Japan should be proud of Rui Hachimura. The 23-year-old Toyama Prefecture native, who is of Beninese Japanese descent, is only the second Japanese-born basketball player to be drafted by the NBA (the first being Yasutaka Okayama in 1981), where he’s now a power forward for the Washington Wizards.
His younger brother, Aren “Allen” Hachimura, plays basketball, too. But earlier this month the Tokai University athlete was in the news for a different reason: an Instagram message that told him he and his brother were “born by mistake” and “should die.”
“Some people say that racial discrimination does not exist in Japan,” Aren said via Twitter. “But I would like the public to take an interest in the matter.”
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