Foreigner in Japanese is gaijin. Man, woman, gaijin How to say stranger in Japanese

My home is my tatami

The first task that a foreigner arriving in any country must solve is choosing housing. In Japan this matter is taken on a grand scale. In every block there is a Fudo-san office, where you will find almost any accommodation option you are interested in, provided that you have money, no pets and... you are not a foreigner. If it’s clear when it comes to money and animals (in Japan they take their care with great responsibility, and I never met a single stray dog ​​during my entire stay there), then it’s more difficult with guests from abroad. There are several terms in Japanese to define foreigners, the main one being “gaijin”.

Gaijin is a “person from the outside.” The term is not essentially offensive, but carries a connotation of Japanese condescension towards foreigners - people who are ugly externally, unbalanced internally, inattentive, stupid, with their own “cockroaches in their heads”, but generally safe if there are few of them. In general, gaijin in Japanese is approximately the same as German in Russian, if you forget for a moment about the idea of ​​the Germans as eternal enemies, that is, a person without a language is dumb. There is also a henna-gaijin - a strange foreigner, and a baka-gaijin - a stupid foreigner. All these are extremely important terms for adapting to life in Japan, but for now let’s return to housing.

It can be difficult for a foreigner to remove it, because most Japanese generally view foreigners with a tinge of mistrust, and for good reason. Japan is a country where 98% of the population is Japanese. Despite the fact that it is approximately the same size as Germany, the Japanese consider their country small - the islands are 70% covered by mountains, and the relatively flat Hokkaido is sparsely populated - cold. It turns out that 126 million people belonging to one people are concentrated in a relatively small area, the important features of which are discipline, groupism and careful observation of each other. If a Japanese person has done something wrong or committed a crime, he will definitely be found someday - the overall crime detection rate in the country is over 75%, and murders - 98%. Keeping track of a foreigner, much less predicting his actions, is much more difficult. He seems to be in full view, walking around like a fire tower, but at the same time it’s completely unclear what’s on his mind, and he might even run away abroad. Where are the guarantees that he will pay the rent on time and not pretend to be a dumb, deaf and blind baka-gaijin? To understand how visible gaijin is in Japan, I will give an example from my own practice. Once, in good weather, I hung a futon on the balcony - a mattress that is usually dried here in this way so that all sorts of biting organisms do not grow in it from the dampness. I hung it up and went to the store near the station, very nearby. In the store I was caught by a phone call. My neighbor Vadik called:

- Where are you?

- In the store, what?

“It’s raining, and your futon is drying on the balcony.” A neighbor called me, worried that she would get wet.

- Thank you. I'm right here, I'll be right back and take a picture. By the way, where are you? I haven't seen you for a long time.

– Yes, I’ve been in Hiroshima for a week, on a business trip.

- In Hiroshima? So are you calling from there?

- Well, yes. Have you seen the house opposite – across the garden? There's a Japanese granny there. She constantly watches you through binoculars. I saw that the futon was getting wet and you were gone, so I called your landlady. She found my wife, and my wife called me, and Vadik hung up.

But all this was later, but for now... If you don’t have much money, then renting an apartment can be quite problematic. Paying three monthly amounts for the first month is a normal practice, a kind of insurance for the homeowner in case something happens to the apartment he owns. And the monthly fee is quite a lot. I was lucky - the Japanese sensei found me an excellent apartment, consisting of a room with an area of ​​six tatami mats in the Japanese style (that is, apart from these tatami mats and a table with chairs that my sensei gave me, there was nothing there), as well as a kitchen with a two-burner stove, a bath and a toilet - all together with a total area of ​​six more tatami. One tatami has a standard size of 180 by 90 cm, that is, 12 tatami in my apartment are approximately 20 square meters in European terms. I lived near Oomori Station, very close to the capital’s main Yamanote railway line, and this pleasure cost 9 mana per month (1 mana – 10,000 yen), which at the then exchange rate was approximately $850. This amount also included utility bills, which according to Japanese standards is absolutely great. Although, of course, everything is relative - the famous translator Mitya Kovalenin, who moved into the same apartment after me, considered it not good enough and soon found another. Maybe he was confused by the small square bathtub in the Ofuro style, in which to heat the water it was necessary to strike a spark in a gas apparatus by turning a special handle, or the kitchen with a small barred window and a hallway measuring about 50 square centimeters? I don’t know, but I was happy with my apartment, and its price at least did not exceed the prices for similar apartments in our area.

