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Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 9 |
We're told that: Sean in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift is called a gaijin. The main character of the video game Red Steel is called a gaijin. In the movie Tokyo Pop a Drag queen tells the main character Wendy about how he and her are "gaijin". Am I alone in finding this utterly uninteresting? -- Hoary 11:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
22:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I visited the public library yesterday in order to research the use of “gaijin” in the mainstream press (English and Japanese), as well as the number of times the word "gaijin" appeared in Japanese language non-fiction publications. This is what I learned:
Up until about 1997 or so, the word “gaijin” appears quite often in book titles and magazine headlines in a positive way. In fact, in the English-speaking press, according to Lexis-Nexis, the word is constantly used thousands and thousands of times in newspapers across the world to simply mean “non-Japanese person” or “foreign national.” True, there are exceptions to the rule under the English-language coverage (some are critical Op-Eds), but generally speaking, this was the pattern I found in both Japanese and English.
Then, I researched newspaper guidelines for the Japanese press.
According to the tenth edition of Kisha Handobukku: Shinbun youji yougo-shuu (Journalist Handbook: a collection of newspaper characters and terms) published on 15 March, 2005, the guidelines for Kyodo News journalists changed. For the past 8 or nine editions of the handbook, from roughly 1975 until 2005, the word “gaijin” was not considered part of the sabetsu you-go, or “discriminatory terms.” Journalists were apparently free to use the word in their news articles, which would make sense considering the number of times that the word appeared in the Japanese press during this period. Now, they are asked to write gaikoku-jin in its stead, while acknowledging that the term is a contraction.
I cross-checked this Kyodo News handbook for their journalists with a similar source citing Yomiuri Shimbun guidelines. Here, journalists are *not* prohibited from using the word “gaijin” unlike words such as eta, hinin or buraku which were (and definitely are) considered to be unacceptable under all circumstances. However, the Yomiuri still advises its journalists that it’s probably best to write gaikoku-jin instead of gaijin, also noting that special circumstances can certainly be made. (Source: “Kotobagari”-to sabetsu (“Word hunting and discrimination), Tokyo: Shukan bunshun, 1994, pg. 233.) What these "special circumstances" (tokubetsu-na baai) are, the newspaper handbook doesn't say.
I didn’t have a chance to research other newspaper guidelines, but just based on these two so far, in addition to the vast number of Japanese and English publications that used the word in a generally neutral way up until the late 1990s, my impression is that “gaijin” only recently became (legally?) problematic due to some kind of political correctness movement (if that's the appropriate term to use to describe what's happening), that it was simply an acceptable contraction of gaikoku-jin. Given this preliminary evidence, I’m beginning to wonder if the etymology section is not terribly misleading to the general reader by arguing that “gaijin” has always carried a pejorative connotation. -- J Readings 00:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Hola once more Jim, If I read you right your opinion is that you acknowledge a problematic "gray area," with current usage, that "gaijin" is potentially derogatory, but do not regard the word as unconditionally derogatory. I would certainly agree (I think very few words are "unconditionally derogatory," certainly not nigger or fag which are frequently either used self-referentially by blacks and gays respectively, or within sympathetic groups or with poetic license and so on). So yes, while "gaijin" isn't always derogatory, we agree that is has a definite potential to be derogatory and is widely treated as such in educated society and respected media, and this brings the merry-go-round back to the question of why the word isn't tagged as "derogatory" in the article's intro.
In short, my argument is that universality is practically not a condition for this word not to be tagged as "derogatory." For example there are more than 100 listings in the Wiki category for infectious diseases. Even though these diseases do not infect absolutely everyone or even most people who come into contact with them, we regard them as "infectious" (not "potentially infectious diseases"). So, suggest tagging "gaijin" as "derogatory" in the lead and qualifying elsewhere in the article that the word is / can be used without malice or insult. RomaC 07:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
I have an electronic dictionary, and the entries for gaijin and gaikokujin are as follows:
My experiences in Japan don't contradict this usage. Bennie13 03:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it accurate and/or noteworthy to mention that it is comparable to the term gringo. Gaijin must be the Japanese equivalent of the word gringo. 75.162.19.68 21:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really sure what to say, but I can't see any use at all for this section, and I consider myself rather tolerant of such sections. It says absolutely nothing aside from "the word gaijin was used here." Now, like I said in my edit summary, the usage of gaijin in culture is undoubtedly an interesting topic, but a mere listing of wherever gaijin was used would be ridiculously huge and an indiscriminate collection of information. The section, should it be remade, needs things like considerations on usage, notable times it may have been censored or stuck in odd places, the usage for flavor, that kinda stuff. SnowFire 01:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
May I offer a few general frustrations and observations about this gaijin article having closely followed the back-and-forth for the past year?
