Deliver Stories Of Youths With Filipino Roots Living In Japan With Music 【Music For People Project】

Youths with Filipino roots living in Japan

In the 1980s, many Filipino females landed in Japan to work as entertainers. From that, many of them had relations with the Japanese men. Furthermore, more Filipino came to Japan for other reasons such as work and study than entertainers. In 2021, it was not rare to see youths with Filipino roots in Japan. However, we don't have many stories of them. Music For People Project made music videos to deliver individual stories of youth, who are 15 to 24 years old according to the United Nations, living in Japan with Filipino roots including Filipino immigrants, mixed-race people, and Japanese whose parents are from the Philippines.

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Why Youths with Filipino roots living in Japan?

There are mainly two reasons, my background and lack of researches on those people.

The first reason is about mine, Daichi Hasegawa, personal background. I am also youth with Filipino roots living in Japan. My mother is Filipino. I have come across several challenges, including identity and family issues made by socio-cultural-economic. However, everything is not something I can talk about to many people. Since I could not open up this, I felt that I was the only one who struggled with these issues. But as I grew, I have met those people, and I realized that I was not the only one. I felt relieved at that moment. However, some people don't recognize that people struggle with the same or similar situations. That's why I want to deliver those stories with music so that more people can experience and meet those stories.

Another reason is a lack of research on stories with authenticity from the perspectives of those people. Academic research on Filipino immigrants in Japan, especially Filipino women, has been developed by people, for example, Sachi Takabata, a scholar from Shizuoka University, or Koshou Nakashima, a Japanese writer. However, they have not covered their children's lives as much as Filipina immigrants. It is a fact that some worked on those people as research. Still, it tends to be just part of "hafu" research, not focusing on people with roots in the Philippines. It might miss socio-cultural influence in their lives or studies on Japanese Filipino Children or JFC, but around 75% of them live in the Philippines, as the JFC network reports.

Furthermore, youth with Filipino nationality, including "hafu" and immigrants living in Japan, are less researched than "hafu" people even though Filipino youth have been increasing according to the Ministry Of Justice. The number of youth rose from 21,865 in 2013 to 29,361 in 2019. However, research on Filipino immigrants is mostly about Filipina immigrants, not youth. That is why I want to focus on the youth with Filipino roots living in Japan to deliver those stories to others. 

Interviews

As Music For People Project, I interviewed several of those youths and made five music works for each 5 of them. In the interviews, I ask questions that I made a list of previously. If necessary, I did follow-up questions in the interview or after the interviews. It took around 2hours for each interview. After I reviewed those interviews, I started to make music to tell those stories by utilizing sounds only from my mouth.

Music Works

1. Run from the lie

This music is based on the story of the childhood of one Filipina living in Japan when she was in the Philipines. This music shows her desire for freedom from overprotection from her parents and sadness from discovering her father's lies to her with hiding he had another family.

2. Myself

This music is based on the story of one Japanese whose mother is from the Philipines. In junior high school, he had faced pressure from other people to be "masculine" since he is male. However, he struggled with adopting his real character to "the ideal man" because some characteristics are feminine for some people. But he realized that he doesn't have to follow masculinity, but he can be just himself.

3. OK

This music is based on the story of one Filipino living in Japan when he was in elementary school. His mother worked as an entertainer, so he was not with his mother. He tried to feel fine, but it was hard for him to see other students with their parents. Moreover, he got bullied, so he lost motivation to go to school. However, to make his mother happy and not worried about him, he said OK to his mother and himself.

4. Path

This music is based on the story of a Japanese female, but her parents are from the Philippines. This music shows her story of She grew up in the Philippines until elementary when her mother went to Japan and married a Japanese man. Her mother brought her to Japan, and they started living together in a new place with another guy as her father a law although she did not know who he was. She got used to living in Japan, but her mother overprotected her, so she did not have as much freedom as she wanted. Even though she had followed what her mother told her, she decided university where she wanted to go by herself, not following her mothers' opinion. She finally found and could what she wanted. However, her mother had affairs with another man, and her parents divorced. Her mother left the family, so her Japanese father was the only one who financially supported her, but he could not since she was siblings and he could not afford to support every child. She decided not to go to university for her siblings, although she passed her exam so that her Japanese father could support them. She made that decision, but she also wanted her voice to be heard.

5. Lone Wolf

This story is based on a Japanese female whose mother is from the Philippines when she moved her junior high school to another. Because of her parents' decision, her family had to move to her junior high school in her 3rd year. However, in the new junior high school, she could not make any friends because students already had their group by which she did not feel welcomed. She was alone most of the time, so she said that she was like a lone wolf.