The cost of an apartment directly depends on the type of house. There are two such types in Japan: apato and mansen (or manschen). Apato is an apartment (usually a small one, like mine, or a small one, like the one in which one of my friends lived, with a total (not living!) area of ​​6 tatami) in a two- or three-story building. These houses are most often metal and plastic or wooden. They are not subject to major repairs, but they are not afraid of earthquakes - the light but durable frame will only be carried away by a tsunami. As the houses become completely worn out, they are dismantled and new ones are assembled in their place. The older the house, the cheaper it is and the worse it is to live in. It's simple. There is no heating, the window may resemble a prison one, or maybe, like mine, it covers the entire wall. If you don’t close the thick curtains, you get the persistent feeling that you are a fish in a cramped aquarium.

The second category is mansen - high-rise buildings with apartments, as a rule, much larger in area and, accordingly, more expensive. My friends who lived in the center of Yokohama, a satellite city of Tokyo, rented a three-room apartment, comparable in size to an ordinary Moscow three-room apartment of the 1970s, for 25 mana per month - approximately $2,300.

Housing prices rose in Japan at the same time as prices for everything else rose in the last quarter of the last century. There were many reasons for this, the most exotic of them being the purchase of land by firms close to organized crime (the construction business in Japan is traditionally intertwined with the yakuza), non-repayment of “bad” bank loans and much more, which requires special explanations for the average person. An interesting detail is that in 1991 the highest price for land was recorded in the center of Tokyo - 400 thousand dollars (50 million yen) per square meter for office and 70 thousand dollars for residential development. By the way, pedantic Japanese realtors appreciated not only Tokyo. All of Japan was worth 2,300 trillion yen in the same 1991 - three times more expensive than the entire United States of America, taken together and exceeding Japan in area by 25 times.

After the economy began to stagnate, prices froze, and by the beginning of the new century they slowly crept down. Nevertheless, Japan is still such an expensive country that it is not always possible to clearly explain how expensive it is. This is especially difficult for Muscovites to understand, who are convinced that nothing in the world can be more expensive than the Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. If they do delve into the essence of the quoted numbers, then the Japanese are awarded the highest sign of New Russian recognition: shaking their heads from top to bottom and the word “super” with an emphasis on the “e”: we caught up with them! Really!

Well, God bless them, the new Russians. It is important that the Japanese themselves have not been spoiled by the housing issue. I didn’t notice the fetishization of tatami on a mass scale, like ours. Of course, everyone needs an apartment, or better yet a house, but it’s still almost impossible when you’re young, but over time you’ll probably be able to take out a loan for fifty years – and everything will be fine. A stable country with a stable economy - what else is needed to meet old age?

Gaijin. For most foreigners and Japanese I know, it's just a word. It means foreigner, and as non-Japanese living in Japan, we take it with humor: gaijin are us.

But for some expats it's more than just a word. This is a caustic definition with an unkind, deeply hidden subtext.

In an attempt to understand its meaning, I decided to consult linguists and Japanese language experts. One professor's observations deeply interested me.

Kevin M. Doak is a professor and Nippon Foundation Endowed Chair in Japanese Studies Department of East Asian Languages ​​and Cultures at Georgetown University ). He is the author of such works as Xavier's Legacy: Catholics in Contemporary Japanese Culture ( Note lane Francois Xavier (1506-52), Christian missionary, Jesuit, preached in Asia - in Goa, on the Malacca Peninsula, the Moluccas and Ceylon, in 1549-52 in Japan) and "The History of Nationalism in Modern Japan". He has translated numerous books, written op-eds for Sankei Shimbun, Sekai Nippon, and was even quoted by former Prime Minister Abe in his book Utsukushii kuni E (2006).

As Professor Doak explains, "gaijin" is a shortened form of "gaikokujin" - a person from another country. Some foreigners living in Japan believe that it should be translated literally: “non-person” (leaving out the word “kuni” - country) from the middle, but it is unlikely that most Japanese understand it that way. To them it means “foreigner” or “non-Japanese.” It certainly does not carry racist overtones: a gaijin can be a person of any race, including Japanese-Americans or Japanese-Brazilians, many of whom live in Japan.

