approaching half past the hour here on al-jazeera and these are the top stories armenia and azerbaijan engaged in fierce battles over the disputed region of nagorno-karabakh fighting is now in its 4th day and there's been reports of heavy casualties both sides have also rejected international calls for a cease fire the other headlines in the 1st debate in the u.s. presidential election has taken place in cleveland ohio it was a bad tempered at times chaotic affair joe biden called president trump a liar and a clown president failed to condemn white supremacists and targeted what he called the radical left kuwait's late emir. has been laid to rest a day after his death a funeral procession was held in kuwait city for the 91 year old leader just after his body arrived from the united states he had been receiving medical treatment

there before his death kuwait has declared 40 days of national mourning and creates new media. has already been sworn in he paid tribute to his half brother and the contributions he made to his country. i mean really bill just. as a soon this huge burden of this office i promise god almighty i promise our homeland and our people that i will spare no effort that i will continue to work to save the interests of our homeland preserve the freedoms of our people their welfare and continue to support the peoples of kuwait and i pray to god almighty to guide our steps forward. france's highest court has ruled that a suspect in the rwandan genocide can be sent to tanzania to face trial in a un back to court. is accused of helping to finance members of the hutu tribe who killed 800002 seize and moderate hutus in 1904 he's been held a french jail since his arrest at his home outside of paris earlier this year he

had been on the run for more than 20 years an indian courts acquitted 32 people accused of inciting a mob to destroy a 16th century mosque among the accused were former deputy prime minister and top members of the ruling party the hindu nationalist b j p the destruction of the in 1902 triggered sectarian violence across india that left more than 2000 people dead and pro-democracy activists joshua one has been granted bail after another appearance in a hong kong court he's been charged with taking part in an unauthorized demonstration in october last year for violating laws against wearing masks just one is among several activists facing charges related to last year's pro democracy protests that's not for today thanks for your company here on al-jazeera the stream is next. we understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter. how dissimilar to bring you the

news and current affairs that matter to you. al-jazeera. hello i'm melissa can guest host al-jazeera is the stream home edition today we'll be taking a closer look at japanese food passed through is a term signifying someone who is half japanese and has something else now japan is a modulus country very much in this country so have to stick out for better or worse as usual post your comments and questions on you tube will try to get to as many of them as possible so you too can join the stream. me and mitzi welcome to the program if you can each introduce yourselves let's

start with mitzi hi material i had a carter and i my professor of politics and student studies at florida international university in miami florida i. have been writing about black and ok now in issues for quite some time now and megumi i everybody am i going to need to crack i'm a documentary filmmaker i focus on telling stories about the marquis racial japanese experience and in 2013 my partner lara president yet i made the film. about the mixed race experience in japan and to tell us about yourself. and i just i mean consider me as i can huff belgian huff japanese photographer and i've been working on a photo project called the hunt for the heart for i don't have

a clue poster like me who does but i have happened to have the book here. it's a photo project about being mixed up unease and for this one i've photographed and if you would about 150 huffed up in these people from a 100 or more different so different other countries excellent so 1st things 1st have to do which is a japanese were derived from the english word for half. is it a derogatory word can can we even use it or was it commonly used in japan whoever wants to star in answer this question so. yeah obviously we called the film. and. the filmmakers everybody is involved in the team that feel that the term is drug atory we intentionally called the film ha ha a few as opposed to have the english word because we believe that it is

a japanese term now and it really directly means somebody who has one japanese parent and one not japanese parent and i think you know it's a commonly used term it's the most common use term within. japan and it's very good when you meet somebody to the 1st time and you explain that you're hot people and so we understand that you have one japanese whatnot jackal's parents so i think it's. you know a large part of the community accepts that grace is that term. and of course one of the most well known hostages these days is naomi osaka and there's been so much commentary in japan about how japanese she is and whether she's japanese enough and so that makes me very curious in terms of your personal experiences being hostile in japan where there are particular moments that you remember and how are you treated perhaps nitze you can start. well i grew up in the united states i will

