

He opined that distance promotes misunderstandings. Ranzo emphasizes that at the core, each story is not just a “black” story, it is a human story. The channel has since branched out into covering black lives across East and Southeast Asia. While J-vlogs typically follow a pattern of first-person explorations into Japanese culture, society, or language, for BEJ, Japan is simply a medium through which to learn more about what it’s like to be black and how living in certain countries can inform that experience. Black people make up just a portion of the channel’s following and the stories we share are reaching people from all backgrounds,” he told us. The channel has gained 200,000 subscribers, and the most popular interview has received more than 2.5 million views. Despite stepping into an already saturated J-vlogging scene, the explosive popularity of the channel suggests that Ranzo identified an important gap in the market. He continues, “the work is close to my heart as I want to inspire the next generation of black youth around the world through showcasing a variety of role models.” The videos take the structure of informal interviews BEJ has featured over 200 people who identify as black across Japan and other parts of Asia. Our stories are often marginalized or don’t get told,” said Laranzo (Ranzo) Dacres, a Jamaican expat in Tokyo who launched the Black Experience Japan YouTube channel in 2017. “I wanted to explore and shed light on what it’s like to be black in Japan, change the global narrative of blackness and disabuse any negative misconceptions.

Our imagination of the black experience, then, has largely been limited and confined. The ubiquity of such dispiriting accounts, and conversely, a lack of positive images of being black and abroad, have long served as a deterrent for black people seeking to travel overseas, especially to what are considered as unfamiliar or distant lands. This narrative is global, not only applying to countries with large African diaspora populations. While playing a significant role in raising awareness of the struggles of being black, media articles and viral videos detailing accounts of police brutality and everyday racism also feed into a dominant narrative that says the black experience is solely one of oppression.
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More than ever, people of all backgrounds want to know how to show their support and understand what it’s like to exist as a black person in the world. Surprisingly, the protests have even made their way to Japan, with demonstrations being held in big cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto.
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Across the world people are defying governmental calls to stay at home to avoid further waves of COVID-19, and are instead mobilizing online and offline to fight what is seen as a more pressing and deadlier virus-racism. Crowds of protesters are gathering in major global cities to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in police custody.
