Mixed Race Studies

Hapa Japan Conference

Center for Japanese Studies
Institute of East Asian Studies
University of California, Berkeley
2011-04-08 through 2011-04-09

• Introduction
• Agenda
• Registration
• Tickets: New Vision Award Recipient Jero, A Conversation & Mini-Concert

Introduction

Hapa is a Hawaiian term that is now widely used to describe someone of mixed racial or ethnic heritage. A New York Times article cites that just within the United States, one in seven marriages are now between people from different racial/ethnic backgrounds.

The Center for Japanese Studies, along with the Hapa Japan Database Project and All Nippon Airways, will host the Hapa Japan Conference on April 8th and 9th, featuring specialists in the study of mixed-race Japanese history, identity, and representation. Topics range from the history of mixed-race Japanese in the 1500s, part-Japanese communities in Australia, to the exploration of identity and representation through story-telling, films, and a photo-exhibit. For more information, please reference the conference agenda or contact cjs-events@berkeley.edu.

The whole story on being ‘hafu’

CNN International
CNN Go
2010-11-29

Daniel Krieger

The movie ‘Hafu’ explores the limbo world of people who are half-Japanese and half something else, as they try to find their place in society

What does it mean to be half-Japanese in 21st-century Japan?

This is what filmmakers Megumi Nishikura and Lara Takagi set out to explore in their documentary film, “Hafu,” of which they showed a preview screening last month at the Kansai Franco-Japanese Institute in Kyoto.

The film, which is not yet completed, is an offshoot of the Hafu Project, which was set up in London two years ago by sociologist Marcia Yume Lise and photographer Natalie Maya Willer, both half-Japanese.

The project profiles hafus with photos and interviews that shed light on the experience of living between two cultures.

“We wanted to create an opportunity to discuss contemporary Japan through the lens of half Japanese,” says Lise…

Read the entire article here.

A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

2010-08-07 Through 2010-08-29
Tue-Thu & Sun 12:00-19:00
Fri&Sat 12:00-20:00
(Closed on Mondays and 14, 15, and 16 August )
3331 Arts Chiyoda 6-11-14 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-Ku,Tokyo, 101-0021

Natalie Maya Willer, Photographer

Marcia Yumie Lise, Researcher

The Hafu Project is a visual and sociological study & representation of the so-called “Hafu”s. This is the first public exhibition in Japan. The work provides an unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of what it is to be a hafu in modern day Japan as well as on a global scale in a time where culture, nationhood and identity are increasingly fluid.

View the flyer here.