Miss Japan 2016 Priyanka Yoshikawa is a 'beauty with a purpose'

Miss Japan 2016 Priyanka Yoshikawa finds Miss World 2016 slogan, "beauty with a purpose," fitting. It fits her as well, as she wants to embark on charitable works, and build a home for children in Kolkata, her father's hometown which is in India's eastern state.

Yoshikawa was nine years old when she saw a six-year-old girl running after their cab, begging. That made her feel wrong. The young beauty who is born to a Bengali father and a Japanese mother wants to help children and laments about some unfortunate stuff in India compared to Japan.

Yoshikawa had her share of racial slur, like being called hafu or "half" or having one non-Japanese parent. However, she sees the positive side of things, and is more than grateful for the overwhelming support she gets worldwide.

The 22-year-old beauty was born in Tokyo, and lived in India for a year when she was nine. Though her mother tongue is Japanese, she also speaks Bengali and English, Hindustan Times reported.

Miss Japan 2016 loves everything India, as much as she loves Japan. She is a fan of Bollywood, especially Varun Dhawan, Priyanka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.

Yoshikawa would represent Miss World 2016 pageant in November in Washington, DC.  Yoshikawa comes second to her predecessor Ariana Miyamoto, the African-American and Japanese who represented Japan in the Miss Universe contest in 2015. Yoshikawa win is not welcomed by many, as she faces criticism for not exactly looking like a Japanese.

Being biracial, Miss Japan 2016 struggled with her identity before deciding to feel proud of being half Indian. She came to the point of thinking she was not normal. She shared though that people in Japan are starting to accept those with mixed races.

"When I was in fifth grade, I was the only half in my school," she said in an interview on Sept. 7, Wednesday. "If I was weak or acted like one (a mixed-race person), I thought people would attack me more."

Yoshikawa has worked as an English teacher to doctors and a freelance translator. She just likes elephants and got an elephant-training license from Laos, WSJ reported.

Listen to an interview of Yoshikawa below.

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