I Dated a “Gaijin Hunter”
Being exoticized as a white woman in Japan
I traveled to Japan for the first time in the fall of 2013 for a study abroad. That first trip was the culmination of many years of childhood daydreams and several of my young adult years saving money and studying Japanese.
As the time of my first experience living overseas neared, I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was excited by the prospect of dating a Japanese guy. Probably due to the amount of Japanese dramas I watched — purely for language study purposes — I romanticized the exciting lifestyle of being a student abroad, meeting a kind and reserved new classmate and falling in love. I quickly dismissed this as a silly fantasy, my primary defense the idea that no one would be interested in someone like me among a sea of slim, feminine Japanese women.
Although I was fairly confident in my ability to navigate the language and cultural nuances I would face, I wasn’t very confident in my appearance during this time. I set off for Japan when I was at my heaviest weight ever of 155 pounds, which on my 5'4" frame meant I was a bit overweight. My relationship with my body image has been its own saga, but the bottom line was that I wasn’t as content with myself physically as I wanted to be when I first went overseas. This self-esteem deficit was bad news for me, traveling to a country where a woman’s appearance is a strong form of social currency.
Upon arriving in Japan I found that I was not alone in my secret romantic sentiment. I quickly realized that the language study circles offered at our university doubled as match-making groups, and I was shocked by the number of girls who smuggled Plan B in their luggage in case of an unexpected (but secretly hoped for) tryst. More than a handful of my classmates quickly paired off with Japanese students at our school, and I even found my reserved self thrust into an environment where I was more desirable than I had ever felt in my young adult life.
On a normal school day, I could expect to be stopped and asked for my photo on the way to the station, stared at by men on the train, or told by my male classmates that “they’ve always wanted to date a white girl”. Although in the back of my mind I knew this tokenization was problematic, the egotistical part of me enjoyed being considered desirable, if a desirable commodity.
During my subsequent travels, I eventually fell into a little fling of my own with a Japanese man. We unsurprisingly met on a language exchange site, and even in my early conversations with him, I got the inkling that he was what is known as a 外人ハンター(gaijin hunter), or a Japanese person who specifically seeks out gaijin (foreigners) for friendship or romance. But I, finally being swept up in that silly dream of mine, chose to ignore the potential negative repercussions of this. He showered me with compliments on my shiny hair, pale skin, and green eyes, and I basked gladly in it, for a time.
It didn’t take very long to unveil the one-dimensionality of his interest in me, and grow tired of it. He always complimented me on my appearance, and excitedly talked about when he would be able to “show me off” to his friends and family. However, he also would often longingly state how he wished I would bleach my hair again, because he loved blondes. Early on in our relationship, I had mistakenly shown him a photo of me when I had platinum blonde hair, which I got rid of shortly before my study abroad. When it came down to emotional connection, we had a lackluster one. He wasn’t interested in learning about my life in the U.S. (he told me as much), chastised me for crying in front of him, and eventually, began complaining how he couldn’t afford the hour-long trip from his hometown to come visit me.
Things came to a head a few weeks later. One day without warning, he texted me to tell me that he was in my town to see a baseball game with his high school friends. I asked if we could meet up later, and he declined, his excuse being that he hadn’t seen these friends in a while and wanted some quality time with them (instead of showing me off like he had always claimed he wanted to do). Although he had begun complaining about the hour-long distance between us, he had paid the train fare to come to my town, only to leave without seeing me. I cried myself sick that night, certain that this was a sign that things were over between us. And they were.
The next day while scrolling Facebook with puffy eyes, I saw that he had been tagged in a photo at the baseball stadium. But he hadn’t been with his high school friends. He had been there with my replacement.
At that point, I couldn’t even cry about it anymore. After weeks of nearly begging for him to find something respectable about me other than my appearance, he had decided I was too much effort to keep around. And while he was trolling around for another gaijin girlfriend, he managed to find one with blonde hair. I couldn’t cry about it anymore because I was more offended than heartbroken. In my desire to feel adored and beautiful, I had stooped so low, and sacrificed my happiness and burgeoning sense of self-worth in the process. I had grown a bit emotionally since I had first arrived in Japan, and I embraced my hurt pride at being cast aside as a positive reaction. I finally realized that I didn’t deserve to be treated poorly, and I was happy to never speak to him again. From what little I know, he quickly married this new girl and moved to the U.S. shortly afterwards. I hope he loves her and treats her with the genuine respect he never gave me.
I returned to the U.S., and returned to a life where people didn’t turn to look at me walking down the street. Instead of being gawked at, I once again blended into the crowds, which honestly took some getting used to. Over the next few months of processing my experience living overseas and riding out my reverse culture shock, I realized that living in Japan as a white woman was an experience that taught me to not take my many privileges for granted.
My status as a white woman living in the U.S. affords me the luxury of being judged primarily on traits other than my appearance. The experience of being objectified ended up being an exhausting one, and I’m glad I only had to live through it for a short time. Many people of color living in the U.S. don’t have that luxury. Although I would never equate my experience with those of people who live this reality on a daily basis, I’m glad that I am now more sympathetic of the psychological toll that exoticization can take.
I am also lucky to have formed great friendships during my time in Japan, based on a mutual curiosity and respect for each other’s culture. As with any experience, my time in Japan was a mixed bag, but the positives far outweighed the occasional bad times. I’ve reaped many of the rewards that come with making international friends over the years. Through that process I’ve not only learned to value myself, but to trust that a real friend is one who will appreciate me inside and out.
