Ariana Miyamoto 宮本エリアナ
Ariana Miyamoto is most well known for claiming the Miss Universe Japan title in 2015. In the Miss Universe pageant she also placed within the top 10. Her dad is African American and her mom is Japanese, and they divorced when she was one. However, she originally never planned to enter a Japanese beauty contest since she felt due to her multiracial origins she would not be able to win. Growing up, Miyamoto attended Japanese public middle school where kids would refuse to touch her because "her color might rub off(Lies)". She attended high-school in the US while staying with her dad but could not understand the culture, and realized, ‘Without a doubt, I’m Japanese’(McNeil).
What pushed her to enter this pageant was the suicide of a close biracial friend (half white/half Japanese), who always felt unaccepted by Japanese and was unable to accept himself. She thought “for my friend’s sake, if there was something I could do to change Japan, I should" and entered the contest(Lies).
Her selection set off a firestorm with people saying she didn't look "Japanese" enough to represent Japan, and making other derogatory or hateful comments. Despite the negative comments there were also some supportive ones and some are hopeful about what her win means for Japan's future. Ariana also hopes to push for awareness around discrimination stating, "With more and more international marriages, more children will be born from these marriages, and in this way I hope Japan will become an easier place to live"(McNeil).
Place of Birth: Nagasaki, Japan
Nationality: Japanese
Background of Parents: Father is African American and Mother is Japanese
Languages Spoken: Japanese (fluent), English (advanced)
Profession: Working at Talent Company Called Someday(Miyamoto)
Sentiment Data from Youtube
Comments from a video titled " "People don't believe I am Japanese" says Miss Japan - BBC News "
Video Summary
Its 2015 and Ariana Miyamoto has just become the first bi-racial woman to be crowned Miss Japan. In the video Ariana is interviewed and talks about how the international media cares a lot about her win but the Japanese media does not.("People don't believe") The video talks about the debate she set off on social media about whether a person of mixed race person should be eligible to win the competition and represent Japan. The experience of other Hafu is mentioned as well and BBC talks about the myth that Japan is entirely homogenous. The video has 3 million views.
Data Collection Parameters
We collected a random sample of 50 comments with 1 or more likes. Comments were not double counted and we tried to fit them into the most applicable category. Due to the subjective nature of interpreting the comments there may be some discrepancies in the data. To see examples of comments that fit into a category, view the google sheet with extracted comments The example comments are listed under the graph and highlighted accordingly with the category on the left.
Data Analysis
There were many people complimenting Ariana's looks overall. There were also people talking about whether or not she looked Japanese and another debate in the comments about whether or not she should be able to represent Japan. There were a decent number of comments that were against biracial people trying to claim one culture in general, and many non-Japanese people were agreeing that biracial people/people who do not look like the majority are not good country representatives. Many of the comments expressed that BBC should not try to force its own views of diversity on to Japan, and that Japan should be allowed to be as homogenous as it likes. We created a separate category for positive comments about how she looks African/African American and the negative ones were added to the category "Does not look Japanese" since the negative and neutral comments were often using her African American half to negate the Japanese half.