My first frustration is that nobody seems to agree on what purpose this articles serves: is it supposed to be about the “controversy”? Is it supposed to be about the etymology and history of the word? Is it supposed to be about its modern-day usage, and if so in what language: English or Japanese or Brazilian Portuguese? What is the model for the article, and why are we sure it’s the appropriate model to emulate?
My second frustration is linked to the first: there are virtually no sources, let alone cross-referenced sources, that present a descriptive and neutral presentation of all the alleged (and known) facts in this article—especially the “analysis” of the word itself. That alone should sound the alarm bells for WP editors that there is something seriously wrong here.
My third frustration is the heaviest of all: read the WP archives for this article, like reading these yahoogroup chat fora, and you’ll notice that what sometimes (not always) passes for research is the equivalent of a barroom discussion. “Some of my Japanese friends tell me….” “I have foreign friends who think the word is derogatory…” “I am a Japanese native-speaker, therefore I am telling you that the word is not derogatory…” “I am a naturalized Japanese citizen, therefore I’m telling you the word is derogatory…” Light on facts, heavy on personal opinion and philosophy. Like it or not, all of that is “noise.” It’s private, non-verifiable (almost always erroneous) hearsay and speculation that circulate the internet in the form of assumed “facts” about the nature of the word. Yet, it keeps creeping into the article (viz. the article's current "broadcasting and publishing" section on the main page). What evidence is there to support the assertion that "The word gaijin is classified as racial discrimination (人種差別) and included on a common list of prohibited words used by Japanese broadcasters and publishers"? The source is some guy's personal homepage which is not—I repeat not—a reliable source for a controversial article. The only reason that I did not remove it is because I haven't finished my own research on the media yet. I figured, "Let it go for now; it's not libelous material."
I strongly encourage everyone who wants to edit this article to follow the very informative discussions on Wikipedia:Reliable sources WP:RS, Wikipedia:Attribution WP:ATT, and Wikipedia:No original research WP:NOR. Those discussions and guidelines influenced why I stopped “editing-as-I-go.” With controversial subjects, I wanted to make sure that any generalized statements of fact are fairly well-researched before they entered the main article. This is why I haven’t added my preliminary research on the press guidelines and gaijin because: (1) how representative are these two newspapers (today) of the entire media, (2) when did these guidelines come into being, and (3) why did they come into being? Without answering those three questions, it’s difficult to generalize about the nature of the word in Japanese or English...assuming that is even the purpose of the article. I just don't have enough to time to re-visit the library to do the research.
Finally, let me stress that I’m not attacking anyone’s personal beliefs. I’m neither for nor against the usage of the word. I simply want to write an article that’s consistent with WP guidelines...all of them. It's frustrating. J Readings 09:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
At the risk of going off on a tangent, RomaC raised an interesting issue regarding the use of 外人, or gaijin, in academic works. To test the hypothesis that academics "avoid gaijin" in their published work for either reasons of malice, informality, or perhaps something else, I typed the keyword into Google Scholar. Anyone can access Google Scholar by going to the following URL: (Japanese) < http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?q=%E5%A4%96%E4%BA%BA&hl=ja&lr=lang_ja> and (English) < http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr=>. Assuming it were true that the word 外人 is not used in academic papers because it's always been derogatory, for example, the number of hits should be very low to non-existent for papers not discussing the word itself. However, for Japanese-language papers, roughly 350 hits were registered. Moreover, the word 外人 seems to be used in published papers as recently as 2006 by Tokai University. The title: 大相撲における女人禁制の研究IV : 外人観客の意識調査 (A Survey of Nix Women in the Sumo Ring IV : The Case of Gaijin spectators' opinions). Judging by the tone of the paper, the academic is simply referring to "foreigners" without any malice. If the Google Scholar search is opened up to include other languages with the word 外人, assuming everything is adjusted to the correct "Scholar Preferences," over 35,000 hits will be registered. Most of these hits are for academic papers written in either Mandarin, Taiwanese or Cantonese (I'm assuming — they're clearly not written in Japanese.) I also typed gaijin into the English version: 291 hits. Obviously, the number of hits in each language don't tell us anything about the tone or context of the word use. For that, we would need to read each Japanese, English, or Chinese-language article and try to sort it all out. But just based on these preliminary findings without reading all of the articles we do know for a fact that the word is being used in what were (or are) presumably peer-reviewed academic publications. J Readings 16:34, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
The section on etymology and history was supposed to be removed from the main article on 27 March 2007 if it could not provide corroboration for both its unsourced assertions and single sourced assertions of questionable accuracy. I gave it some more time thinking a few editors were still researching the question. We can always re-include the material provide that dual-sources can be found to corroborate the assertions.
