can help slowly change this, but it’s a long road ahead because in reality there just aren’t many people like her in Japan (or East Asia in general).
Well thinking that is kind of racist also. Colonialism didnt just happen in english empire. Culture is far more than english speaking. Latin american countries, for example, hold their prehispanic cultures, their hispanic heritage, but spanish empire came with years of arabic ocupation also. So its a mixture of cultures.
@Denisse HL
I don’t think A. Key said that colonialism happened just in the English empire. She brought up English-speaking countries because everyone on this site is obviously a speaker of English and most posters live in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada – all English-speaking countries. Therefore, she compared and contrasted English-speaking cultures familiar to most readers with Asian and Eastern European cultures that are probably not all that familiar to most of us. Nothing racist about it, doesn’t mean that “culture is only English speaking” or Latin America isn’t relevant.
That’s interesting about Korea! Even more surprising to me than white Russians being excluded by Asian people, Koreans who look Japanese and have been there for generations are still not accepted. Same for anyone half white or a quarter white who’s born in japan. I don’t hold this against Japanese people and I’m not judging their society because obviously it’s working for them, but I’ve never heard of a more ethnocentric nation. Naomi’s experiences don’t surprise me at all
It’s not just English speaking countries that have a mixed culture with many nationalities. South America is also very diverse with European, asian and African immigrants…
True. My friend was travelling the world by bicycle. He got to the Russia border near Siberia. He is Canadian, born and raised but he of Japanese descent. And they refused to believe someone that looked like him could be Canadian and wouldn’t let him in the country. He was turned away and had to come back later when different guards were on duty.
I’m truly a downer today, but in reading that I was wondering when ‘discussions’ and judgements about shades of a color would disappear, and then I quickly switched to our current status. If we can’t walk through equality’s doors, how could we ever expect to eradicate shade racism outside of, as well as inside, races? Because it’s everywhere. And I have to concede that maybe a large percentage of garden variety intolerance is simply part of the human species. One problem begets another begets another….. If it’s not in someone’s heart to love and embrace, they will behave with textbook skill.
I get what she’s saying. I’ve never been to Japan but I also come from a country with few people of African ancestry. A lot of people, particularly among the older generations, are entirely unaware of how offensive things like blackface, or the use of certain words, are. As Naomi says, it’s not a hate thing, they just don’t know any better.
I find her and her hype exhausting. Am I the only one? Maybe it’s the Haitian in me that’s jealous.
I just don’t understand why she identifies so heavily as Japanese nationality-wise when she grew up in America. She lives in America, can see more and befriend multi-racial Asians like her in America…I don’t understand her desire to purposely be always the odd one out as it seems she always is in Japan (according to this excerpt).
marketing. in the us, osaka is just another biracial woman, of which there are many. by branding herself as Japanese, she stands out more/gets more attention
100 percent absolutely.
I checked this young woman’s biography and my gosh she grew up in Valley Stream, Long Island! MAGA country. It’s not like she was born in Haiti and grew up in Miami’s Little Haiti or Brooklyn. She’s doesn’t even live in Japan and hasn’t since she was three. Now if anyone looks at this American woman sideways for not only identifying as Japanese, but also renouncing her US citizenship so she could play tennis for Japan, we’re the ones being rude.
Wiki says her parents decided the girls would play for Japan when they were still kids, so sounds like it wasn’t really up to her. Might have been easier to get a spot there. The idea that a black-japanese woman is “purposely being always the odd one out” is kind of strange to me. Even in American, there are not a lot of Japanese-Black people around. And one of the burdens of being mixed race is everyone else thinking that you have to identify as one thing and that they get to decide what that is for you. There have been some interesting articles discussing this vis a vis Kamala Harris as well. Naomi was born in Japan, she speaks Japanese. If she looked like most japanese people look, I don’t think anyone would be questioning her choice.
Well, yes that’s the whole point. If she looked like her mother, she wouldn’t have experienced her opponent calling her ‘that Black girl’. If she looked like her mother, she wouldn’t experience an othering whenever she’s in Japan. Which she and the press around her *constantly* talk about.
I’m not focused on how she identifies *racially* but why she identifies as a Japanese national when she grew up in America, was raised by both her parents, trained by her Haitian father, and lived on Long Island and in Florida. When I wrote my comment “purposely being always the odd one out”, I assumed she lived primarily in Japan, but she does not. She firmly resides in America (Los Angeles I think with her boyfriend). The only significant time she spent in Japan was her first three years of life.
So, looking only at where she has lived, I would not identify her as a black-Japanese woman, but a Japanese-Haitian American woman. I find her choice eye-rolling and whenever she speaks about it exhausting, but it’s her choice. Again maybe it’s the Haitian in me that’s feeling erased. Because I feel no ways with how Kimora Lee Simmons identifies and she is black and Japanese.
