Blonde, blue-eyed half-Japanese kids

During my lifetime, I have met a few half-Japanese, half-Caucasian children who are very blonde and blue-eyed. According to Mendel's laws of inheritance, it's impossible for a person with two genes for brown eyes (e.g. a purebred East Asian) to have a blue-eyed child.

How is it possible, then, for these half-Japanese children to have blue eyes? One of the children I met was so blonde, blue-eyed, and pale that I had a hard time believing she wasn't Northern European.

Does anyone know what's going on here?!

Read this:
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jan2002/1012348094.Ge.r.html

It gives you a full detailed version of how it is very much possible for it to happen. It is an answer by a doctor and a professor.

I'm sure some Japanese people carry the recessive gene for lighter eyes since the depth of brown can vary among Japanese people. My mother is Japanese with sort of dark eyes and my father is American with hazel eyes. Mine turned out to be sortof mesh og brown green and gray... Apparently my mom's genes aren't all dominant! My answer isn't as excessive as the professors... but hopefully a little helpful... Jya-ne!

I wish that doctor/ geneticist had used paragraphs in his explanation...

I am a halfie, I have green/hazel eyes. My brother has brown/green/blue eyes and my sister has all brown eyes.

In high school there was a halfie girl who looked totally Japanese except for the bright red hair and freckles she got from her father. Very cute btw, she was a cheerleader IIRC.

Does "hazel" mean "greenish brown"? If so, we haven't had any Caucasian people in our ancestry as far as we know, but my grandfather and my son has hazel eyes and extremely light brown hair. Hazel eyes can be quite seen among the Japanese.

I found this
"light reddish-brown; yellowish-brown. hazel eyes are usually flecked with green or gray."

My eyes would be green then, girls have always commented on them :)

Thanks Stan. Then probably a large percentage of Japanese people have hazel eyes, since a lot of them are light reddish-brown or yellowish-brown like mine, although fewer are flecked with green or gray like my grandfather and my son.

My japanese friend told me, than in northern japan (Aomori and Akita) a long time ago they were some caucasians (russians) that mixed up with local. Some very rare people have therefore blue eyes there. It may also explain some blue eyes gens remain hidden in some japanese pepole genetic, as blue eye gene is recesive vs brown. But if mixed with blue eyed people, children may have blue eyes.

The linked document merely explains the complexity we observe in the genetic interplay of individuals with 'other than brown or blue' alleles.

The doctor concludes the article with the concession that the model he outlines in place of the layman's Mendelian model (which remains very useful, in my opinion) still does not explain two blue eyed people producing a brown-eyed offspring.

The question I'd like to see answered is 'where is this mythical brown-eyed offspring of two blue-eyed parents, and how well does the father trust the mother?' lol

Nature is full of surprises, so I'm not going to say it isn't possible, but I'll believe it when I see it.

PS Evidence suggests the Japanese, like the Mongols, to have some European genes. Politically suppressed evidence indicates that prehistoric Europeans wandered the globe and left their culture/technology behind.

Neil, the original question asked was how can someone with brown eyes and someone with blue eyes have offspring that has brown eyes, because normally the blue eye gene is dominate.

The question orginally posed was NOT i repeat was NOT how does two people with blue eyes produce offspring with brown eyes.

Eye and hair color depend from that of grandparents.

My cusines child has blond hair, even both parents have black. Grandfather was blond, so there was no surprise.

If Japanese person marries Caucasian person (Georgian, Armenian etc.) and have half-J and falf-C child, then blue eyes and blond hair obviously are impossible.

My husband and I are both half. Our mothers were Japanese and fathers were caucasian. My husband has hazel (orange) eyes which turn a lovely green when he is excited. He also has strawberry BLONDE hair which used to be a bright orange red. Sorry, blonde is not impossible although he used to tease his mom that there was a Portugese in the woodpile. I have brown hair with red and BLONDE highlights. Again, not impossible to have blonde hair. We have two children who are also HALF Japanese and HALF caucasian. Because my husband and I are both half, our children are also half. With that being said, one daughter has BLUE eyes and I am talking water blue with no other color mixture and light brown hair with red and blonde highlights. She is very fair skinned. My other daughter has auburn hair with medium brown eyes, black eyelashes, freckles and a tan. So, in conclusion blue is definitely possible (I was born with blue eyes and they turned brown which the doctor told me would turn blue again when I am old) and although blonde is not proven, red definitely is.

I misread the above post. Yes, blonde must be from one of the ancestors.

Thatfs so interesting that a supposedly full-blooded Japanese can have light brown hair and hazel/green eyes. Is this something that happens only in Japan out of all the East Asian countries, or has it been known to happen in China or the Koreas as well?

It seems to me that many people are not pure bred. It may be that all their relatives, as far back as they can trace, appear to be of the same race, but it only takes one blue eyed ancestor. If you go back five generations you have 65536 ancestors to choose from!

I have hazel eyes, my husband has brown, our 3 sons have hazel, brown and blue.

But..as I understand it 2 blue eyed parents will not have a brown eyed child.

"If you go back five generations you have 65536 ancestors to choose from!"

Five generations: 32 great-great-great-grandparents.

Apples, is your husband Japanese?

An interesting idea is that our number of ancestors is lower than in theory, because of the fact that the same people might show up multiple times in our family trees. If we go back 50 generations, we apparently have 1,099,511,627,776 ancestors... but 1) there weren't that many people on Earth back then, and 2) it seems unlikely that there WOULDNfT be any repeats!

So in the end, we're all inbred ;)

I meant 40 generations, not 50!

There are also albino or semi-albino Japanese people. I have seen a few with almost white hair and light blue eyes, and very pink skin, and others who are not totally albino but despite their parents and siblings having normal Japanese colouring, for some reason have less melanin and end up with naturally medium brown hair and
light brown or hazel eyes, with quite fair skin.