No mention of とひと anywhere (I checked for it). My volume is a copy of the 628th printing from 1931, so I have no way to check whether this entry was also in the original Genkai from 1889.ぐわい志゛ん (名)=外人=㈠外[ホカ]ノ人。㈡外国人[グワイコクジン]。
As you can see from the broader context given here, in Heike, 外人 refers to people who one has to be wary of because they might spill secrets, since the reason for gathering is to plot and ready for a fight. The definition from the Myōgishō is also quite interesting, though not necessarily relevant here.ぐゎいじん〔名〕自分と無関係の人。他人。転じて、疎遠な人。敵視すべき人。「その恩を忘れて、外人もなき所に兵具を整へ軍兵《ぐんびやう》を語らひおき」<平家・一・鹿谷>。「外人 ウトキヒト」<名義抄>
All these words embody, at least in current usage, the intent requisite of pejorativeness; my argument with respect to gaijin is simply that it, used without qualification, does not embody such intent, especially not in past usage and rarely (if ever) in current usage. People’s taking offense at it is their option, therefore it is unfair to automatically attach malice to it and, especially, attribute malice to those who use it when they are unaware of the potential of its giving offense. If you want to educate people about that possibility, that’s fine; but flatly stating it—which is what labeling the word derogatory/pejorative does—is not, at least not here. In haste and best regards, Jim_Lockhart 13:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)...terms [such] as nigger (nigga), redneck, cracker, white trash, Redskin, dyke, queer, fairy, faggot, tranny, geek, nerd, chav, or cripple are not pejorative only when used by a member of the group [they refer to].
The word gaijin is of ancient provenance and the first recorded use citation needed can be traced back to Heike Monogatari, written early in the 13th century:
Here, the word "外人" is used to refer to potential spies or people who should be regarded as enemies. citation needed Another early reference is in Renri Hishō (連理秘抄, c. 1349) by Nijo Yoshimoto (二条良基), where it is used to refer to a (Japanese) person who is a stranger, not a friend. [1]
The word was initially not applied to foreigners, and historically, the Portuguese, the first Europeans to visit Japan, were known as nanbanjin (南蛮人, "southern barbarians"), because their ships came sailing in from the south, and because these sailors were perceived as unrefined by the Japanese. [2] When British and Dutch adventurers such as William Adams arrived in Japan fifty years later in the early 17th century, they were usually known as kōmōjin (紅毛人, "red-haired people.") [3]
The word gaikokujin was only introduced and popularized by the Meiji government citation needed. As the empire of Japan extended to Taiwan and Korea, the term naikokujin (内国人, "inside country people") was used to refer to nationals of other territories of the Empire citation needed. While other terms fell out of use after World War II, gaikokujin remained as the official government term for non-Japanese people. citation needed.
This section relies largely or entirely on a
single source. (January 2007) |
The purported source ( http://monoroch.net/gallery/kinshi/index.html) is unreliable because:
The previous section also contains unsourced statements saying the use of gaikokujin is practically limited to whites, and that the Japanese media use specific country origins for other Asian nationalities and ethnic groups. Since seeing this statement here, I’ve been observing how these words are used in news reporting on NHK and Fuji Television; my observations do not coincide with these statements: Specific nationalities seem to be mentioned whenever the nationality is known at the time of reporting or relevant, and gaikokujin (as well as gaikokujin-fū and gaikokujin no yō na) seems to be used for people of just about any nationality until their nationality is clear. (I’ve watched specifically for the transition from gaikokujin to Chinese, Korean, etc., and seen it.) So unless this material can be sourced reliably, I think it should be removed. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 14:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I've restored the etymology section, with some extra references. Unlike much of the POV cruft that has been rightfully excised, this is factual stuff, and a couple of missing references for (IMHO) fairly uncontroversial assertions are no excuse for nuking the whole thing. I don't have a Kojien on hand, and it's not available online, but the naikokujin/ihoujin bits should be easy to verify from there if somebody does. Jpatokal 08:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 9 |
We're told that: Sean in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift is called a gaijin. The main character of the video game Red Steel is called a gaijin. In the movie Tokyo Pop a Drag queen tells the main character Wendy about how he and her are "gaijin". Am I alone in finding this utterly uninteresting? -- Hoary 11:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
22:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I visited the public library yesterday in order to research the use of “gaijin” in the mainstream press (English and Japanese), as well as the number of times the word "gaijin" appeared in Japanese language non-fiction publications. This is what I learned:
Up until about 1997 or so, the word “gaijin” appears quite often in book titles and magazine headlines in a positive way. In fact, in the English-speaking press, according to Lexis-Nexis, the word is constantly used thousands and thousands of times in newspapers across the world to simply mean “non-Japanese person” or “foreign national.” True, there are exceptions to the rule under the English-language coverage (some are critical Op-Eds), but generally speaking, this was the pattern I found in both Japanese and English.