“However, during and after the American Occupation, the term was commonly used to refer to the many non-Asians, largely white, who came to Japan. Since these people were noticeably different from the majority of the Japanese population, the word "gaijin" was used to say something like, "Look, it's someone different from us!" It is not uncommon for Japanese schoolchildren to point their fingers at foreigners and shout: “Gaijin yes!” (“gaijin da!”). These children are not hostile to the "gaijin", but are fascinated by them. They often run up to foreigners, try to talk to them, or giggle and run away in embarrassment. I don't think there is any cause for offense in these cases.

During the early post-war period, the term often took on an informal meaning to refer to white, especially American. Thus, some people attach both national and racist connotations to this word. But the rest simply mean foreigners, regardless of race or nationality. Some Japanese who don't like foreigners may have a judgmental tone; others, more politically correct, will insist on using the cumbersome and more formal expression "gaikokujin". But there are words with a much more negative meaning that the Japanese can use to refer to foreigners: “banjin”, “eibei kichiku”, “sankokujin” and so on, fortunately , quite rarely used. And of course, there are racist words in Japanese other than “gaijin.”

The professor expressed his personal opinion: “I think that foreigners living in Japan who are offended by any use of the word “gaijin” is a generally recognized phenomenon among foreigners (especially whites) who want to become Japanese in absolutely everything (culturally, biologically, socially) - compare with Loti Pierre in the novel “Lady Chrysanthemum”, Blackthorne in Clavell’s novel “Shogun” or James Bond in the film “You Only Live Twice”. For these Japanophiles, any hint that they are unable to become Japanese is taken as a personal insult. I think most of the offense against the word gaijin comes from these fears that they bring into the situation.”

Indeed, as the professor described his first visit to Japan, during my first stay in Kawagoe, some schoolchildren noticed me and pointed their fingers at me in amazement: “Gaijin! Gaijin! In fact, years later, the lack of attention in Japan is more surprising than the times I have been noticed. Even I notice foreigners on trains and watch them out of the corner of my eye. I seem to notice everyone. I even eavesdrop on them in restaurants and cafes, and I suspect the Japanese do the same to me. What language do they speak? Where are they from? Why are they here?

The kids who noticed me on my first day in Japan brought back memories of the picturesque middle-class neighborhood where I grew up. If we saw a black or Hispanic guy on the street, we knew he either worked for someone else or wasn't local. We watched them with curiosity from behind the curtains. Such a visit could become the topic of the day even among adults, transmitted over the phone and discussed in playgrounds and over meals.

I also recalled my experience as a jazz musician, when I worked in the “black” neighborhoods. As I walked down the street, I wondered if people were looking at me, wondering what I was doing in their neighborhood. I asked myself whether this attention was real or just what I imagined (the love I received from the listeners to whom I played was indescribable). But at the same time, I thought about the fundamental difference between Philadelphia and Japan: in America, the neighborhoods where you belong or not are located within a few blocks of each other, sometimes separated by a highway or a railroad. Japan is separated by a huge ocean, so my stay here is a big deal, although in recent years there have been more and more people like me (using statistics, roughly 1.5%, about three-quarters of whom are Asian).

I also reflected on my privileged status as a foreigner in Japan. It has happened, although not every day, that complete strangers have paid my bill at an izakaya bar, sometimes simply for trying to speak Japanese. A few years ago, a tipsy Japanese guy even took me to his home around midnight and introduced me to his wife... and later, after sobering up, to his college-age daughter (under the assumption that I would teach her Japanese). By the way, some Japanese parents were so friendly towards me that I played with their children (imagine a Japanese person so inclined to trust another unfamiliar Japanese person with a child, or an American easily handing a child over to a random foreigner!). The Japanese paid quite a lot of money to teach me English, without even asking for recommendations and respectfully calling me “sensei.”

The stories of “foreigner privilege” I have enjoyed as a result of superficial but positive stereotypes are too numerous to list. Sometimes this caused irritation. I want to be accepted for the person I am, not for what I look like. By the way, when my ethnicity is revealed, I am even more actively praised for the good deeds of “my people.” This behavior would be considered impolite in the West, but in Japan it is a sincere compliment.

Despite my privileged status, to say that I have never felt prejudice would be a lie. Police checks, for example, when just because you simply don’t look Japanese, they take you aside and question you. At the beginning of the conversation - an unnerving greeting, then: where are you coming from? where are you going? Obligatory confusing interrogation. Finally: where are you from? (the same question seems to be heard daily from everyone, especially taxi drivers). “America,” I say. “アメリカ人...” the policeman usually says, looking at my ID card, and politely hands it back. You can go. American.

