Pageant winner ran in memory of friend

Ariana Miyamoto hadn't planned to enter a Japanese beauty contest because she figured her multiracial origins meant she couldn't win. Then a close multiracial friend committed suicide.

So Miyamoto, the daughter of a Japanese woman and an African-American man, whose bronze skin and height of 1.73 m are unusual in Japan, where she was born and brought up, took part in the pageant and won, becoming Miss Japan.

"I thought that, for my friend's sake, if there was something I could do to change Japan, I should," Miyamoto, 20, a dual Japanese and US national, said.