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.”

Angus

Mahalo,
Mike

Thank you again for this post!