The following is a slightly modified message that I recently sent to the Life in Japan Yahoo group forum.
A person had commented that gaijin cannot be regarded as a racial term because nikkei are considered gaijin. Nikkei means second generation, and refers to those children of Japanese parents who were born and raised in countries such as Brazil, Peru, or America.
My response was as follows:
The problem here is with the the word “race” being fairly nebulous. I mean what constitutes race? It’s a pseudo-scientific concept to begin with. Japanese regard themselves as having special long intestines and special brains as well. Often reasons such as upbringing and diet are invoked in cases like this. That is because Japanese have a special diet of rice and fish, they have special long intestines. Speaking the Japanese language from birth actually produces physical changes on the brain (so it’s claimed). I’m sure there’s a sense in which, by being away from Japan for so long, nikkeijin have been physically transformed into gaijin. However, it must be pointed out that nikkeijin are only second tier gaijin, but not “pure” gaijin.
The term gaijin seems to apply more often to white foreigners. That is blacks are often kokujin and Asians are often Ajia-jin. Brazilian-Japanese are often nikkeijin, not gaijin. Like blacks and Asians, their status as gaijin seems only as the less pure sort.
I’m going to give some quotes here, to support what I just said, but first I want to list the victims of the word “gaijin.”
1. Whites, who are are all stereotyped and put into one big group. (See the supa gaijin video I posted earlier.)
2. Blacks, Asians, Nikkeijin, and zainichi who only get to be second tier gaijin, as opposed to the pure variety.
3. Japanese. Many Japanese are led to classify everyone into a simple dichotomy, Japanese or non-Japanese. That is, this world has two kinds of people nihonjin and gaijin. Differences within these two groups are minimized and differences between them maximized giving a distorted view. In fact, there is a great deal of variety in Japan, and a great deal of variety outside of Japan. Moreover, similarities between various individuals abound, regardless of the group they are affiliated with. Koudai Suzuki just might have more in common with John Smith than he does with his neighbor Kyohei Muneo. But that’s damn hard to figure out when everyone gets classified as either gaijin or nihonjin.
4. Japanese minorities such as buraku people and ainu. As they were “Japanese” to the outside world and ostensibly not gaijin, it made discriminatory treatment towards these people very hard to see.
Now, let me list those who are not victims of this dichotomy:
…
We all lose out by using the term gaijin.
Let me give some quotes, here are two quotes by Millie Creighton from her essay, “Soto Others and uchi Others: imaging racial diversity, imagining homogeneous Japan”:
1. “The Otherness of foreigners, however, has multiple loci. Definitions of these soto Others, or ‘outside Others’, is often differentiated along sociological categories of race, conforming to the white, yellow, black continuum. Although the word gaijin can be applied to any non-Japanese person it is most commonly only used for white foreigners, who are conceptualized as ‘pure gaijin’, or ‘true gaijin’ (Creighton 1994:233). Research by Manabe et al. (1989) reveals that Japanese tend to use the word gaijin only for Whites, while the term gaikokujin (person from an outside country) is used for Blacks and non-Japanese Asians. Blacks are also called kokujin, while other Asians are called Ajiajin, or referred to by the country of their origin (i.e Chūgokujin for a Chinese person).” page 212
2. “The president of a Japanese trend-watching and consulting firm revealed the Japanese conceptual links between soto Others and uchi Others by suggesting that there are three distinct types of foreigner: white foreigners, non-white foreigners, and people designated as foreigners who are not foreigners: ‘We have three gaijin. The pure gaijin is white. The second gaijin is non-white, people from Asia, people from Africa and South America. In fact, my generation don’t really think of these as true gaijin. The third kind of gaijin are Korean-Japanese and Chinese-Japanese. Still, at present these people are not considered Japanese at all.’” page 230 [Japan’s Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. Editor: Michael Weiner]
I mean really, *pure* gaijin? If your white, and someone calls you gaijin, hold your head high with pride, I guess. You’re the genuine article!
