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TOKYO – When the Ohno family watched Naomi Osaka beat Serena Williams at the United States Open early Sunday morning from Tokyo, there was no question in their minds that Ms. Osaka was a true Japanese champion.
"Her face looks Japanese," said Ryutaro Ohno, 14, shortly after playing a few tennis matches with her younger brother and parents at Tokyo Tower.
His mother, Naoko, 49, showed a snapshot on her cellphone of her sons posing with Ms. Osaka, the daughter of a Haitian-American father and Japanese mother, when the tennis star played in the Pan Pacific Open in the Japanese capital last year .
"Her soul is Japanese," said Ms. Ohno. She does not show her joy so excessively. Her playing style is aggressive, but she is always humble in interviews. I like that. "
In becoming the first Japanese-born tennis player to win a Grand Slam championship, Ms. Osaka, 20, is helping to challenge Japan's longstanding sense of racial purity and cultural identity.
Her emergence comes at a time when Japan is also grappling with a declining population, growing in size, and growing up in Japan.
Yet a new generation starts to embrace a different sense of what it means to be Japanese, a conservative strain in the country clings to a pure-blood definition of ethnicity. Still, the Japanese media warmly welcome Ms. Osaka's victory as the country's own.
"The first Japanese achievement," read a headline on a special edition of the Sankei Shimbun on Sunday, over a large picture of Ms. Osaka, who moved to the United States when she was 3, kissing the trophy.
On Twitter, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe congratulated Ms. Osaka. "Thank you for giving energy and inspiration to all of Japan in this troubled time," he wrote, referring to two natural disasters of the past week: A typhoon that ripped through Western Japan and an earthquake that rocked the northern island of Hokkaido.
Many fans woke to dawn to watch Ms. Osaka in the final. At the headquarters of Nissin, an instant-noodle company that is one of Ms. Osaka's corporate sponsors, 150 employees gathered to watch. Nissin's chief executive, Koki Ando, told the Nikkei newspaper that it was "Hanpa nai ne," "Japanese slang for" awesome "or" extraordinary. "
Kei Nishikori, Japan's biggest male tennis star, used emojis to congratulate Ms. Osaka on Twitter, interspersing a series of thumbs up, trophies, flexed arms and fist bumps with several Japanese flags. Mr. Nishikori reached the semifinals of the tournament, but lost to Novak Djokovic.
The celebration of Ms. Osaka struck some as Japan hypocritical. Many biracial people – known as "hafu" in Japanese, a word that comes from the English word "half" – say that they are not really accepted.
"Naomi Osaka is a Japanese or the pride of Japan," a user with the handle @phie_hardison wrote on Twitter. "You can not kiss hafu 'as Japanese only in such times. They are usually discriminated against, are they? The post had been more than 3,600 times as of 10 p.m. on Sunday in Japan.
Three years ago, when Ariana Miyamoto, half-black, half-Japanese woman was crowned Miss Universe Japan, the judges received some criticism from people who said she did not look welcome Japanese.
"This country prides itself on being homogeneous," Mr. McNeil said. He said that he has a woman in the world of Japanese culture in the world. "In an awkward position of sending a message to the world they are in a place that everyone knows they are not."
Purpose Japan, however slowly, may be changing. The year after Ms. Miyamoto won the beauty contest, another mixed-race woman, Priyanka Yoshikawa, took the crown.
Megumi Nishikura, co-director of the documentary "Hafu: The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan," said, "Anybody who is able to represent Japan in a public way who is 'hafu' will open Japanese minds and hearts to be more accepted . "
"We live in a world where we can not be more," added Ms. Nishikura, who was raised in Japan by a Japanese father and Irish-American mother and now lives in New York. "I think Naomi Osaka really presents a very interesting challenge for people who are still attached to these antiquated ideas that you can only be one."
In Tokyo on Sunday, there have been some signs of antiquated ideas might be shifting. "I think the definition of what is Japanese is becoming vague," said Masako Mikami, 52, who works at a gaming software company in the city. "I think Japanese society is changing to become more generous. Naomi Osaka is one of the next generation of Japanese people. "
Shinji Ichinose, 36, who watched the final, said that he had thought it would be impossible for a Japanese woman to win a Grand Slam title.
Mr. Ichinose, who was getting ready to play tennis at dusk on Sunday, said he had the perception that Americans or Europeans could be more important than a person's appearance. "So I think Japan can change the future," he said.
Ms. Osaka has worked to cultivate Japanese identity on the circuit. In interviews with Japanese outlets, she answers questions in her imperfect Japanese, and she's talking about her love of manga and green tea.
After the victory, Ms. Osaka demonstrated a characteristically Japanese trait when she apologized for her win. "Ms. Osaka said, I'm sorry," the contentious decisions against Ms. Williams by the umpire. As she thanked the fans, she also went to Japan.
In an interview with the Japanese public broadcaster, NHK, Ms. Osaka answered some questions in Japanese and others. In Japanese, she said that she was "a little sad and a little happy" to have defeated Ms. Williams.
Supporters in Japan said they were disappointed that the final had ended in such a storm. "But she really won with her ability," said Kanako Ozawa, 32, a real-estate agent who was hitting balls at a tennis court in central Tokyo on Sunday.
Darryl Wharton-Rigby, an African-American filmmaker from Baltimore, who said to herself that she was a young lady and that she was becoming more and more likely to become racially progressive.
"I actually do not like using the word 'hafu,'" he said. "I prefer biracial or bicultural because when you say it, it sometimes feels like you're only half-Japanese, which means you're not fully Japanese. But I think that it's a thing that can be changed with every single victory, and that it's not a Japanese word, 'No, I'm Japanese, even though I have a parent who is not from Japan.' "
Follow Motoko Rich on Twitter: @MotokoRich.
Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno
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