Karolina Shiino (b. 1998) is a Japanese model, until recently signed to Free Wave Talent in Tokyo.

If, at first glance, she doesn't look like a Japanese model, that's because it's a point of contention. Born in Ukraine to Ukrainian parents, she moved to Japan at age 5 when her mother remarried to a Japanese man. She speaks fluent Japanese, is a Japanese citizen, and has grown up in Japanese culture. But when she started entering beauty pageants, controversy followed, as some ethnic Japanese insisted she shouldn't be allowed to compete for Japanese pageant titles.

In January 2024, she won the title of Miss Japan (a.k.a. Miss Nippon). Was her victory a triumph over racist Japanese resistance to immigration? Another sign of Western beauty standards' unfair hegemony in non-Western countries? A political sop to war-torn Ukraine? It all depends on how you look at it.

Either way, her time as Miss Japan was brief; on February 5, 2024, she resigned her title (and from Free Wave Talent) after a Japanese tabloid reported that she had had an affair with a married man. (One wonders if such reporting would've been published had she been a "normal" Japanese woman, but who knows.)

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