A little over a year ago after I first set this site up, I wrote a post about a comment made on a television program (about Harry Potter of all things) on which one of the show’s guests used the word gaijin, a rather controversial Japanese word for “foreigner”. Not feeling like opening up that particular can of worms at the time, I wrote the following:
Although I won’t go into depth about my thoughts on the word gaijin at this time, I’ll just say that it’s a discriminatory term and there’s really no need for it to be used when their are several other inoffensive alternatives. While some may argue that gaijin is simply an abbreviation of gaikokujin (foreign national), the true meaning is quite simply “outsider” and carries derogatory connotations. Despite this, many Japanese people continue to use the word freely despite knowing that many non-Japanese people find it offensive.
I received an email recently from a Japanese person asking me to elaborate on my opinion of the word. After procrastinating for a while, I finally stayed up late one night and tried to write out my thoughts on the matter. Well, today I figured I’d go ahead and put that email out there for public consumption, essentially just for the heck of it, since I can’t imagine that anyone would especially care to hear about what some suburbanite punk on a lark has to say about a particular word in a language that he can barely speak.
Anyhow, the email (slightly edited) is below. I apologize in advance for the length; regular readers should know by now how long-winded I can be at times.
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My basic view about the terms gaijin and even gaikokujin is that they are both highly overused. Not only are they used in instances when people’s names and nationalities are already known, but also when nationality has no relevance to the situation at hand. For example, I have heard Japanese people talk about their “gaijin friend” or “gaijin neighbor,” when there are other much more appropriate (not to mention more specific) descriptors that can be used, such as “my friend, Paul,” “my neighbor from Canada,” etc. Also, I have had experiences in shops when I am referred to as “gaijin-san” by the staff, rather than “okyaku-sama,” as all of the other [Japanese] customers are called. The word “gaijin” singles people out for not being part of the “group” (i.e., Japanese), and in most instances, there’s no need to do so. A friend is a friend and a customer is a customer, regardless of their nationality or appearance.
Another issue I have with the word gaijin is that it is used to indiscriminately clump together groups of people who otherwise have no relation whatsoever, other than the fact that they happen not to have been born in Japan to Japanese parents. As a result, people with different ethnic backgrounds who don’t share a common culture or even speak the same language are often considered one in the same by some Japanese people.
Even worse, many Japanese people often tend to assume that everyone they consider to be “gaijin” all share the same characteristics, behavioral tendencies, likes and dislikes, etc. For example, I would imagine that every foreigner in Japan has at time or another heard statements such as, “Gaijin eat bread, not rice,” and “Gaijin are very loud,” as well as been on the receiving end of questions such as, “Can gaijin eat sushi?” and “What do gaijin think of Japan?” Similar statements and questions are often said/asked about “gaikoku” (foreign countries), as if all countries outside of Japan are identical [I like to refer to it as the The Magical Kingdom of Gaikoku]: “Gaikoku is very dangerous,” “Gaikoku don’t have four seasons like Japan does,” “Do you have cars in gaikoku?,” etc. (Yes, all of those are actual statements/questions that I have heard spoken by supposedly educated Japanese people here in Japan).
In my opinion, what makes words like “foreign” problematic is that they emphasize non-membership. For example, if I mention that a friend of mine is Brazilian, it expresses that she belongs to the Brazilian group; however, if I only say that she is “foreign,” it expresses that she doesn’t belong to any group, which may give the impression that she is somehow less significant than a member of a group.
Many people argue that gaijin is merely an abbreviation of gaikokujin, the official word for foreign national. However, if one examines the history of the term, one would learn that long before the arrival of visitors from other countries to Japanese shores, gaijin was used to refer to other Japanese people from different regions or villages. In this regard, the meaning of the word is a literal reading of the kanji characters — “outside person” — and has inherent exclusionary and somewhat disrespectful connotations.
Also, as I mentioned previously, it is not a necessary word — there are countless other more specific and more appropriate words that can be used in its place according to the context, such as, “John,” “the British guy,” “the guy in the gray sweater,” “the friend I made when I studied abroad in university,” etc. Although there are a few words to express the concept of gaijin/gaikokujin in English — foreigner, alien, etc. — in my experience, they are rarely used outside of situations relating to official immigration matters. In fact, outside of such circumstances, I hardly ever used these words before coming to Japan.
I think that the most compelling argument against the use of the word gaijin is that regardless of whether some Japanese or non-Japanese people disagree, many people do in fact consider the word to be offensive. Because of this alone, it seems only proper to try to avoid using it.
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Well, that’s my imbecilic rant on the word gaijin. As you can see, it was neither well thought-out nor particularly coherent.
Just for the sake of clarification: I’m not some sort of neo-colonialist rabid anti-Japanese crackpot. I love living here and hold in high regard all of the people that I’ve been fortunate to get to know here. As a non-Japanese person living in Japan, gaijin is a word that I hear with relative frequency, and thus the issue surrounding the use of the word is something to which I have given a considerable amount of thought (well, I meant to, anyhow).
By the way, I doubt I’ll be sinking to such depths again to actually write another pseudo-serious post any time in the near future. I’ll try to put up some new high-quality low-brow content in the coming days. In the meantime, here are a few hardly relevant links:
* Gaijin glasses
* Gaijin newscaster disguise
* Some might argue that we bring it upon ourselves
The main feature of this week’s issue is a series of profiles of several young non-Japanese women who participate gothic lolita scene in Tokyo. The women’s bland responses to the markedly unprobing interview questions, which touched on topics such as their preferred reading material (Harry Potter is a favorite), the cost of their 
