Gaikokujin Smash!

~The subtitle of this blog reads, "Follow the adventures of a clueless Gaijin as he blunders his way across the Land of the Rising Sun." As you're probably aware, the word gaijin is the generic Japanese word for a foreigner, but I'd like to go into a bit more detail on what the term means.

"Gaijin" (外人) is a compound of two different sounds, "gai" (外) and "jin" (人). "Jin" simply means "person" and can be used to denote nationality; for example, "americajin" is an American. "Gai", however, is a bit more complex. According to my kanji dictionary, it can mean any of the following: foreign, outside, other, remove, undo.

The upshot of all this is that the word "gaijin" indicates an outsider, which is easy to understand when you consider the group-mentality common in Asian cultures such as Japan. As I've written about before, foreigners make up only a tiny percentage of the Japanese population, and the Japanese government is not keen on allowing more gaijin to move here.

However, in an etymological sense, gaijin is actually short for the longer word gaikokujin (外国人), which contains an additional kanji that makes the word more accurate. The "koku" sound in gaikokujin is another way of reading the kanji kuni (国), which means country. Hence, gaikokujin indicates a person from another country (a foreigner), rather than the somewhat more sinister "outsider" that the term gaijin may possibly connote.

Kuni (国) was one of the first kanji that I learned to read and write. More importantly, it's one of the few that I actually remember without any difficulty, because I learned the history and meaning of the symbol, rather than simply trying to memorize the way to write it.

玉 ---> 国

^ As you can see, the kanji kuni (国) has another kanji, jyu (玉), inside of it. This kanji for jyu means "king", and, as my Japanese teacher explained to me, it's supposed to look like the jewelry worn/displayed by Chinese emperors as a symbol of their authority. Note that kuni is simply jyu with a box around it; the box indicates territory or a boundary of some kind. Hence, kuni symbolizes the boundaries of a king's authority: a country.

Another phonetic reading of kuni is koku, so gaikoku (外国) means "foreign country". Add a jin (人) on the end, and you get "person from a foreign country". A bit more polite than simply "person from outside", isn't it?

At the school where I work, the term gaikokujin sensei is used to refer to foreign teachers, and almost all of the parents use this more polite form of address. One parent seems oblivious and always talks about the "gaijin sensei", which cracks me up, although I know she doesn't mean anything negative by it.

While the term gaijin is thrown around all the time in Japan, there are signs that its usage may be fading. Recent letters to The Japan Times have advocated phasing out gaijin in favor of gaikokujin, discarding "gaijin" as a xenophobic relic of the past comparable to the term "Jap" once used by Americans to refer to the Japanese during World War II.

Frankly, I don't really care either way. Even if the words change, the attitudes will remain the same, for good or ill. Besides, "Gaikokujin Smash" just doesn't have the same ring as "Gaijin Smash". ~Oyasumi!