Steve B Howard NOVELIST
1 min readApr 25, 2021

--

Etymology and history

The word gaijin can be traced in writing to the 13th-century Heike Monogatari:

外人もなき所に兵具をとゝのへ[15]

Assembling arms where there are no gaijin[note 1]

Here, gaijin refers to outsiders[16][17] and potential enemies.[18] Another early reference is in Renri Hishō (c. 1349) by Nijō Yoshimoto, where it is used to refer to a Japanese person who is a stranger, not a friend.[18] The Noh play, Kurama tengu[19] has a scene where a servant objects to the appearance of a traveling monk:

源平両家の童形たちのおのおのござ候ふに、かやうの外人は然るべからず候

A gaijin doesn't belong here, where children from the Genji and Heike families are playing.

Here, gaijin also means an outsider or unfamiliar person.[20]

The word gaikokujin (外国人) is composed of gaikoku (foreign country) and jin (person). Early citations exist from c. 1235,[21] but it was largely non-extant until reappearing in 1838.[22] The Meiji government (1868–1912) further popularized the term, which came to replace ijin, ikokujin and ihōjin. As the Empire of Japan extended to Korea and to Taiwan, the term naikokujin ("inside country people") came to refer to nationals of other imperial territories.[citation needed] While other terms fell out of use after World War II, gaikokujin remained the official term for non-Japanese people. Some hold that the modern gaijin is a contraction of gaikokujin.[23]

--

--

No responses yet