Cheers.

I know this is off subject however I simply wanted to ask.

Kudos!

But, to get to the bigger issue, I think there is zero insult in being referred to as a Gaijin, whatever your level of blending into the Japanese society is. Why? Because by using the word Gaijin, the Japanese person outs themselves as having a certain mindset, ie. that of a small-minded, often bigoted, often of-mediocre-intellect person who has never bothered to learn a foreign language, never bothered to travel anywhere else than maybe Hawaii, and surely has not had an interesting career that has given them a broader perspective.

I personally lack the ability to get offended by such people who I, to be perfectly honest, consider to be below me. I know this sounds incredibly arrogant, but please bear with me. I do not mean to say that the Japanese majority is particularly small-minded and bigoted towards foreigners. As I am German, and have lived in the UK, France, and the US, what I have learned is that the majority of people of any country are bigots. They fear the outsider, and they fear their collective being broken up by outside influences, because they have little else to give them a sense of self-importance. This can be studied very well in Germany – the people who are talking the most about “the Turkish” or “the foreigners” are always the least interesting ones who spend their lives watching and discussing Television shows or other such pulp.

I guess many foreigners to Japan who get the “Gaijin” a lot simply do not have many ties to the educated classes, but move in the lower ranks. To make an extreme example, do you really think Ryuchi Sakamoto, or Haruki Murakami would lower themselves to such levels as to think along the lines of “Japanese / Gaijin” ?

I always had good results judging (yes, judging) people under the guidance of Mrs Roosevelt who said:

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

Essentially the debates surrounding gaijin only matter in so far as you care about being accepted into Japanese culture. For American’s and our hodge-podge melting pot background, this becomes an issue very quickly, but only if you let it.

Gaijin, as a word, I learned from my Japanese friends four years ago. Their strong reaction to another Japanese person referring to the foreigners/non-Japanese in our group spoke volumes. Admittedly, the person who said gaijin was mortified a second later but that only further informed me how rude the word is perceived.

Additionally, there is a great example of the use of the word gaikokujin in “My Darling is a foreigner.” The female character goes to the US and reacts as such: “mi-nna gaikokujin… Gaikokujin wa watashi ka.” If she had said Gaijin perhaps there wouldn’t have been any rethought. Also if you haven’t, you should check out the movie, I think it gives the Japanese approach to this issue.

I wonder how this integrates into our understanding of Japanese….