Belonging in the In-Between: My Life as a Half-Japanese, Half-American Actor

The lights were hot, the camera already rolling, and I was standing there mid-scene, playing a character torn between her roots and her reality as Crash in"Ultimate Bias-Jpop vs Kpop" a Silvanomari film. The irony didn’t escape me...I wasn’t really “playing” anything. That conflict? It was already mine.

Crash & Jin Ultimate Bias- Jpop vs Kpop, Silvanomari Film, Still from Marshaell Chen

You’d think being half-Japanese and half-American would give you double the insight, double the culture, double the everything. And in many ways, it does. But what people rarely talk about is how it can also leave you floating ... like you’re always visiting one world while holding a passport from the other.

I grew up in Japan, where I learned to read the air before I learned to speak up. Subtlety was sacred. The way you say something often mattered more than what you actually said. I lived in layered silences, learned to bow before I spoke, and found comfort in things unsaid. And apparently become a mind reader if not a room reader. Then, in 2015, I moved to the U.S. - a place where silence sometimes felt suspicious and people seemed to talk with their whole chest all the time. It was loud, bold, expressive, and deeply individualistic. And also… a bit jarring.

Suddenly, I was caught in a weird cultural ping-pong match. In Japan, I was the girl with an American father, speaking Japanese a little too bluntly, laughing a little too loud. In the U.S., I was the Japanese girl- reserved, soft-spoken, “exotic” (a word that never quite lands right, does it?). I wasn’t quite enough of either to blend in.

So I learned to shapeshift. A chameleon.

You know, the way you read a room and quietly adjust? In Japan, I’d tuck my American opinions into my back pocket. In the States, I’d let my Japanese pauses pass for “thoughtful.” But over time, that kind of constant translation, of self, of culture... gets exhausting.

That’s where acting came in.

Puck- A Midsummer Nights Dream, Berea College Theatre Laboratory

Acting gave me a space where all the contradictions inside me weren’t things to smooth over, they were assets. I could bring my whole self to a character, and no one asked me to explain it. I didn’t have to pick a side. I just had to tell the truth in the moment. For once, I wasn’t “too much” or “not enough.” I was simply what the scene needed.

I've stepped into so many shoes of people and characters, where honestly it was sometimes easier to not be me. Tell me who you need, and I'll become exactly that. (- but that's another story for another time)

But don’t get me wrong - the industry doesn’t always know what to do with someone like me. I’ve been told I don’t “look Japanese enough” to play Asian roles and simultaneously “look too Asian” to be cast as American. (Racially ambiguous apparently is a good thing? yet has to meet certain criteria?!) Imagine that. Somehow, I exist in this blurry middle space the casting world hasn’t quite made room for. There’s this unspoken expectation that you should fit into a clean cultural type - the martial artist, the nerdy tech girl, the geisha, the ingenue. But where’s the role for the woman who grew up on Studio Ghibli and Disney? FullMetal Alchemist and Spiderman? Sailormoon and The Princess Diaries?

And then there’s the accent thing...

I can’t tell you how many auditions start with, “Can you do an Japanese accent?” Which one? Yonezawa-ben? Shizuoka? Are we going for anime, or are we just leaning into the stereotype? Half the time, I feel like they’re asking me to cosplay my own identity. And trust me, that’s a special kind of weird. I alway say English is my second language and then people be shocked when I can't spell and gamary is not my strong suit. At the same time, my Japanese is slipping away faster than I'd like to admit. Cause living in the U.S. doesn't always allow me to speak Japanese on a daily basis.

But here’s the thing: the more I show up, the more I see that I’m not alone. Slowly, stories are starting to shift. More scripts are reflecting people like me - complex, multilingual, culturally layered characters who aren’t reduced to clichés. And I’ve started to hear from others, especially younger folks (and older Senpai -those who have gone before us -in life) who are navigating that same duality I did. They say things like, “I saw you and thought, ‘That’s me.’” Or, “I didn’t know we were allowed to take up space like that.”

I get it, I've felt the same way when first saw "God Said This"by Leah Nanako Winkler at Actors Theatre in Louisville KY in 2018. And now I hope that Crash who I played from "UB-Jpop vs Kpop" will be that for others when it's released.

That’s why representation matters - not in the buzzword-y, panel-discussion way, but in the deeply personal, quietly life-altering way. It’s not about being “seen” as a performance. It’s about recognizing yourself in someone else and realizing, maybe for the first time, that your existence isn’t a glitch in the system.

To every other mixed kid, or adult, who’s felt like they’re constantly explaining themselves -you don’t have to. Not here. Not with me. I get it. I’ve been the only one at the table who knows what omotenashi means but also cries during Pixar movies. I’ve lived in the land of “Where are you from?” and the dreaded follow-up: “No, but where are you really from?”

Let me tell you something I’ve come to believe - not just in theory, but in my bones: we are not half. We are double. Double the humor. Double the worldview. Double the emotional vocabulary. Double the cultural fluency. We’re the bridge between two languages, two histories, two sets of holidays. That’s not a flaw. That’s power.

Crash, Jin, Misa and Soo-yun Ultimate Bias- Jpop vs Kpop, Silvanomari Film, Still from Marshaell Chen

And yes, it comes with confusion, with loss, with the feeling that no one really gets the full picture of you. But it also comes with a deep well of empathy and the ability to move through the world with curiosity, because you’ve always had to.

Guess who can relate to that?

Wanting to belong is

not a Japanese trait,

not an American trait,

but a Human trait.

These days, I don’t try to tone down one side to make the other more comfortable. I bring both. To set. To scripts. To interviews. Even to my bio on casting sites. Because if I don’t, who will?

If you're reading this and you’re in that same in-between space, wondering if you belong -this is your sign that you do. You don’t have to choose. You don’t have to shrink. Just tell your story. Speak your truth. And if the world doesn’t have a role for you yet, maybe you’re here to write it.

And I promise, I’ll be cheering you on from both sides of the stage.

Love Joy 真喜