Then, I researched newspaper guidelines for the Japanese press.
According to the tenth edition of Kisha Handobukku: Shinbun youji yougo-shuu (Journalist Handbook: a collection of newspaper characters and terms) published on 15 March, 2005, the guidelines for Kyodo News journalists changed. For the past 8 or nine editions of the handbook, from roughly 1975 until 2005, the word “gaijin” was not considered part of the sabetsu you-go, or “discriminatory terms.” Journalists were apparently free to use the word in their news articles, which would make sense considering the number of times that the word appeared in the Japanese press during this period. Now, they are asked to write gaikoku-jin in its stead, while acknowledging that the term is a contraction.
I cross-checked this Kyodo News handbook for their journalists with a similar source citing Yomiuri Shimbun guidelines. Here, journalists are *not* prohibited from using the word “gaijin” unlike words such as eta, hinin or buraku which were (and definitely are) considered to be unacceptable under all circumstances. However, the Yomiuri still advises its journalists that it’s probably best to write gaikoku-jin instead of gaijin, also noting that special circumstances can certainly be made. (Source: “Kotobagari”-to sabetsu (“Word hunting and discrimination), Tokyo: Shukan bunshun, 1994, pg. 233.) What these "special circumstances" (tokubetsu-na baai) are, the newspaper handbook doesn't say.
I didn’t have a chance to research other newspaper guidelines, but just based on these two so far, in addition to the vast number of Japanese and English publications that used the word in a generally neutral way up until the late 1990s, my impression is that “gaijin” only recently became (legally?) problematic due to some kind of political correctness movement (if that's the appropriate term to use to describe what's happening), that it was simply an acceptable contraction of gaikoku-jin. Given this preliminary evidence, I’m beginning to wonder if the etymology section is not terribly misleading to the general reader by arguing that “gaijin” has always carried a pejorative connotation. -- J Readings 00:32, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Hola once more Jim, If I read you right your opinion is that you acknowledge a problematic "gray area," with current usage, that "gaijin" is potentially derogatory, but do not regard the word as unconditionally derogatory. I would certainly agree (I think very few words are "unconditionally derogatory," certainly not nigger or fag which are frequently either used self-referentially by blacks and gays respectively, or within sympathetic groups or with poetic license and so on). So yes, while "gaijin" isn't always derogatory, we agree that is has a definite potential to be derogatory and is widely treated as such in educated society and respected media, and this brings the merry-go-round back to the question of why the word isn't tagged as "derogatory" in the article's intro.
In short, my argument is that universality is practically not a condition for this word not to be tagged as "derogatory." For example there are more than 100 listings in the Wiki category for infectious diseases. Even though these diseases do not infect absolutely everyone or even most people who come into contact with them, we regard them as "infectious" (not "potentially infectious diseases"). So, suggest tagging "gaijin" as "derogatory" in the lead and qualifying elsewhere in the article that the word is / can be used without malice or insult. RomaC 07:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
I have an electronic dictionary, and the entries for gaijin and gaikokujin are as follows:
My experiences in Japan don't contradict this usage. Bennie13 03:01, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Is it accurate and/or noteworthy to mention that it is comparable to the term gringo. Gaijin must be the Japanese equivalent of the word gringo. 75.162.19.68 21:36, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not really sure what to say, but I can't see any use at all for this section, and I consider myself rather tolerant of such sections. It says absolutely nothing aside from "the word gaijin was used here." Now, like I said in my edit summary, the usage of gaijin in culture is undoubtedly an interesting topic, but a mere listing of wherever gaijin was used would be ridiculously huge and an indiscriminate collection of information. The section, should it be remade, needs things like considerations on usage, notable times it may have been censored or stuck in odd places, the usage for flavor, that kinda stuff. SnowFire 01:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
May I offer a few general frustrations and observations about this gaijin article having closely followed the back-and-forth for the past year?