have a very different experience from someone who grew up in japan and especially someone who you know maybe speaks only japanese and maybe no other in the other language so i have a very particular experience when i go back home to ok now which is also a very particular place in. it's my relationship to this term even half true or to other mixed race people is very different i think for other people who are in mainland japan. you know i think or for people who are mixed for people who are have you know and have black in particular we have a. it's a complicated at a very complicated story i think for people of my generation and maybe a little bit older we are not totally so you know as part of being you know part of really being integrated in the in the nation and into that space and it's there are

a lot of painful stories that many of us have shared with each other sometimes they're very beautiful stories it really depends on i think you know the moment the political moment the political climate and. yet it's there's so many so many factors that go into how you are feeling in that particular moment. i don't know maybe megumi and tend to have a similar situation or feeling about that but that's that's really how i. i think. well from a very well personal perspective. there are there are moments where where you love everything about being half japanese. i mean you get you get all the perks of being have to happen is you go to japan you get to taste japanese food and you speak japanese or that's that's my case i speak japanese i have relatives in japan i have

friends in japan and i have a 2nd home in japan. but on the other hand there are plenty of times where i wish i were not mixed or just that i work just belgian or even just japanese so it really depends on as it is said it depends on so many factors it depends on the political climate but it depends on the people you're with it depends on the mood you're in and your own age so where am i in in my life. i want to share one. will go right to you want to share comment that we had received on twitter about this issue from dr h.q. he says japan is a country of japanese people their traditions customs festivals worshipping methods birth and death culture is way different from the rest of the world even if the

political system wants to minimize this those they will never change i have lived there japan won't change and so may give me i'm curious what you think about that did you ever experience that it was your experience has your experience been more positive or negative or a mixture of both. so i was born and raised in japan and for me you know growing up seeking jep needs as my 1st language and having a fully japanese name you know i grew up identifying as japanese 1st and i think you know a lot of the had kids especially when i became an adult and had to go outside of my you know immediate bubble of family and friends that you kind of interact with when you're a child in your world is very small and summer when you become adult and you have a much larger world and interact with new and strange people all the time. i received a lot of kind of disbelief that i could be japanese you know people would say your

name is nice could do you are you married to a japanese man is that because that's the only way i could have a japanese last name you know they would always compliment me on my level of japanese and so you know that's a lot of experience that i had and it got to be very exhausting and you know constantly having to explain and justify your existence and that's part of the motivation of why i made this film but specific to the comment that we just received i mean you know absolutely japan has a. you know i think unspoken definition of what it needs to be japanese and there's these boxes that you have to take off that like if you look japanese you speak japanese you have japanese citizenship and you have to be culturally japanese and if you don't you can't check off * all of those boxes you're not japanese and you know i think what's one of the brilliant things about that is that she actually

doesn't take a lot of those boxes but she is japanese and she's representing japan on the world stage and you know i think that's really challenging a lot of people about broadening their definition about what it means to be japanese so i think change is happening absolutely and i definitely want to follow up a little bit and if you could tell us a bit more about your film share i am so that the film follows 5 different individuals. who have all different mixes i'm in behind you can see david at the top he's african and and japanese and below is sophia who's half a stale you know definitely also have somebody who has happened as well and a japanese half korean and japanese and has and you just saw some clips earlier of a little boy who's half mexican and japanese so you know we see a variety of experiences but central to each of their story lines is kind of how

being have japanese impacts their daily life so we see people who completely live outside japan. and you know come to japan for the very 1st time to experience their roots and we see people who have been you know going to race in japan and primarily only speak japanese and but come on a daily basis struggle with you know finding their place in japanese society. tetsuo about your global project. i definitely encourage everyone to check it out after this program but tell us about some of the lessons or takeaways you got while going around taking photographs of half those around the world. right well where should i start i think i should start with my own very narrow world. i grew up in belgium went to japan and most of my summers and i interviewed about 15 have to happen is people in the netherlands when i was living there and i

