I'm not hapa, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how half-Asians are viewed and treated in Asia compared to America.

If any of you follow Japanese media, you'd know that there are a TON of half-Asian celebrities appearing on TV every day. Off the top of my head, almost all of these celebrities are either musicians (Wentz Eiji, Becky), models (Shelly, Rola, JOY, Triendl Reina, Maggie) or 'tarento' (Yuji, Sekiguchi Mandy.)

In Tokyo especially there's a very lucrative business of scouting and recruiting half Asians at a young age so that entertainment companies can turn them into top celebrities. The unfortunate reality of it all is that hapas are extremely commodified in Japan, and are praised for their 'good looks' and 'interesting personas.'

Which leads me to my next point: with this commodification and flooding of hapas into Japanese media comes a lot of negative stereotypes of hapas by the Japanese public, especially with those celebrities I mentioned above. Just to list a few:

1: Every single one of those celebrities I mentioned above come from WM/AF or BM/AF families. Not to say personally that this is inherently bad, but the negativity comes from the fact that almost all of their parents are divorced with the WM or BM 'returning' to their home country. Poor, abandoned single mother households are the primary reason why these people got into show-biz in the first place, to make a lot of money.

2: The mothers of these hapa celebrities are viewed as people who latch onto foreigners easily (Anna Lus I guess you guys call them?) But once the baby pops out, the dad nopes the fuck out and they become divorced single mothers; the public blames these kinds of women a lot for having loose morals and involving themselves with slimy gaijin.

3: Because of broken households and lack of stern father figures (something that's valued a lot in Japan), a lot of hapa celebrities are viewed as 'dumb', 'stupid' and having 'severe daddy issues.' These celebrities can only rely on their good looks in order to make money.

Granted these stereotypes are really messed up and NOT true all the time. My aunt works closely with Becky and has nothing but praises for her personality and work ethic. But I just find it interesting to see how some of the themes discussed in AM take root in Japanese pop culture like this.