From: masuda@fcs280b.ncifcrf.gov (Michiaki Masuda)
Subject: Re: Who started all this gaijin myth?! (was Re: Genitals in Japan) 
Organization: Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:27:46 GMT

In article <MS-C.722505867.1103527590.mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> Mark Crispin <mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
>Michiaki Masuda writes:

>> So, how do you want us to call "gaijin"? We cannot call them "Nippon-jin",
>>can we?

>Answer: how about ``hito'', ``o-kyaku-san'', etc.?

    O-kyaku-san? That means "guest." Why do you think that Japanese should
treat foreigners as "guests" instead of "foreigners"?

>WHY is it so damn important to have to specifically say that the person is not
>of Japanese race?  Yes, I mean ``Japanese race'' -- I have *never* heard
>``gaijin'' used to describe anyone who looks Japanese.

    In the previous posting of mine, I mentioned that "gaijin" refers to a 
member of a different group and that the attribute that determines the group
to belong is in most cases nationality. For those who don't look like Japanese,
"gaijin" would be used from the beginning. For those who look like
Japanese but are from a foreign country, "gaijin" would be used less often.
Assuming that your Japanese language experience is much more limited than
mine, I think that your lack of opportunity to hear "gaijin" for "Japanese
race" (I assume that this means "Asian") seems reasonable. In my universtiy,
"gaijin" included many Chinese students.

>There have been any number of excuses such as ``How, when you have several
>different customers, would you identify in particular the customer who is a
>foreigner if you can't say `gaijin'?''  It is important to realize that this
>is nothing but an excuse.  How do you identify a particular customer if they
>are all Japanese, or if they are all foreigners?

   In order to minimize the possibility of making mistakes, we would use
the most conspicuous characteristics among the given population to describe
the customer. If all the customers in the shop are "gaijin", we wouldn't
use "gaijin" to describe a particular customer. If someone is only "gaijin"
in the shop, I don't see any reason that we shouldn't refer to that person 
as "gaijin" or "gaijin-san."

>You can argue all you want that there is no racist intent behind the word
>``gaijin''.  That argument is not valid:

> 1) you should have enough common sense to know that people do not enjoy being
>    singled out by race.

   I've been understanding that the word such as "Asian-American" and
"native-American" are the ones used to single out a certain group by
race. Are they not?

   Whether someone hates to be singled out or not would be largely dependent
on his/her personality, cultural background and sensitivity. An American
friend of mine in Tokyo was enjoyng calling himself "hen na gaijin" and
enjoying his differentness.

> 2) you should have enough courtesy to stop doing it after you have been told
>    that some people find it offensive.

   Aha! Finally, I heard this word. "We don't want it, so just stop it!"
I cannot help feeling some arrogance in it. What you are saying is, "It
doesn't matter whether "gaijin" is derogatory or not. It doesn't matter
whether our understanding is correct or not. It doesn't matter what
explanation Japanese would give. If we believe that something is wrong,
that IS wrong."

   If many Japanese feel that the gun control in the US is uncomfortable,
would it be a good reason to change it?

>White Americans learned in the 1960's that identifying black Americans by
>their race was offensive to blacks.  We don't say ``that negro'' or ``that
>black'' any more.  We say ``that person''.  Japanese people need to learn the
>same type of courtesy.

   Ironically, you used the expression "black Americans." Was it meant to
be offensive? (As I understand it, Afro-American or African-American is 
a PC word currently.) It is possible for someone to take an offense from
your sentence only becasue it has a word "black."

   In our lab, we often identify a certain person as "the Asian girl",
"the Japanese guy", "the black lady", etc. without any trouble.

   If you request courtesy from Japanese without showing any effort to
to understand the Japanese language, that would be a lack of courtesy
on your side. In addition, abolishing the word "gaijin" would not be
the best way for us Japanese to show courtesy to non-Japanese. There's
something more fundamental. Probably, the same is true for the politically
correstness in addressing the ethnicity of American people. The more important
thing seems to me to be how they are actually treated in the society but not
how they are called.

--Michiaki