Growing up half Canadian and half Japanese means learning that identity is rarely split 50/50
Written by Yuji H. (He/Him) // Contributor
Visuals by Andy ukko Poystila (He/Him) Production Manager
“For although there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other. No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian, and all should be treated fairly.” —Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1971
The former Prime Minister’s message meant that Canada would no longer demand one cultural recipe. People would not have to bleach away their identities to “appear” Canadian. Their languages, traditions and cultural histories would instead be tossed into the great national salad called multiculturalism.
Decades later, I was born into that salad as a little mixture of Japanese sesame and Canadian maple.
Unfortunately, like an unfamiliar appetizer at a crowded table, it is often overlooked for something more familiar, or treated as a novelty to be examined and exoticized.
In Japan, hāfu means half Japanese, but the word can sometimes emphasize the difference between someone like me and someone considered fully Japanese. It can make “half” feel less like a description and more like a dividing line. I am Canadian, not the cartoonish kind you see on TV, like a lumberjack drinking Molson in a hockey rink. But the boring kind you see everyday. The one you see waiting for the bus. I was born here. I grew up here. I went to school here.
But when I was a little maple leaf, some people would start asking me questions:
“Where are you really from?”
“Do you speak Japanese?”
“Why do you eat raw fish?”
This is not open hostility. Most people ask out of ignorant curiosity, but treat me like any other dumb kid growing up. What bothers me is being put on the spot and quizzed about Japan through Western stereotypes.
I am not an anime encyclopedia.
I am bad at math.
I do not know which half I feel closer to because I have never thought of myself as two clean halves.
I am Japanese, but I am also Canadian and a pile of other things that do not fit into somebody else’s ideal of a hāfu.
Canada is my home. I am not sure what imaginary checklist people are using to decide whether someone is Canadian or not. I don’t care about hockey, I say “Vancouver” instead of “Vangcouver” and I have never once felt the urge to wrestle a moose. I do not need to check all the boxes to prove that I belong here.
This answer isn’t enough for some people.
Some people would ignore me and search for someone who could help them feel closer to the Japan they imagined. Their Japan was assembled from anime, samurai movies, cute mascots and whatever other marketing slop that has been curated, packaged and fed to the West to make a sale.
I used to feel like a gacha game dispensing little cultural trinkets. If people did not like what came out, they moved toward something shinier for their next matcha dopamine hit.
The criticism also came from within my own community and family, where I was scrutinized for not being Japanese enough. Some older Japanese people who knew I was hāfu expected me to immediately grasp the language, etiquette and social rules of being Japanese, as if that knowledge had been installed at birth.
At the dojo, failing to understand Japanese could earn me a shinai—a four-piece bamboo practice sword—to the throat. In other settings, I was expected to know every rule of respect and honour when addressing or serving the sensei and senpai. My mother taught me a few things, but being labelled half Japanese and then berated for not possessing all that knowledge at age ten? Bone-chilling.
Fortunately, those experiences belong to the past, and they do not speak for every Japanese person. Growing older taught me that the people demanding proof of my Japanese or Canadian identity were running an exam I never agreed to take.
So I don’t. I do not owe either country proof of who I am.
Finding balance between both does not mean dividing myself perfectly into two pieces. It means understanding that being Canadian and Japanese are only parts of who I am. I am a writer, a student and someone shaped by experiences and dreams.I do not need to apologize for any part of me. I have a strange recipe: Canadian maple mixed with Japanese sesame. I belong to both.