When one is mixed race bi-continentally and/or two different countries, it’s a bit of a different matter than from within one country. In my experience, this country (US) has cultivated very little ability and lacks any desire to have a nuanced conversation about multiracial or biracial identity, and any mention of it is either heavily weighted toward dismissal, vilifying, or attempting to shame such individuals (as if we don’t know, identify with, and celebrate being Black, and yes, we are fully aware that’s how everyone in this country sees us so that point doesn’t need to be trotted out for the bazillionth time). The conversations around this from folks here are always the same, and I always know that if it’s not initiated by a self-identified multiracial or biracial individual, it will be a negative convo designed to give space for people to speak poorly of such individuals. I’ve spent 30 years listening to how it’s discussed here and there’s been no growth, nuance, or change. Sadly, some amazing and brilliant individuals I used to follow, had to unfollow as soon as they started talking badly about mr/br folk. Unless they do so with the aim to have a positive and informed discussion, the only reason to post seems to be to denigrate. I’m tired of it but I’ve been tired for decades now.
I haven’t experienced racial discrimination in my lifetime because I am racially white. I was born to a Brasilian mother and an American father and have spent my entire life explaining that yes, I am a citizen of both countries (passports for both) and that my childhood was as much latino as white (food, traditions, language, interpersonal relationships, entire maternal extended family in Brasil). I’ve had people argue with me (a lot) that I couldn’t possibly be half Brasilian because I’m not dark enough (as if I don’t know my own life) or see my lips and butt and say “Oh yeah – now I see it”…(what?@#$(*&) It’s an odd thing – to be in a meeting with someone asking for a Latina point of view and when I offer one, people say, “Well, not you. You aren’t REALLY Latina”. Um. OK. To be clear, I’m in no way claiming any hardship – I wish there were larger conversations about the assumptions we make about each other and what heritage people are “allowed” to claim because they don’t look like a Hollywood casting call for a certain ethnicity or race.
@Al
I had the same experience, I’m Brazilian and when I was in the US they said I couldn’t possibly be brazilian because “I wasn’t black enough “.
I also particularly hate people that come and tell me how much I must miss the beach and hot weather… like, my city is as cloudy and rainy as it gets, and chilly most of the time. It’s a huge country with very different landscapes but the stereotype always wins apparently…
When you mix coffee with milk its no longer milk, its call coffee and milk, theres nothing wrong with it, some people prefer it. But you can no longer identify it as milk and sell it as milk.
Sorry, but when I look at her I see a black girl, and to me, this article makes it seem to think that being black is derogatory. Whats wrong with being called black? I never said she should ignore or not identify with her asian side, but she is not pure asian and she looks way more african than asian in my option. If she were in Haiti or Africa, no one would blink twice and think that she was Japanese or mixed. There are all types of mixtures and sometimes the offspring look more one way then the other or not even mixed at all. I would never think Obama was mixed, vs Mariah Carey.
Can you blame a 10 year old girl for not knowing that she was mixed? while being chocolate brown.
When your skin is chocolate brown, your hair is long and kinky full and beautiful, your lips are full and juicy, their is nothing wrong with any of these traits. One should embrace them all. Thats what makes you unique and great. Maybe more people should go listen to that new Beyonce song and embrace what God has chosen to give them. She is Beautiful, her mixture is beautiful, embrace BOTH sides because she is a mixture of the two, not just the one. I say all this because as a proud beautiful Haitian woman (who is also mixed) I’m not getting that from article or most of the media coverage.
The whole reason I am commenting is because thees seems to be a stigma to to being black and their is nothing wrong with being black, or refers to as black, nothing wrong with being referred to as a red head either.
Im so tired of the mixed race conversation people have been mixing forever.
She needs to represent Japan to get the $$$. Sloane Stephens won the US Open in 2017 and got a lot of sponsorships but it wasn’t in the same league as Naomi who’s now the highest paid female athlete ever.
Her case is slightly complicated because she hasn’t lived in Japan in years and rarely speaks Japanese with the media. Most countries wouldn’t warmly embrace someone that has lived her whole life overseas and only speaks English with the Japanese journalists that travel everywhere she goes. Sharapova wasn’t seen as one of their own by her fellow Russian players for most of her career.
I’m not going to judge your jealousy, that’s for you to figure out. But maybe she feels more motivated to identify as Japanese because of the specific way in which they talk about things like race and nationality? Especially because, from what I can gather, it seems like she doesn’t exactly look like a biracial person, and gets mistaken for black a lot of the time, even though she is part Japanese in reality. That might motivate her to “prove” her credentials a little bit more as it were.
I’m sure some of the absolutely preposterous conversations happening in this thread are why Osaka quite happily embraces her Japanese side. Its impossible to have a nuanced discussion about culture and race in other countries with Americans because they can never grasp that the way they see and experience things aren’t universal. No wonder she throws her hat in a different ring when people are ready to vilify her because she chooses to identify a certain way. She doesn’t owe any of her identity to anyone else but herself.
Your last line really resonates; good lord I’m tired of hearing people police other people’s owned identities. I spent half my childhood in my father’s home country of Thailand not looking Thai enough, and half here in my mom’s U.S. constantly being asked, “where are you from?” When you’re mixed you can never win; you’re constantly being questioned, like a white man I had just met who asked me, someone he perceived as Asian, how my hair could be naturally curly. Even seemingly innocuous questions can feel very othering. It’s taken me 32 years of life to fully come to terms with that.
To be fair though, when a mixed person is considered black rather than mixed or other, sometimes is because they’re recognised as more one than the other (like most people don’t recognise Alexa Chung as half-Chinese) but isn’t it usually because the “other” rejects the black, i.e. anti-blackness within that culture?
I know what she means but at the same time Japan isn’t pro-black either, even if just from a cultural standpoint.