My first frustration is that nobody seems to agree on what purpose this articles serves: is it supposed to be about the “controversy”? Is it supposed to be about the etymology and history of the word? Is it supposed to be about its modern-day usage, and if so in what language: English or Japanese or Brazilian Portuguese? What is the model for the article, and why are we sure it’s the appropriate model to emulate?
My second frustration is linked to the first: there are virtually no sources, let alone cross-referenced sources, that present a descriptive and neutral presentation of all the alleged (and known) facts in this article—especially the “analysis” of the word itself. That alone should sound the alarm bells for WP editors that there is something seriously wrong here.
My third frustration is the heaviest of all: read the WP archives for this article, like reading these yahoogroup chat fora, and you’ll notice that what sometimes (not always) passes for research is the equivalent of a barroom discussion. “Some of my Japanese friends tell me….” “I have foreign friends who think the word is derogatory…” “I am a Japanese native-speaker, therefore I am telling you that the word is not derogatory…” “I am a naturalized Japanese citizen, therefore I’m telling you the word is derogatory…” Light on facts, heavy on personal opinion and philosophy. Like it or not, all of that is “noise.” It’s private, non-verifiable (almost always erroneous) hearsay and speculation that circulate the internet in the form of assumed “facts” about the nature of the word. Yet, it keeps creeping into the article (viz. the article's current "broadcasting and publishing" section on the main page). What evidence is there to support the assertion that "The word gaijin is classified as racial discrimination (人種差別) and included on a common list of prohibited words used by Japanese broadcasters and publishers"? The source is some guy's personal homepage which is not—I repeat not—a reliable source for a controversial article. The only reason that I did not remove it is because I haven't finished my own research on the media yet. I figured, "Let it go for now; it's not libelous material."
I strongly encourage everyone who wants to edit this article to follow the very informative discussions on Wikipedia:Reliable sources WP:RS, Wikipedia:Attribution WP:ATT, and Wikipedia:No original research WP:NOR. Those discussions and guidelines influenced why I stopped “editing-as-I-go.” With controversial subjects, I wanted to make sure that any generalized statements of fact are fairly well-researched before they entered the main article. This is why I haven’t added my preliminary research on the press guidelines and gaijin because: (1) how representative are these two newspapers (today) of the entire media, (2) when did these guidelines come into being, and (3) why did they come into being? Without answering those three questions, it’s difficult to generalize about the nature of the word in Japanese or English...assuming that is even the purpose of the article. I just don't have enough to time to re-visit the library to do the research.
Finally, let me stress that I’m not attacking anyone’s personal beliefs. I’m neither for nor against the usage of the word. I simply want to write an article that’s consistent with WP guidelines...all of them. It's frustrating. J Readings 09:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
At the risk of going off on a tangent, RomaC raised an interesting issue regarding the use of 外人, or gaijin, in academic works. To test the hypothesis that academics "avoid gaijin" in their published work for either reasons of malice, informality, or perhaps something else, I typed the keyword into Google Scholar. Anyone can access Google Scholar by going to the following URL: (Japanese) < http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?q=%E5%A4%96%E4%BA%BA&hl=ja&lr=lang_ja> and (English) < http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr=>. Assuming it were true that the word 外人 is not used in academic papers because it's always been derogatory, for example, the number of hits should be very low to non-existent for papers not discussing the word itself. However, for Japanese-language papers, roughly 350 hits were registered. Moreover, the word 外人 seems to be used in published papers as recently as 2006 by Tokai University. The title: 大相撲における女人禁制の研究IV : 外人観客の意識調査 (A Survey of Nix Women in the Sumo Ring IV : The Case of Gaijin spectators' opinions). Judging by the tone of the paper, the academic is simply referring to "foreigners" without any malice. If the Google Scholar search is opened up to include other languages with the word 外人, assuming everything is adjusted to the correct "Scholar Preferences," over 35,000 hits will be registered. Most of these hits are for academic papers written in either Mandarin, Taiwanese or Cantonese (I'm assuming — they're clearly not written in Japanese.) I also typed gaijin into the English version: 291 hits. Obviously, the number of hits in each language don't tell us anything about the tone or context of the word use. For that, we would need to read each Japanese, English, or Chinese-language article and try to sort it all out. But just based on these preliminary findings without reading all of the articles we do know for a fact that the word is being used in what were (or are) presumably peer-reviewed academic publications. J Readings 16:34, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
The section on etymology and history was supposed to be removed from the main article on 27 March 2007 if it could not provide corroboration for both its unsourced assertions and single sourced assertions of questionable accuracy. I gave it some more time thinking a few editors were still researching the question. We can always re-include the material provide that dual-sources can be found to corroborate the assertions.
