Miss Universe Japan 2015: Who is Ariana Miyamoto?

Japan crowns Ariana Miyamoto -- a half African-American -- half Japanese lady as the country's representative for the Miss Universe pageant in the recently-concluded Miss Universe Japan 2015 Crowning Ceremony.

Japan has broken tradition and racial discrimination, after 21-year-old Miyamoto was given the title of Miss Universe Japan 2015, according to ABC News.

Ariana was born and raised in Japan but she was always seen as different by all she meets. Even as a child, born from the love between a Japanese woman and an African-American man who was stationed at the American Naval based in Sasebo, she had been discriminated simply because her skin is slightly darker and she looked a little different from others.

"In school I had trash thrown at me and was laughed at, and everyone pretended not to notice. When I was talking to my friends in the classroom, both boys and girls would be told not to talk to me," she recalled, as cited by 10 News.

Some of her classmates even avoided holding her hand during their gym class or field trips because they thought that her skin color was contagious.

Now, she faces the biggest challenge of her life as a biracial individual in Japan, as critics took to Japanese social media.

According to Cosmopolitan, despite having lived in the Asian country all her life, and her ability to speak the Japanese language fluently, Ariana is still viewed as someone who is not Japanese enough to deserve the crown.

But, as a confident young woman that she is, Ariana revealed her stand on racial discrimination in an interview with the New York Times. She expressed her high hopes; that winning the crown for Miss Universe Japan would change the way people saw her and those who are "hafu" or those of mixed race.

In the report, Martin Fackler, reporter of the NYT, noted how the 21-year-old beauty queen had the long legs of a foreign supermodel but has timid personality similar to that of all other Japanese women her age.

The concern about mixing race, according to the New York Times, has been present in Japan since time immemorial, because of the country's proudly homogeneous nature, and it is something Ariana wishes to change given her new position.

Some of the very few hafu in the country lauded her cause.

"Ariana gives us another opportunity to challenge the old assumption that you have to look Japanese to be Japanese," half Japanese, half Irish-American filmmaker Megumi Nishikura told New York Times.