Embracing our identity is complex, and it’s about more than blood

 

Hanako Montgomery, International Correspondent, CNN

 

I’ve spent the last five years reporting from Japan, a country I’m partially from and one I’ve spent much of my life trying to understand. Lately, I’ve found myself wondering how much Japan is trying to understand people like me, too.

 

There’s been growing attention to anti-immigration sentiment here, particularly since the rise of the Takaichi government. Requirements for permanent residency have been tightened, with application fees set to rise sharply.

 

But the shift is also visible in the public mood. In a 2025 Japanese government survey, nearly half of foreign residents said they’d experienced some form of discrimination.

 

And it gets worse online. Videos of foreigners behaving badly—on trains, in restaurants, at tourist sites—regularly go viral. In the comments section, thousands of Japanese users might express frustration that these foreigners don’t respect their customs.

 

What most fail to realize, though, is that these foreigners are very often tourists, people who might never visit Japan again. They’re a very different group of people from the ones who are now facing tighter immigration policies and hiked visa fees.

 

But nuance is easily lost in our world shaped by algorithms that encourage outrage. Complex questions become black and white, and people are flattened into a label. And when we cling to a single definition of what it means to be Japanese, the consequences can be detrimental, like having people who’ve built their lives in Japan wondering whether they still belong. 

 

I know this because the question of who counts as Japanese has followed me for most of my life.

 

 

I was born to a Japanese mother, have citizenship and have been coming to Japan to visit my extended family since before I could crawl. I speak, read and write the language fluently. But because I’m mixed-race and was raised in the United States, I’m not what the Japanese call “jun-japa,” or “pure Japanese.”

I grew up in New York, a city that in many ways defines the concept of a melting pot.  But there too I found myself struggling to fit in.  My family lived in the diverse neighborhood of Jackson Heights, where my ethnic background was never really something I thought much about; I was surrounded by children of immigrant families, where different skin tones and second or third languages were the norm rather than the exception.

 

When I was seven, my family moved to Forest Hills, a leafy, much wealthier and far less diverse suburb.  Suddenly I was no longer one of many, I was something exotic.  From my name, to the way I looked, to the bento boxes I brought with me for lunch, to the fact that I spoke another language, I was different.  And I hated it.  For a long time, I yearned to be ‘normal.’ I even wrote the name ‘Olivia’ in my notebook to escape my identity.

 

That word, ‘identity’, seems to have grown in importance of late.  In the UK, where I was born and where some of my family is from, the Reform party MP Suella Braverman has been outspoken on the notion of what makes someone ‘English’, focusing heavily on ethnicity. In a controversial recent BBC television appearance, Braverman told a black audience member who considered himself English that he was not and could never be, despite the fact that he had lived in England his entire life.

 

 

 

In the United States the term “Wasian”, used to describe white and Asian biracial people has blown up recently, with many embracing the label to feel some sense of connection and representation.

 

Some well-attended Wasian meet-ups were held in San Francisco and New York, with thousands gathering to celebrate their identity. My CNN colleague Jessie Yeung spoke to one attendee who described the experience as “validating”, and “almost like a family reunion”. But Jessie’s report also highlighted another whose background was white and South Asian who said they felt excluded, posting on TikTok ‘Yeah, I’m Wasian but you know my mom’s brown so I actually don’t fu**ing count!’

 

In the 2020 United States Census, a total of 10.2% (roughly 33.8 million people) of the country’s population self-identified as being of two or more races, that’s up from 2.9% in 2010.  Some of that is driven by the way data is collected, but the numbers appear to show a marked increase in multiracial families.

 

The idea of complex, multi-faceted identity has become an ever-greater reality as more people migrate. According to UN Population Division and International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates, there were 304 million international migrants globally as of mid-2024. According to migrationpolicy.org data this count has roughly doubled since 1990 (153.9 million) and almost quadrupled since 1960 (77.1 million).

 

International migrants made up 3.7 percent of the world's population in 2024, according to UN data, while research from the London School of Economics (LSE) and University of Hong Kong shows that annual global migration flows nearly tripled from 13 million people per year in 2000 to roughly 35 million per year by 2023.

 

Complex identity has found portrayals in popular culture, too. In the recent Netflix smash hit, K-Pop Demon Hunters, the movie’s main character, Rumi, is half Demon.Terrified of rejection, she hides her true identity and struggles to accept who she truly is. When the truth is exposed, initially her worst fears are realized as Rumi finds herself shunned, but eventually she embraces her dual identity and is ultimately accepted by her friends. Not only is their relationship strengthened by their newfound openness, but Rumi also unlocks the power of her dual identity, which helps her to fight the villain of the movie. It’s an uplifting tale of a path to self-knowledge and acceptance.

 

The movie’s creator, Maggie Kang, says Rumi’s character arc reflects her own journey with self-doubt and symbolizes the process of recognizing one’s true self and acknowledging the parts of your identity that you keep hidden. My own attempts to hide my identity ended when I was 15, with the help of an incredibly supportive Saturday school teacher, who reconnected me with Japanese culture by getting me to sing Japanese pop songs in class. I found joy in a part of me that I’d buried, and it taught me an incredibly important lesson in life—to see yourself as you truly are. And who I am is, like for many people, complicated.

 

The stories that shape us can sometimes feel like obstacles, and our identities barriers. But no matter how much outside forces try to dictate our identity, its reality cannot go away. That can also complicate one’s sense of belonging. The world is on an inevitable path to greater diversity, whether politicians like it or not. Perhaps in the future the notion of what it means to be a certain thing or belong in a certain place will be less dependent on blood and more on personal choice.

 

 

 

Hanako Montgomery interviewed Maggie Kang at the CNN Global Perspectives: In Bangkok event on 14 October.