thought after 15 people that i had a pretty good idea of what being half japanese was until i got invited to this happen japan festival in the center of this where i meant how from the rest of the world and those included some of the people. making me has talked about already some like some others as well and that's when i realized that i had this huge blind spot on my my radar. i did not know that there were known white japanese nuns i mean i could have imagined but i didn't know them there were not on my own i mean or as i say so finally meeting them for the 1st time and hearing their stories really open up this huge new box and that's when i decided to to try and capture. the full range if you want of being half japanese so

even though by for example media or beauty standards you're not half japanese if you're not this talented young white japanese is not the legal person. i want to find people from different generations people from every single continent and from as many countries as possible so i made that my goal and what i've found out now. oh fischer thought and then now i don't the question i found out and i thought was the most interesting find of my project is that basically you can divide the whole. heart fruit 'd community into so you have the huffers who are born or raised in japan then you have the huffers are born and raised outside of japan and each of those categories can be then divided into 3 being visual visually identifiable japanese but why don't you have the 2nd

fish surely i don't fight about japanese but nonwhite so accomplices africa latin america parts of asia and then you have the 3rd group who are non-visible and say the invisible half ago and they are chinese japanese korean japanese. and we all have a completely different experience there is something that unites us that's this label of being a half loop but what sets us apart are these these factors those are the biggest right factors that i've seen well that's what's really interesting to me as i started hearing the voices and reading interviews of different half was is that not all have those are treated equally i want to bring up a comment from june so gmo who is a well known television personality in japan who is half and this is what he had to

say about his own experience got to go i really hated being different from other people when i was in elementary school i kept wondering why i was a different color from other and hopes that i am the same as everyone else but now being different and japan having different colored skin has turned my advantage and there's this moments when you realize there's a satirical. and i also actually want to share another video comment back to back from ron's oh he's founder of the black experience to pantheistic just to give people an idea of some of the negative experiences of being different looking in japan in a free as the black experience in japan is myriad right does not want to think if you think about it there are a multiplicity of factors that goes into influence in each person's experience to be honest you find experiences different registers across the spectrum some really good some really really bad it will depend on a lot of factors when it comes down to inclusiveness and japan rental

discrimination is a thing in japan is a fact i think he said to recently when i was trying to find a larger place to live in so you know there is still a lot of work to be then of course and but i remain optimistic because interviewed people within japan who occupy sort of positions and roles within the japanese society that back in the day maybe 4 decades ago would not have been possible so i think there is some progress but a lot of work soon is to be done. you know i mentioned at the beginning of the show that japan is a homogenous country just to throw some numbers out there for people to keep in mind 125000000 people approximately 2 percent are migrants and of course a lot of these migrants could easily blend in a lot of people from china and south korea for example in terms of refugees 10000 people applied it to be refugees in 2019 and only 40 people got their applications a sept it and other interesting numbers i know that of course this is

a population that is aging and also not many people are having as many children so it's a shrinking population and so the government is concerned about trying to bring in more people but the fact of the matter is a pew poll of from a few years ago shows that only 25 percent of people in japan are really ready to a sept immigrants. i think we've sort of danced around this but there are words for this thought be a racism and certain views of blood purity and i wonder what you guys think about that is that what's driving some of the negative experiences that have whose have had in japan maybe i'll start with mignini. that's a great question i mean i think perry has a long history. yet you know it's an island has a history. it's foreigners being closed and so i think that.

there and then there's also this you know salt pepper generated image of itself and you know perceived by the rest of the world as who modulus and so that kind of you know narrative continues to exist and. so people are you know dummies people believe that you know they're largely one people one culture one nation one language and. there's also a lot of i think societal pressure to. be to go with the flow be accepted. you know there's a saying that everybody likes to say that the like the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. and so. you know i think. if you're even a little bit different like the boxes that i am related to before if you don't check all of them that you tend to be. you know treated

