Intermarried Couples and “Multiculturalism” in Japan

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-12-30 01:50Z by Steven

Intermarried Couples and “Multiculturalism” in Japan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
ISSN 1481-4374
Volume 15, Issue 2 (2013)
DOI: 10.7771/1481-4374.2216

Kaori Mori Want
Shibaura Institute of Technology

In her article “Intermarried Couples and ‘Multiculturalism’ in Japan” Kaori Mori Want discusses why hyphenated names for the children of intermarried children are important for the achievement of multiculturalism in Japan in an era of globalization. In Japan the number of people who marry interracially or inter-ethnically is increasing, but changes to naming practices must occur for Japan to become a multicultural society. Intermarriage is not a reliable indicator of the maturity of multiculturalism. Foreign residents who have intermarried in Japan do not have the rights of Japanese, such as those of voting, social welfare, education, and so on. This fact alone makes Japan far from multicultural. One of the aspects missing in the critiques of multiculturalism in Japan has to do with naming practices. Children of intermarried couples have at least two cultural heritages but under the present Japanese family law, it is almost impossible to give children a hyphenated last name that would reflect their multicultural heritage.

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Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive on 2010-09-01 03:29Z by Steven

Hybridity and Whiteness in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
Volume 7, Issue 3 (September 2005)
9 pages

Heather Latimer
Simon Fraser University

In her paper, “Hybridity and Whiteness” in Claudine C. O’Hearn’s Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural, Heather Latimer examines the autobiographical collection Half and Half: Writings on Growing up Biracial and Bicultural assembled and edited by Claudine C. O’Hearn. Latimer’s analysis reveals how current models of hybridity theory are performed, articulated, and exemplified in the texts of O’Hearn’s volume. In her analysis, Latimer explores the anxiety and tension about whiteness within hybridity theory, often reflected in the performance of hybrid aesthetics. Latimer argues that while some authors in Half and Half avoid talking about whiteness as a way to establish legitimate hybrid identities, this avoidance actually resinscribes an authenticity to their identities which in turn replicates the very oppressive processes of identity formation they are attempting to write against. Latimer sees other authors in the volume, however, as disrupting the stability and invisibility of whiteness by performing a type of hybridity that makes visible the made-up and constructed nature of all racial identities.

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