Is blood ties what determines one’s nationality? It is now a burning topic in the Japanese media due to Ukrainian-born, Karolina Shiino winning the Miss Japan/Miss Nippon beauty pageant.
Japan is a majorly conservative country that prefers to stick to its old ways. While efforts have been made for foreigners to settle in as citizens due to its rapidly declining population incidents like these make us question if foreigners have been able to truly integrate into its society.
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“I Am Absolutely Japanese”: Karolina Shiino
Karolina Shiino was born in 1998 in Ternopil, Ukraine. She migrated to Japan at the tender age of five and has been brought up in Nagoya since then. She is the first naturalized citizen to have bagged the title of Miss Japan. While some call this a win for globalization and acceptance others are questioning if it’s legitimate for such a thing to happen. The beauty pageant winner herself has expressed quite cheerfulness on having won and has addressed the issues saying, “There are many people like me who are worried about the gap between their appearance and (who they are)…..I kept being told that I’m not Japanese, but I am absolutely Japanese, so I entered Miss Japan genuinely believing in myself. I was really happy to be recognized like this.”
The reactions of people all over are very divided. “This person who was chosen as Miss Japan is not even a mix with Japanese but 100% pure Ukrainian. Understand she is beautiful, but this is ‘Miss Japan’. Where is the Japaneseness?” wrote an X user. Another user in support of it pointed out that it might send a wrong message and wrote, “I think that Japanese people naturally (would) get the wrong message when a European-looking person is called the most beautiful Japanese.” Few people even saw this as a political statement considering Karolina Shiino’s origins and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict.
While the other side of the debacle asserts that Karolina had already gained her citizenship in 2022 which automatically enabled her to be worthy enough of the title. One post read, “If you have Japanese citizenship then you are a Japanese. Isn’t that all there is to say? What more is there to prove?”
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Other Miss Japan Finalists
There were a total of eight Miss Japan finalists who were shortlisted for the competition after rigorous interviews and show-cases in swimwear, traditional Japanese attire, Kimono, and western dresses. The finalists included Yuka Shimizu, Kana Arima, Marie Yoshida, Karolina Shiino, Kirari Ando, Rana Maruyama, Hayakawa Chiri, and Yasui Minami (from left to right).
On the other hand, a more darker side of Japanese beauty pageants has come to the surface, the incident has highlighted the extremely superficial nature of Japanese beauty pageants overall. According to the New York Times, “The contests reflect a culture that often judges women by their appearance and slots them into rigid, gender-defined roles.”
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