Would you like some whale with that? Emi Doi
“If you’re part Japanese, why are you so bad at maths?” “How many hours do your parents make you practice piano per day?” “Have you ever eaten whale?” Above are just a few of the comments I have received – some more regularly than others – living as a Japanese-Australian in Tasmania. Though these kinds of questions were ones I was asked more frequently during primary and high school, I am still asked variations of them today as a 19-year-old university student. Just the other day I was interviewing an old man, who asked after the interview, “so where are you from?” I have learnt that answering such questions with “I am from Hobart”, or “I am Australian” never really cuts it, and 98% of the time is followed with, “yeah, but where are you from?” Now I jump straight to the response of, “I am Australian, but my father is Japanese.” This always seems to be a satisfactory reply, and is met more often than you might expect, even from secondary school teachers, with responses like “ahh, I could tell because of your eyes!”
mother and my Japanese father. I have always identified as an Australian; I have lived in Australia my entire life, my native tongue is English and my Japanese language skills are ‘survival’ at best. But despite the fact that I have never lived in Japan and I do not really speak Japanese, I still feel that my identity as a “haafu” has significantly shaped my life experience. Growing up, ‘slant eye’ gestures from kids on the back of the school bus and jeering from drunken strangers about how I should go back to “ching chong China” never really phased me – it’s hard to take offence from insults that are ill-informed, misguided, and just kind of blatantly ignorant. A response to such jibes is a waste of energy and I usually feel a resigned sense of “whatever.” It was actually the more common misconceptions about Asians* that dominated my school experience. Throughout school I felt an immense pressure to live up to expectations about what I should be due to my Japanese background, both within myself and from the people around me. I remember being in high school mathematics and having a substitute teacher ask me – “your dad is a Jap isn’t he? You should be better at this!”
I am what Japanese people commonly refer to as a “haafu”, or what Australians way less frequently refer to as a “halfie” – an individual that is bi-racial, mixed ethnic heritage, mongrel half-breed, slanty-eyed bastard, descending down into increasingly insulting rings of ignorance.
It was said with a laugh, but as the saying goes, ‘many a true word spoken in jest’. I myself have applied the occasional Asian stereotype for cheap laughs like “I ruv rice,” or paltry excuses such as, “I can’t hold my drink because I am Asian.” Early self-deprecation is the best defence. It’s like a preemptive strike: while everyone is distracted by the joke, I hope they don’t notice that I can’t actually hold my alcohol.
I was born and raised in Tasmania by my Launcestonian
The assumption that I was supposed to excel at math-
Good deduction, Sherlock.
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