“It’s been a dream.” Excited and with dreamy eyes, Karolina Shiino, 26, told reporters how she had felt having been chosen Miss Japan from among all the candidates who had entered the pageant last Monday night in Tokyo. Her impeccable Japanese did not impress the most critics, and Shiino’s choice has become a national debate. The reason, her Ukrainian origin.
The 26-year-old was born in Ukraine, but moved to Japan when she was five years old, when her mother remarried a Japanese man. Since then, Karolina – who took the surname of her new father – has lived in Nagoya, Naichi Prefecture. She is Japanese, although she was not born in the country, which allowed her to participate in the contest.
However, being chosen as the winner of the beauty pageant has not satisfied everyone. Many citizens have opened a debate about whether Shiino should have been chosen among all the candidates to represent Japan. On social networks, the alleged “discrimination” against “the Japanese faces” of the rest of the candidates was even criticized. Others, for their part, suggest that her election could represent the necessary social change that the country needs.
The election of Karolina Shiino puts the country in check, just as what happened a little over a decade ago with another winner, Ariana Miyamoto, the first woman of mixed origin – daughter of a Japanese mother and an African-American father – who won the precious crown. . Miyamoto sparked heated debate over whether women who were not “purely Japanese” should be considered for the crown.
Shiino’s case, however, is different. As some users pointed out on social networks, her Japanese origin is not even taken into account, since the model, although beautiful, was born in Ukraine. “If she were half Japanese, there would be no problem. But ethnically she is 0% Japanese,” says one, “she wasn’t even born in Japan.” Others even allege “political decisions” for her victory, given the current global climate.
With almost perfect measurements and very beautiful, the model signed up for the beauty contest and underwent the tests like the rest of the candidates. Her motivations for entering the contest in Japan and not in Ukraine were clear: she has lived her entire life in the country, she speaks Japanese and knows nothing else. “The first time I noticed that I looked different was because of the comments from those around me.”
According to the organizers of the pageant, this represents a great opportunity to redefine the concept of beauty in Japan. “We have to rethink what Japanese beauty is. After today’s results, beauty in Japan not only exists in appearance or blood; but also in our hearts.”