Here’s another Millie Creighton quote, from her essay, “Imaging the Other in Japanese
Advertising Campaigns”:
3. “This occidentalist construction is reflected in the actual usage of the word gaijin. The word, literally meaning ‘outside person’, is most frequently translated as ‘foreigner’, but is commonly used only in reference to whites, who are assumed to be Westerners. A relevant linguistic code distinction occurs between the Japanese words gaijin and gaikokujin ( Manabe, Befu, and McConnell 1989: 40). Blacks and non-Japanese Asians are conceptualized differently and, in recognition of the fact that they come from foreign countries, may be referred to as gaikokujin (person from an outside country) but are seldom called gaijin since, as I said, this word suggests someone white.”
[Occidentalism: Images of the West, Editor: James G. Carrier, Page Number: 137]
There is a certain ideology in place in Japan about Japanese as being special and unique in some way. The term gajin is part of this. In my opinion people who use the term are unintentionally supporting this ideology. I think Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu explains this quite succinctly, here’s a 3 paragraph quote from his essay, “Multiethnic Japan and the Monoethnic Myth”:
4a. Japanese are often accused of being racialistic and racist. Excessive concern about race is not necessarily racism, but it is potentially close. The tendency to homogenize and to deny diffferences among Japanese, while maximizing the diffferences between Japanese and gaijin (foreigners), is dangerous because exaggerating differences between one’s group and others, while also blurring the diversity within one’s group, is a way of thinking that leads to prejudice. The constant distinguishing between Japanese and non-Japanese is extended far beyond cultural differences into the realm of human physiology. Statements by people at many levels of society indicate beliefs that Japanese and non-Japanese have different human gestation periods, body temperatures, intestinal length, brains, and general body composition Taylor 1983).
4b. That such racializing is closely related to prejudice and discrimination is not often recognized. Since there are not supposed to be minorities in Japan, these topics are not legitimized. They are associated with South Africa or the United States, but rarely with japan. Discrimination is practiced openly and without apology, as though it required none. In explaining his unwritten policy of hiring only “pure” Japanese, an employer is likely to justify his action as an attempt to avoid konran (confusion). The right to practice discrimination in housing might be defended by realtors as atarimae (proper, reasonable), or tozen (natural, deserved, matter-of-fact), or simply as shikata ga nai (it can’t be helped). Discriminatory practices can even be dignified as shukan (social custom) or tetsugaku (philosophy). That they are a social custom and philosophy of discrimination is not stated and is perhaps not noticed by some. In this way of thinking, discrimination is not recognized as morally reprehensible; in fact, it is not recognized at all. As a Japanese social activist once lamented about the difficulty of fighting discrimination, “most people don’t even know what discrimination is.”
4c. Another side effect of the myth is the tendency to stereotype and denigrate minorities in foreign countries. Media representations heavily stereotype blacks as both childlike and hypersexual, and as natural dancers, natural musicians, and athletes. These images saturate all forms of popular mass media such as sensational weekly magazines, comics, and television, but are also found in award-winning literature and in the works of internationally acclaimed writers (Russell). Black stars are popular, but blacks in general are viewed with a mixture of fascination and repulsion, and through a condescending eye that regards them as unsuitable for the “higher” cultural and intellectual roles.
[ MELUS. Volume: 18. Issue: 4. Publication Year: 1993. Page Number: 63+.]
I consider the word gajin to be part and parcel to the entire system as described above. I cannot express enough disdain for the word. Note, people can attempt to use gaikokujin the same way, but I don’t think this will work. Gaikokujin has a distinct legal meaning, and when people are using it in another way they can be called on it, just as when people use Japanese in a non-legalistic way, they can be called on it.
Gaikokujin can be contrasted with nihonjin in a legal sense.
Gaijin can be contrasted with nihonjin in an essentialist (racist) sense.
(That is, Japanese possess certain ineffable qualities or essences that outsider just don’t possess, such that they are set apart from the rest of us.)
If someone wants to call you a gaikokujin, then either that’s correct or it’s not. All one need to do is to look at one’s passport. However, there is no similar criteria for the word gaijin.