In his Aug. 5 article "Once a 'gaijin,' always a 'gaijin,' " Debito Arudou claims that the word "gaijin" is essentially the same as "n--ger" and should be made obsolete. He adds that the word gaijin lacks the meaning of "extra-national." I found this explanation absurd.
Think about the word "foreigner"; historically it, too, lacks the specific meaning "extra-national." It could mean "strange and unfamiliar." Look at the word "alien"; it also could mean "unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful," or even an extraterrestrial monster. Moreover, the etymologies of both words can connote negative images. By contrast, etymologically speaking, gaijin simply means "outside person" and does not carry negative meanings.
Arudou's claim that "gaijin" strips the world of diversity is an illogical jump. It is quite natural for someone to divide the world into "inside" and "outside." It is not a matter of percentages. Arudou states that the word gaijin is even used overseas by traveling/resident Japanese to describe non-Japanese in their own country, often without any apparent sense of irony or contradiction. This is untrue; Japanese people often make jokes about their ironic use of gaijin in a foreign country by saying "here, we are the gaijin."
Finally, it is totally unfair to compare what white Americans have done to black people with what Japanese people have done to gaijin. Arudou should study the history of his own country before accusing another country.
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