What does the word gaijin mean? I know a lot of foreigners don't feel good when they are said so. Japanese dictionaries tell us the word gaijin means foreigners in a neutral sense but as a matter of fact, this word does have some negative connotations.

I found an interesting usage of this word in the Economist (MAY 16th - 2nd 1998). The article entitled Rich pickings for the gaijin is about the foreign firms' making dramatic inroads in Japanese fund management market. It concludes that the foreign firms are making huge strides as a result of the competition in the market even if Japanese firms don't want it.

This usage of gaijin reflects correctly the notion of gaijin of our own usage. I think we can divide the usage of this word into two cases: simply because of the limitation of our perception and when consciously with a negative connotation.

First we use this word simply because it's difficult for us to distinguish one Caucasian from another, or one black person from other, etc... In addition, we generally don't tend to pay attention to the nationality. When we see a Caucasian, we have tendency to regard them as Americans without any idea of their nationalities. In such a case, we use the word 'gaijin' simply because we don't know where they come from.

But behind this seemingly 'neutral' usage of this word, you can see what remainds the same since the seclusion policy in the Edo period. Speaking more exactly, It's not bacause we can't tell one foreigner from another but we don't want to know the difference or the personality of each foreigner.

As you know, Japanese have two contradictory attitudes toward foreigners: we admire the foreigners and foreign cultures while we despise them. No Japanese high school students can live their ordinary lives without McDonald or Hollywood movies while they feel that the name of the president of the United States isn't worth knowing. For most Japanese rich men, Mercedes is the evidence of their status while they don't always indicate exactly where Germany is on the map of the western Europe. We are influenced by American pop culture much more than any other Asian countries while most of us still can speak only a simple English sentence such as 'How are you?'

These facts mean we admire foreigners and foreign culture as far as they don't step into our own lives. Foreigners are the object of our admiration as far as they are in the screen or as far as they express their culture only in their products. This 'admiration or seclusion' theory is the fundamental of all of our attitude toward foreigners and foreign culture.

For example, our government's policy of foreigners in Japan is historically hostile and enforces them to assimilate with Japanese society. The most notorious example is our government's attitude toward Korean-Japanese living in Japan. I suppose the reason why Japanese discriminate them is not because they are Koreans (as a matter of fact, there are many Japanese who love Korean culture) but that they live in Japan. And the article we mentioned above uses the word 'gaijin' because the writer thinks Japanese are afraid of Tokyo security market's being dominated by foreign firms and that Japanese don't feel good when foreign firms step into our domestic market.

A Korean-Japanese, one of this page's readers, said in her e-mail that one Canadian friend had asked her why Japanese know so little about foreign countries and why Japanese don't make efforts to know. I think everything is derived from this point. Although what we know about foreigners isn't what they are, we don't make efforts to know exactly what they are.

Japanese must begin with getting rid of too idealized notion of foreigners as well as too discriminated one and make efforts to know them just as they are in a phenomenologic way. The veritable mutual-understanding is the only way to abolish the negative connotation of the word 'gaijin'.