The reigning orthodoxy of race in enlightened circles has triumphed in just about the last place would expect.  Japan, which takes pride in its racial homogeneity, has selected a young woman with a Japanese mother and an African-American father as Miss Japan-Universe, to be entered in the Donald Trump-owned Miss Universe contest.  

The young lady goes by the name of Ariana Miyamoto, which I presume to be her mother’s, not her father’s name.  And she is certainly lovely.

I think this is a very good thing, for Japanese attitudes toward mixed-race offspring were not always so benign.  When I first visited Japan in 1967, I had dinner with a group of mixed-race offspring of Japanese mothers and American servicemen, and they were a faced with serious economic and social discrimination.  Racial purity is a rather dangerous doctrine, as the history of the German Third Reich and Japanese Imperium prove.

It will be very interesting to see how Ms. Miyamoto fares in the Miss Universe contest.  Not interesting enough for me to actually watch the program, mind you, but I will check the news feeds the morning after.