Is Debito Still Relevant?

 In his August 6 article for the Japan Times, David Aldwinckle, a.k.a. Debito Arudou, compared the G-word to the N-word, saying, “For gaijin is essentially ‘n–ger’ and should likewise be obsoleted.”  And he further recommended that everyone follow a policy of “I won’t use it, I won’t let it be used.”

One problem here is that comparing any word or epithet to the N-word is the semantic equivalent of comparing something, whatever it might be, to Hitler and the Nazis.

In a May 15 speech in Jerusalem, George Bush implied that Barack Obama’s stated willingness to open a diplomatic dialog with such countries as Iran to Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Hitler by, for one thing, ceding him a large chunk of Czechoslovakian territory. So, let’s consider for a moment whether the two things are the same…of course they aren’t. “Appeasement” and a willingness to talk are two completely different things.

On the 4 of August, Taro Aso, in a bizarre non sequitur about the Weimar Republic letting Hitler gain power, seemed to imply that the DPJ were analogous to the Nazis. So, are the DPJ the same as the Nazis? Of course not.

And, is calling someone a “gaijin” the same as calling them a “n–ger”? Of course not. I would think that any African American who heard that comparison would find it ludicrous. “Gaijin” doesn’t have anywhere near the historical baggage that the N-word does: when was the last time you saw a gaijin hanging from a lamppost on the Omote Sando? Come to think of it though, some of the posers who hang out at the sidewalk cafes there are pretty annoying.

Another problem is that Debito seems to be stuck in the past; he’s at risk of becoming like an old war veteran who can’t stop talking about the privations he suffered in a war that nobody else remembers. Societies and language are always evolving and words can sometimes go through dramatic shifts in meaning—look at the word “gay” for example.

“Gaijin” used to refer primarily to Caucasian Americans. Especially during, and for a number years following, the Occupation because the majority of non-Asia foreigners in Japan at that time were white Americans. “Gaijin” could also refer to white people in general, and while it was xenophobic, it was never a racist word. I would call it “racialized” because it did usually refer to a particular racial group. I don’t think the word was ever used with pejorative intent, but it did pick up negative connotations because of the many stereotypes of “gaijin” that developed in postwar Japan.

There were definitely a lot of stereotypes when I came to Japan, at the tail end of the bubble. In particular, there were a lot of self-stereotypes about Japan and the Japanese people. After a year in Japan, my nickname for the country was the “land of myth”. There were the big myths about Japan having a unique culture and climate—and for some reason that was considered unique, rather being the normal state of affairs in any country. There was the myth that “Japanese is the most difficult language in the world”; I remember constantly hearing that, apropos of nothing, when I went to bars in order to meet the locals and practice my Japanese. There were also a lot of small myths. One of my colleagues in that era was particularly irked by the belief that the ability to do arithmetical calculations in one’s head was beyond gaijin. He would sometimes demonstrate, with clenched teeth, that he was perfectly able to do arithmetic in his head. I once saw a dialog in a junior high school English textbook with two characters, “Emily” and “Yukiko”, in which Yumiko does a very simple calculation in her head, and then Emily says with a gasp:

“Yukiko, you can calculate in your head!”

The myth that really got up my nose for some reason was this one: “Americans need contracts when they do business together, but we don’t need contracts because Japanese people can trust each other.”

And beyond stereotypes, there were many cases of non-Japanese being denied services specifically because they were foreigners. I used to live in a “Gaijin house”, which is an institution I haven’t seen the equivalent of in any other country. And besides the difficulty of finding a landlord who would rent to a foreigner, I met people who had, for example, been denied membership at video shops, or told by a barber that he didn’t know how to cut foreign hair. I have endless examples actually, but suffice it to say that when I first came to Japan I find it to be a very xenophobic country: I had never before been to a country where the people considered themselves to be fundamentally different from people born “over there”, as in any other country outside their own.

But Japan has changed. I don’t feel now that I’m treated any better or worse than Japanese people are. The only thing that I do sometimes still encounter is people who answer my wife (who is Japanese) when I have spoken. There are some people who seem to think that my wife is a master ventriloquist who can throw her voice and make it seem that it is me who is saying something in Japanese; but they won’t be taken in, ohh no, they know it’s just a trick and that I am actually a life-size wooden dummy, so when I speak, they answer her. But even that is quite rare these days. These days 99% of the Japanese I encounter acknowledge me without surprise, awkwardness or resentment. And the meaning of “gaijin” has changed. Now it’s basically equivalent to the English word “foreigner” which, because Japan doesn’t have a monopoly on xenophobia, also has negative connotations. I think it’s best to avoid both words if possible. In Japanese, “gaikokujin” sounds more respectful, and in English “non-Japanese” is perhaps best. Having said that, neither “gaijin” nor “foreigner” are inherently derogatory words, there’s no reason to call out the word police (Debito gotten up in Spanish clerical vestments?) or tear off on a diatribe just because someone happens to use either of them in conversation. 

There still are problems. Japan hasn’t suddenly become an Arcadian paradise of racial harmony. There are still issues for Debito to tilt at—the government’s foreign trainee program comes to mind—but if he insists on equating the G-word with the N-word, nobody is going to take him seriously.