These numerous incidents brought back memories of my time in high school in Philadelphia, when police officers, mostly white, would arbitrarily stop or even surround blacks “on suspicion.” Stories of police brutality that I had heard about, especially in the previous generation, came to mind. I was remembering the late 80s - early 90s, Rodney King and the Los Angeles Riot ( Note lane riots that occurred in Los Angeles from April 29 to May 4, 1992, when a jury acquitted four white police officers who beat African-American Rodney King for stubbornly resisting arrest for speeding.), condemnation heard over the radio against 911 and the police. I thought about the anger, the resentment, the resentment that drove black people onto the New Jersey Turnpike, and how lucky I was to be born white. I did not forget that all these memories belonged to another time and another country... perhaps it was some kind of cultural trauma.

Because of this, almost not a day goes by without thinking: “This is Japan, and I am a gaijin” and asking: “What does that mean?” I thought about this when the Japanese addressed me in completely unclassifiable working class jargon, not quite realizing that I was a foreigner who had absolutely no idea what they were saying. Or when I spoke to the Japanese in their language, and they answered me in English or said: “Sorry, I don’t speak English.” But I speak Japanese!

) - abbreviation of the Japanese word gaikokujin (Japanese: 外国人), meaning "foreigner".

Hieroglyphs that make up a word gaikokujin(外国人), means 外 "outside", 国 "country" and 人 "person". Thus, the word literally means "a person from an outside country." In common parlance the abbreviated form is used gaijin(外人), containing only the characters 外 "outside" and 人 "person"; thus the word means "a person from outside." Therefore, many foreigners living in Japan consider the word gaijin offensive.

Origin and history

Gaikokujin or gaijin- relatively new words in Japanese. The Portuguese, the first Europeans to visit Japan, were called nambanjin(南蛮人 - “southern barbarians”), due to the fact that their ships came from the south, and the sailors were considered rude and discourteous. When English and Dutch adventurers reached Japan 50 years later, at the beginning of the 17th century, they began to be called Komojin(紅毛人 - “red-headed people”).

When the Tokugawa regime was forced to open Japan to contact with the outside world, Westerners were generally referred to as ijin(異人 - “another person”). This is a shortened form of ikokujin(異国人 - "person from another country") or ihojin(異邦人 - “person from another homeland”). These words were previously used for Japanese from another feudal area.

After the Meiji Restoration, the government coined the word to refer to foreigners gaikokujin, which gradually replaced the words ijin, ikokujin And ihojin. When the Empire of Japan took over Korea and Taiwan, the word began to be used for the population of the imperial territories naikokujin(内国人 - “person from the interior”). After World War II, this term lost its meaning, gaikokujin became the official term for referring to non-Japanese people, and all other terms fell out of use.

Modern use (in the 21st century)

In Japanese, shortened versions of long words are often used in common parlance. However, when the shortened form becomes popular and the colloquial meaning becomes generally accepted, the original form of the word may practically disappear from use.

The most formal term is Gaikoku no kata(外国の方 - approximately “person from another country”), followed by gaikokujin, and then gaijin. The choice of wording has its own nuances. Yes, word gaijin included in the list of words not recommended for use on television and radio.

People of Japanese descent who live or were born in other countries are called Nikkei-jin, and children from mixed marriages - hafu(from English half half).

Word gaijin can be used as an address. In this case it is usually used with a nominal suffix -san.

Sometimes the Japanese call foreigners this way, even when they themselves are abroad.

In cinema

“My Fiancé is a Foreigner” is a Japanese film directed by Kazuaki Ue, which, using the example of a romantic story, shows various difficult situations that often arise when representatives of different cultures interact closely with the Japanese.

see also

Links

Alexander Kulanov Vasily Molodyakov about the “immigrant” law in Japan, the Russian diaspora and care for compatriots (Russian) (07/15/2009). Archived from the original on September 1, 2011. Retrieved December 4, 2010.

