HAFU PROJECT + FILM
Hafu Project and Film explore the multiracial and multicultural people in a once mono-ethnic nation.
With an ever increasing movement of people between places in this transnational age, there is a mounting number of mixed-race people in Japan. Inspired by the "Hafu Project", the film is the unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of mixed-race Japanese and their multicultural experience in modern day Japan, following the lives of five “hafus”–the Japanese term for people who are half-Japanese–as they explore what it means to be multiracial and multicultural in a nation that once proudly proclaimed itself as the mono-ethnic nation. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, one in forty-nine babies born in Japan today are born into families with one non-Japanese parent. This newly emerging minority in Japan is under-documented and under-explored in both literature and media. This project seeks to open this increasingly important dialogue, exploring race, diversity, multiculturalism, nationality, and identity within the mixed-race community of Japan.