Japanese girls and white guys: My Darling is a Foreigner

All right, I might be a J-Girl but I happen to like international guys. I’ve dated my fair share of boys white and black, and so of course I read the manga My Darling is a Foreigner (ダーリン は 外国人).

More than your usual manga this is like a column — there’s no story, just anecdotes about how the strange-ness of Tony, the partner of the author. It first came out in 2002 and since then has spawned a fair few sequels, TV ad tie-ins and so on.

The real couple, Tony Lazlo and Saori Ogura, now have a baby too — so this is one kokusai kekkon (“international marriage”) that turned out happily.

After the series sold two million copies it was inevitable that a movie would be made. The film actually just came out here, starring Jonthan Sherr, who’s not famous at all, and Mao Inoue, a rather cute actress. Well, I guess mismatch is part of the theme.

This got me thinking about famous Japanese women who have married foreign — especially white — men.

There’s the actress Shinobu Terajima, of course, and her French designer hubbie. Terajima is well known for being one of the few mainstream Japanese actresses willing to shed her clothes in the name of the art. You can see her nude in her breakthrough role, Vibrator, and the raunchy Ai no Rukeichi (all right, it’s no Basic Instinct).

Why do some of us J-Girls love foreign men?

There’s the urban myth about how during the Occupation we wanted to screw US servicemen as a way of saying sorry for the War. I don’t buy that.

Is it the size of foreigners’, well, c**ks? Hmm, they do compare favorably with local male appendages, that’s for sure. Plus, what with the soshoku-danshi (草食男子) generation here, men are more interested in shopping than in screwing!

I would argue that, unlike My Darling is a Foreigner, these kinds of relationships are not mismatches — but a good balance, especially physically!

What choice does a gal have but to get herself a foreigner?!