What connotation does the term "gaijin" have for you ?

[Maciamo]

Do not forget that all human people have the habit of excluding people who look different from them. This has been a primitive method of gathering tribes together. Now that we are civilized, many thousands of years after tribalism, we still struggle to understand our tendencies.

This is my point. Tribalism based on looks is quite primitive and, although natural to our ancestors, shouldn't be accepted in today's world.

It is only recently that the United States has struggled to become free for all people.

This is why we Europeans see the US as late by a few decades socially speaking. Even slavery (an relatively old issue) was made illegal almost 100 years earlier in Britain or France than in the US.

In Japan of 100 years ago, gaijin made no sense. They had no koseki, and no real names - just katakana noises - and no real language, just grunting (English). How were Japanese people to understand them? Were they to be considered REAL PEOPLE? So, they were gaijin.

So the Japanese entered the antique era of intercultural relations in the 20th century. Their way of calling all foreigners "gaijin" remind me of the Ancient Greek way of calling all non-Greek speakers "barbarians" (which meant something like "gaijin" at the time, and only acquired a strongly negative connotation later).

As Japan struggles with post-tribal thinking, just like the rest of the world, there is still the habit of describing people as Us or Them. I do not see it as a defect in Japanese character - just a common human struggle.

Actually when we look back at history it is not so surprising that the Japanese are a few thousands years backyard in the state of social development. The earliest Japanese civilisation (i.e. settled, agricultural society) only dates from the age of the Roman Empire. All of Europe had agricultural societies from 5000 BCE, i.e. 5000 years before Japan. In South-Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Greece...), it predates Japan by 7000 or 8000 years. Indeed, Japan was still in the height of the medieval era in the mid-19th century, so about 500 to 800 years late compared to Europe. It had caught up so much (5000 to 500 years) thanks to the heavy influence of China, which developed much earlier. Japan is only "developed" today because copied the West in the late 19th century, then was forced to adopt an Americanised system after WWII. But mentalities do not change nearly as quickly as systems and technologies. This is why the Japanese socio-cultural mindset still carries strong elements of ancient or medieval way of thinking by Western standards.

I am not saying this to disparage Japan; I am trying to analyse history as rationally and objectively as possible. It may sound offensive, but to me it is just cold facts which political correctness will not change. History is history, whether it is nice or ugly, whether we like it or not.

[Steve Ototo]

This is my point. Tribalism based on looks is quite primitive and, although natural to our ancestors, shouldn't be accepted in today's world.
This is why we Europeans see the US as late by a few decades socially speaking. Even slavery (an relatively old issue) was made illegal almost 100 years earlier in Britain or France than in the US.
So the Japanese entered the antique era of intercultural relations in the 20th century. Their way of calling all foreigners "gaijin" remind me of the Ancient Greek way of calling all non-Greek speakers "barbarians" (which meant something like "gaijin" at the time, and only acquired a strongly negative connotation later).
...
I am not saying this to disparage Japan; I am trying to analyse history as rationally and objectively as possible. It may sound offensive, but to me it is just cold facts which political correctness will not change. History is history, whether it is nice or ugly, whether we like it or not.

Thank you so very much for your post, Maciamo!

About 100,000 years ago, a group of Homo sapiens came out of Africa, and populated the rest of the world. I call them the EBA (エバ) people - Everyone But Africans. That is the group that made the Swedes, Japanese, Filipinos, French, American Indians - エバ.
I believe that the エバ had the tendency to exclude others who did not look the same - that is why there is so much variety in the エバ branch of Homo sapiens. (The Africans may have the same tendency, but they stayed on the mother continent.)
Therefore, the children of the Eba People have a tendency towards xenophobia. It made them associate into tribes or clans that would war against each other for small percieved differences.
It has only been 100,000 years since we were all from the same little branch that left Africa. This is just an eye-blink in evolutionary history. And yet, so quickly, we have developed our instincts to a point where we do not recognize other エバ as even human!
I live in New Mexico. There are Native North Americans here in many tribes. People worry whether it is politically correct to call them "Native Americans" or "Indians." 外国人, 外人, 毛唐, 変な外人?
The answer is, they do not care if you say "Native American" or "Indian." They care very much about what you have to say to them. If you treat them like stupid dirty savages, they don't care what you call them. If you treat them like honored friends, they don't care what you call them.
I work with a friend who is Navajo. They call themselves "Diné" which means "The People," or "Human Beings." Everyone else is gaijin - even other Indians. My friends who are Navajo are fascinated with Japan, as the Diné follow a strict 戸籍 system from mother's descent. You are born to mother's family, but from father's mother's family, and in each generation you have a major lineage from mother, and a minor lineage from father. You are not allowed to marry into the same "clan," or lineage, as mother's descent, as this is considered incest - even to ten generations!
We are all from a tribal clan, that of the EBA people, and we are struggling to learn how not to be so tribal. All of us.

[gaijinalways]

But wouldn't you say that this xenophobic tendancy is more pronounced in Japan (and some other countries I can think that are not as developed in the economic and technological sense in Asia)? In other words, we are contrasting this behaviour across countries, yet a lot of people seem to find it acceptable behaviour if it is not violent.

Let's face it, in that sense, Japan is a safer country. Generally your chances of being attacked are pretty low here (though that is sadly changing), but of being 'mistreated' because you are not Japanese is very common for some of the posters (the others maybe are just lucky or don't notice it).

[pipokun]

This is another aspect of what some of you call us-them free society today.