No mention of とひと anywhere (I checked for it). My volume is a copy of the 628th printing from 1931, so I have no way to check whether this entry was also in the original Genkai from 1889.ぐわい志゛ん (名)=外人=㈠外[ホカ]ノ人。㈡外国人[グワイコクジン]。
As you can see from the broader context given here, in Heike, 外人 refers to people who one has to be wary of because they might spill secrets, since the reason for gathering is to plot and ready for a fight. The definition from the Myōgishō is also quite interesting, though not necessarily relevant here.ぐゎいじん〔名〕自分と無関係の人。他人。転じて、疎遠な人。敵視すべき人。「その恩を忘れて、外人もなき所に兵具を整へ軍兵《ぐんびやう》を語らひおき」<平家・一・鹿谷>。「外人 ウトキヒト」<名義抄>
All these words embody, at least in current usage, the intent requisite of pejorativeness; my argument with respect to gaijin is simply that it, used without qualification, does not embody such intent, especially not in past usage and rarely (if ever) in current usage. People’s taking offense at it is their option, therefore it is unfair to automatically attach malice to it and, especially, attribute malice to those who use it when they are unaware of the potential of its giving offense. If you want to educate people about that possibility, that’s fine; but flatly stating it—which is what labeling the word derogatory/pejorative does—is not, at least not here. In haste and best regards, Jim_Lockhart 13:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)...terms [such] as nigger (nigga), redneck, cracker, white trash, Redskin, dyke, queer, fairy, faggot, tranny, geek, nerd, chav, or cripple are not pejorative only when used by a member of the group [they refer to].
The word gaijin is of ancient provenance and the first recorded use citation needed can be traced back to Heike Monogatari, written early in the 13th century:
Here, the word "外人" is used to refer to potential spies or people who should be regarded as enemies. citation needed Another early reference is in Renri Hishō (連理秘抄, c. 1349) by Nijo Yoshimoto (二条良基), where it is used to refer to a (Japanese) person who is a stranger, not a friend. [1]
The word was initially not applied to foreigners, and historically, the Portuguese, the first Europeans to visit Japan, were known as nanbanjin (南蛮人, "southern barbarians"), because their ships came sailing in from the south, and because these sailors were perceived as unrefined by the Japanese. [2] When British and Dutch adventurers such as William Adams arrived in Japan fifty years later in the early 17th century, they were usually known as kōmōjin (紅毛人, "red-haired people.") [3]
The word gaikokujin was only introduced and popularized by the Meiji government citation needed. As the empire of Japan extended to Taiwan and Korea, the term naikokujin (内国人, "inside country people") was used to refer to nationals of other territories of the Empire citation needed. While other terms fell out of use after World War II, gaikokujin remained as the official government term for non-Japanese people. citation needed.
This section relies largely or entirely on a
single source. (January 2007) |
The purported source ( http://monoroch.net/gallery/kinshi/index.html) is unreliable because:
The previous section also contains unsourced statements saying the use of gaikokujin is practically limited to whites, and that the Japanese media use specific country origins for other Asian nationalities and ethnic groups. Since seeing this statement here, I’ve been observing how these words are used in news reporting on NHK and Fuji Television; my observations do not coincide with these statements: Specific nationalities seem to be mentioned whenever the nationality is known at the time of reporting or relevant, and gaikokujin (as well as gaikokujin-fū and gaikokujin no yō na) seems to be used for people of just about any nationality until their nationality is clear. (I’ve watched specifically for the transition from gaikokujin to Chinese, Korean, etc., and seen it.) So unless this material can be sourced reliably, I think it should be removed. Best regards, Jim_Lockhart 14:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
I've restored the etymology section, with some extra references. Unlike much of the POV cruft that has been rightfully excised, this is factual stuff, and a couple of missing references for (IMHO) fairly uncontroversial assertions are no excuse for nuking the whole thing. I don't have a Kojien on hand, and it's not available online, but the naikokujin/ihoujin bits should be easy to verify from there if somebody does. Jpatokal 08:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)