Hapa Japan Database Project
The Hapa Japan Database Project is a forum for connecting mixed-race and mixed-roots Japanese people. The Project sponsors a website with social networking, genealogical, and educational features. They also host a Festival every other year that celebrates this community through concerts, exhibits, comedy nights, film screenings, and academic conferences. Hapa Japan I took place in April 2011 in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hapa Japan 2013 runs from April 2-6, 2013 in Los Angeles.
Related Resources on Discover Nikkei
Discover Nikkei is a community-based project of the Japanese American National Museum that explores Nikkei identity and community stories. The website provides an inviting space for a global community to share, explore, and connect with each other through diverse Nikkei experiences, culture, and history.
Explore a range of community stories and perspectives through daily Journal articles, first-person interviews, Nikkei Albums, events, and more.
It is believed that by the 2020 U.S. Census, a majority of Japanese Americans will identify as multiracial. Explore the diverse and complex history of the mixed-race and mixed-roots Japanese American experience.
Visible & Invisible, curated by Cindy Nakashima, Lily Anne Yumi Welty, and Duncan Williams, reveals the long “mixed” history in the Japanese American community. Starting with the earliest days of immigration, over a century ago, multiracial and multiethnic families and individuals dared to forge unexpected communities and families, against all odds. The pioneers of Japanese American history took risks and crossed oceans, embraced new communities, and established roots in unfamiliar places. They created multiracial families and their children became the first Americans of Japanese ancestry. In doing so, they played a pivotal role in transforming the United States into a place where they—and others like and unlike them—can belong.
The exhibition also tackles the history of racial segregation and anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited or even criminalized marriages between White and non-White peoples. Laws that prohibited interracial marriage existed in many states as late as 1967, when they were finally outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia. Today, the Japanese American community continues to explore questions of belonging and identity as Hapa Japanese Americans expand notions of family and community, challenging us to imagine new possibilities for the future.
Visible & Invisible is a collaboration between the Hapa Japan Database Project, the USC Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, and the Japanese American National Museum. The opening of the exhibition is preceded by the five-day Hapa Japan Festival, April 2-6, 2013—a free festival featuring hapa musicians and artists, a comedy night, readings by award-winning authors, film screenings of great documentaries, and a two day academic conference at USC.
Public Programs Sponsors: 
Media Sponsors: 
It is believed that by the 2020 U.S. Census, a majority of Japanese Americans will identify as multiracial. Explore the diverse and complex history of the mixed-race and mixed-roots Japanese American experience.
Visible & Invisible, curated by Cindy Nakashima, Lily Anne Yumi Welty, and Duncan Williams, reveals the long “mixed” history in the Japanese American community. Starting with the earliest days of immigration, over a century ago, multiracial and multiethnic families and individuals dared to forge unexpected communities and families, against all odds. The pioneers of Japanese American history took risks and crossed oceans, embraced new communities, and established roots in unfamiliar places. They created multiracial families and their children became the first Americans of Japanese ancestry. In doing so, they played a pivotal role in transforming the United States into a place where they—and others like and unlike them—can belong.
The exhibition also tackles the history of racial segregation and anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited or even criminalized marriages between White and non-White peoples. Laws that prohibited interracial marriage existed in many states as late as 1967, when they were finally outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia. Today, the Japanese American community continues to explore questions of belonging and identity as Hapa Japanese Americans expand notions of family and community, challenging us to imagine new possibilities for the future.
Visible & Invisible is a collaboration between the Hapa Japan Database Project, the USC Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, and the Japanese American National Museum. The opening of the exhibition is preceded by the five-day Hapa Japan Festival, April 2-6, 2013—a free festival featuring hapa musicians and artists, a comedy night, readings by award-winning authors, film screenings of great documentaries, and a two day academic conference at USC.
Public Programs Sponsors:
Media Sponsors:
Videos
Jero (Jerome Charles White Jr.)
2010 interview about cultural identity and becoming an enka singer in Japan.
Virgil Westdale
2013 interview with the early Hapa Nisei about discrimination in the Army Air Corps, and serving in the 442nd R.C.T. and 522nd Field Artillery Battalion during World War II.
Terry Janzen
2012 interview about growing in Japan, memories of Poston, and post-war life.
Mike Shinoda
2006 interview with the Linkin Park musician about identity, connection to Japan, and role as an artist and musician.
Articles
On Being Japanese American
“What does it mean to be Japanese? To be Black? To be both, at the same time…To separate them is nearly impossible…”
When There Was No “Hapa”
“Throughout most of my life I’ve been THE Asian in the room, so to speak.”
Part Asian, Not Hapa
“My mother is Japanese from Osaka; my father, American from a small town in Western Oregon. There’s a word for people like me, used especially on the West Coast and popularized in recent years, maybe most notably by artist Kip Fulbeck: Hapa.”
My Transnational, Hapa Identity in Question
”I like to say that I have a transnational, multicultural, multiethnic identity. I am hapa, haafu, I am both/and, Japanese AND American. But I know that many others still see the world in dichotomies, as either/or, Japanese OR American.”
Analyze My Face: Hapas, exoticism and the entertainment industry
“I heard him utter the recurring phrase of my life, the one that was born in the mouths of the children at Hiroba Koen and echoed to lips of an up and coming film director in New York City on the set of a big budget feature.
‘She doesn’t look Asian enough.’”
Nikkei Albums
The Hapa Collection
“What are you?”
That’s the question posed to visitors to JANM’s exhibition kip fulbeck: part asian / 100% hapa (Los Angeles, June 8 – October 29, 2006). The exhibition included over 80 photographic portraits of people of multiracial heritage, selected from the 1,000 portraits taken by artist Kip Fulbeck over three years. During the run of the exhibition, visitors were asked to take a Polaroid photograph in the gallery and add their images and personal responses to the question of “What are you?” to the exhibition’s interactive display. A selection from the overwhelming participation in Los Angeles is included here.
Revelations & Resilience: Exploring the Realities of Hapa-ness
Photos and video from the event “Revelations & Resilience: Exploring the Realities of Hapa-ness” organized by JANM’s Discover Nikkei project on April 12, 2008.
Nikkei+ ~ Stories of Mixed Language, Traditions, Generations & Race ~
Nikkei Chronicles
This series introduced stories that explore how Nikkei around the world perceive and experience being multiracial, multinational, multilingual, and multigenerational.