Living as a “Hafu”

by Makiko Akita (The Fountain stuff)

Do you know the word "Hafu"? In Japan, most people call the person who has parents from different races or nationalities "Hafu". In other words, “Hafu” means mixed-race or biracial. 

Maya Osakada

"I don't like the concept of hafu. I mean, everyone is hafu, right?" Maya Osakada,1st-year-APU student said so. She is half Japanese, half Indonesian who was born in Jakarta, Indonesia but brought up in Saitama, Japan. "I think there is no one who is 100 percent pure race," Osakada said.

She also said that the benefits of being a hafu is that she has a wide perspective because she shares connection to two countries and values, although sometimes she was concerned about herself being a hafu in the past. She said, "I can enjoy being different from others, I never felt embarrassed that I am different from other people." She said that's one of the reasons why she doesn't have any bad experiences being a hafu.

Shogo Yato

"SHUT UP! Korean!" he was told by his friend when he was talking in the Japanese high school dorm. "I knew it was half joking, but I felt I was kind of looked down by him." First-year APU student, Shogo Yato is half Japanese, half South Korean. He was born in Tokyo, but he spent ten and half a years in South Korea and nine and a half years in Japan.

"When I am in Korea, I am regarded as Japanese, but when I am in Japan, I am regarded as Korean," he said. Fortunately, he has no experiences of being bullied. "Actually, because I went to the school for Japanese in Korea." Additionally, “Through the question “who am I,” eventually, I came to think that all the people are human beings regardless of where they were born,” he said.

Jesse Tran

“My nationality, technically, is Australian. But my parents, umm, my mom is Philipino and  my dad is Vietnamese,” Jesse Tran, first-year APU student said. She explained that Australians generally refer to hafu as “Mixed”. And in Australia, mixed people are treated normally, but it could depend on the location. “I think because Australia is known to be multicultural, it’s not a surprise,” she said. Moreover, there was tons of different races together where she grew up, therefore she didn’t experienced any bad things.

However, she has had an experience peculiar to the mixed person. When she hung out with her Vietnamese side families, they can speak Vietnamese but she cannot. So sometimes she was kind of isolated from them. “I thought regret, because I wonder if I knew more about the culture, maybe I’d feel like more than identity, kind of thing, I’d know who I would be, kind of thing,” she said.  Although she said mixed people have some benefits such as they can see both sides of culture and  access to them, for the negative aspect, what she feels now is that she doesn’t feel connected to her cultures because she has never told Vietnamese or Philipino culture deeply.

APU has multicultural and multi-ethnic community and there are many more “Hafu”. How do they live and feel in APU?