'Japanese people go first': Boy with Filipino roots speaks out after discrimination at school
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260625/p2a/00m/0na/020000c
YOKOHAMA -- In the summer of 2025, sixth grader Miko was standing in line in his classroom for school lunch when a classmate who knew his background cut in ahead of him and said, "Japanese people go first." He was left speechless with rage, and he thought of his mother, who is from the Philippines and raised him through hard times.
Miko, 13, who graduated from elementary school this past spring, speaks with a maturity that rivals adults. He is also talented at drawing. He struggled for a long time to read and write Japanese. He was first able to write his own name when he was in the second grade.
Born in Japan, Miko lives with his mother Rin, 54. His Japanese father died of illness when Miko was 1. Around the time he entered elementary school, he and his mother became connected with Minami Ward, Yokohama-based Shin-ai-Juku, an organization providing learning support for children with foreign roots and assistance to families.
Because he was slow to begin speaking at the kindergarten he attended, the possibility of developmental delay was pointed out. Rin thought, "Maybe he's just slower than others, not disabled," and decided to send him to a regular class for first grade.
"All I could do was trace the letters the teacher wrote," Miko recalled. Rin worried, "I don't understand school. He might also be bullied," and consulted Mariko Takekawa at Shin-ai-Juku. From his second year, she decided to have him join a class with support for individual students.
Miko said written characters "looked like pictures." The phonetic katakana syllabary was especially difficult; looking at the character "mi," with its column of slanted lines, he wondered, "What is this?"
Even so, at home, he would get in the bath while looking at a chart of the Japanese syllabary that Rin had bought and read aloud before going to bed.
Then one day in second grade, he suddenly thought, "I feel like I can write now." Taking a pencil in hand, he wrote his own name for the first time in small letters. Rin cried with joy. He kept practicing after that, and little by little he became able to write Chinese kanji characters as well while looking at models.
Miko says, "My goal is to put my mother at ease." He had seen her struggle not only with child rearing but also with financial and health problems.
Rin came to Japan at 18. She worked as a dancer seeking better income than in her home country, but now poor health has left her unable to work. She receives food aid, such as rice, from Shin-ai-Juku.
"Even if I am gone, I want him to be able to live on his own," she says, worrying about and supporting her son.
After the incident in the lunch line, Miko began thinking about discrimination.
In March this year, before graduating from elementary school, he was at home and drew people with different skin colors. He also wrote the words, "For a world without discrimination" himself. "Japan is home to people from many countries. There are good people and bad people. I didn't want people to think everyone from the Philippines is bad," he explained.
In his class at school, when he had a chance to speak, he appealed for "an elementary school without discrimination."
Takekawa said that when she heard about the incident, she thought of the national electoral gains made by Sanseito, a political party campaigning under the slogan "Japanese First." She was surprised, saying, "Maybe words like that are starting to affect children too."
In April, Miko advanced to a local public junior high school and began attending a class with individual support there. After school, he takes part in the art club and stops by Shin-ai-Juku.
Watching him lead a busy but fulfilling life, Takekawa smiled. "He has grown up so freely, into a really wonderful child," she said quietly, looking back on seven years of supporting the mother and son.
(This is part 2 of a 4-part series)
(Japanese original by Chika Yokomi, Tokyo Business News Department)
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