differently mitzi what do you think i mean you study a lot of. you know i think we have to be really careful when we talk about japan as a homogenous nation as though he was referring to this kind of the hunting wrong method and as that as the twitter comment came in i was thinking about the same thing you know this idea that japan is unchanging it's this kind of. reifies idea that it's an essential it's place and it reifies that kind of idea that it's that then that you know it's unchanging and it can never be a place of acceptance of difference when that's really not the case and it's really it's up further isolating and marginalizing the experiences of so many different types of mixed race people within within the nation state so we have to be really careful about perpetuating that that that myth of home which immediately it's

a it's a dangerous one and it's one that that we put on to japan historically we've done that apologists have done that in my field but also i think japanese people have taken the single story myth and really it it's very it's very dangerous for for for mixed race people. and so it is done out of japan like many nation states are dynamic they deal with you know phobia and there's a push back to that as well i mean maybe the push may not be as fast as we would like but. you know if it is changing and you know there's a black labs matter protests within japan that are organized by japanese people who are who are you know trying to really make a change within their own countries i mean when we have a a miss america competition i think is in 2013 or 2040. an indian american woman you know what i forget her name but her last name remember when she was crowned miss america or she was crowned some pageant head and there was so much pushback people

were questioning if she can she really be american i mean ray or generation and asians who have been living in this country and they're still like where you really probably you know we still in ecuador we must you know it's interesting because we've also seen that barry being broken in the patterns in japan with i am yamato and also of course a priyanka ship yoshikawa 2016 miss world in japan and that has really moved things along in terms of the conversation i you just mentioned of course the only osaka talking about one talk about black lives matter in japan and earlier and the gooney was talking about naomi ozark i want to share what she posted at the u.s. open she was showing up and wearing a face mask with the names of people who have been victims in the united states as

a result of people thinking that black lives do not matter and that's sending a very strong statement and also she is japanese and i wonder to what extent her presence has changed things and i'm curious about looking ahead in terms of whether the next generation of japanese will be more open to half of those into immigrants and to citizenship in general and tetsuo what do you think. well. i think role models are really really very important so people who become. mr or. really successful sports players can can make it make a big change in firstly i think in the self acceptance of younger people so so many half japanese people growing up in the countryside don't know anybody who looks like them or who they say does not look like the others as they do if that

makes sense. so having a role models is is so important and that goes for europe as well where i live and i'm sure that works the same way for the united states you need people to look up to who can achieve things despite what they look like i mean i'm going to get revenge absolutely i want to hear me gloomy mitzi thoughts on this we're getting near to the end of the shell but the gloomy if you can tell us what you think in terms of what attitudes needs to change and your thoughts about the future yeah i mean i think you know as tense just said like importance of role models is really you know so valuable and i think right now you know we've seen role models and. yet any kind of. popular media whether there

are t.v. had ental as they like to call them like celebrities in japan or are now athletes and so i think you know it's partially just a kind of a numbers game like it's just a matter of time i mean you know a surrenders to think that like you know the population of japan is declining like the number of mixed babies are you know growing and so. that's going to change and i think you know what i would like to see as these generations grow up and participate in japanese society is not just the people on t.v. and on the sports fields but in business a leadership like nonprofit leadership like different areas of society and we're going to start and there are a few politicians are ready and i want to i want to i want to get i'm so sorry but i want to make sure that if he also has a quick thought since we're really getting near to the end it's if you can give us your one quick sentence and thought about the future. one quick sentence that you

know i actually agree she would make me here at that you know representation is definitely important of course i would love to see more people out there where you know it's that you know separate younger people who are 'd isolated in the countryside. seeing yourself on on in you know well you know in the popular media is very important at the same time yet we've got an educational change shifts have got to be made that it just anti blackness that have been transnationally you know absorbed into the country got it yet doesn't know the bigger harder question that he can so much. thank you so much attends that it needs to meet nitze thank you for joining algeciras the street. corruption it is the invisible behind a wall of silence. against. corruption is

not something to be told in that. african. country he said. let's destroy this wall. in 2020 the free space i want to encourage is the heroes who are fighting against corruption this helps our communities to save the resources that we need in order to address the burning problems that affect us and. shine a light on your anticorruption here. nominate now. played an important role. don't trace. a face can tell a story without uttering a single word. and knowing god can guide us.

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