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

• Bulaevo
• Kremenets (disambiguation)

See what "Gaijin" is in other dictionaries:

gaijin- noun, number of synonyms: 1 foreigner (23) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary

baka-gaijin- Japanese American... Universal additional practical explanatory dictionary by I. Mostitsky

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Hepburn system- Japanese writing Kanji ... Wikipedia

Non-Russian- Russians have a collective term for non-Russians, foreigners, inozemtsy, foreigners. In Dahl's dictionary (1866) it is interpreted as “foreigners, aliens, foreigners” (inaccessible link). In Efremova’s explanatory word-formation dictionary... ... Wikipedia

Farang- Farang statue at Wat Pho, Bangkok Farang (Thai: ฝรั่ง, transcription: farang, Lao: phalang) is a word used by Thais to refer to Europeans. A word... Wikipedia

Clavell, James- James Clavell James Clavell Birth Name: Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell Date of Birth: October 10, 1924 Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia ... Wikipedia

) - abbreviation of the Japanese word gaikokujin (Japanese: 外国人), meaning "foreigner".

Hieroglyphs that make up a word gaikokujin(外国人), means 外 "outside", 国 "country" and 人 "person". Thus, the word literally means "a person from an outside country." In common parlance the abbreviated form is used gaijin(外人), containing only the characters 外 "outside" and 人 "person"; thus the word means "a person from outside." Therefore, many foreigners living in Japan consider the word gaijin offensive.

Origin and history

Gaikokujin or gaijin- relatively new words in Japanese. The Portuguese, the first Europeans to visit Japan, were called nambanjin(南蛮人 - “southern barbarians”), due to the fact that their ships came from the south, and the sailors were considered rude and discourteous. When English and Dutch adventurers reached Japan 50 years later, at the beginning of the 17th century, they began to be called Komojin(紅毛人 - “red-headed people”).

When the Tokugawa regime was forced to open Japan to contact with the outside world, Westerners were generally referred to as ijin(異人 - “another person”). This is a shortened form of ikokujin(異国人 - "person from another country") or ihojin(異邦人 - “person from another homeland”). These words were previously used for Japanese from another feudal area.

After the Meiji Restoration, the government coined the word to refer to foreigners gaikokujin, which gradually replaced the words ijin, ikokujin And ihojin. When the Empire of Japan took over Korea and Taiwan, the word began to be used for the population of the imperial territories naikokujin(内国人 - “person from the interior”). After World War II, this term lost its meaning, gaikokujin became the official term for referring to non-Japanese people, and all other terms fell out of use.

Modern use (in the 21st century)

In Japanese, shortened versions of long words are often used in common parlance. However, when the shortened form becomes popular and the colloquial meaning becomes generally accepted, the original form of the word may practically disappear from use.

The most formal term is Gaikoku no kata(外国の方 - approximately “person from another country”), followed by gaikokujin, and then gaijin. The choice of wording has its own nuances. Yes, word gaijin included in the list of words not recommended for use on television and radio.

People of Japanese descent who live or were born in other countries are called Nikkei-jin, and children from mixed marriages - hafu(from English half half).

Word gaijin can be used as an address. In this case it is usually used with a nominal suffix -san.

Sometimes the Japanese call foreigners this way, even when they themselves are abroad.

In cinema

“My Fiancé is a Foreigner” is a Japanese film directed by Kazuaki Ue, which, using the example of a romantic story, shows various difficult situations that often arise when representatives of different cultures interact closely with the Japanese.

see also

Links

Alexander Kulanov Vasily Molodyakov about the “immigrant” law in Japan, the Russian diaspora and care for compatriots (Russian) (07/15/2009). Archived from the original on September 1, 2011. Retrieved December 4, 2010.

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what "Gaijin" is in other dictionaries:

Noun, number of synonyms: 1 foreigner (23) Dictionary of synonyms ASIS. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary

baka-gaijin- Japanese American... Universal additional practical explanatory dictionary by I. Mostitsky

It is proposed to rename this page to Gaijin. Explanation of the reasons and discussion on the Wikipedia page: To rename / March 8, 2012. Perhaps its current name does not correspond to the norms of the modern Russian language and/or rules... ... Wikipedia

Japanese writing Kanji ... Wikipedia

Russians use non-Rus as a collective term, foreigners, inozemtsy, ino(alien) strangers. In Dahl's dictionary (1866) it is interpreted as “foreigners, aliens, foreigners” (inaccessible link). In Efremova’s explanatory word-formation dictionary... ... Wikipedia

Farang statue at Wat Pho, Bangkok Farang (Thai: ฝรั่ง, transcription: farang, Lao: phalang) is a word used by Thais to refer to Europeans. A word... Wikipedia

James Clavell James Clavell Birth Name: Charles Edmund Dumaresque Clavell Date of Birth: October 10, 1924 Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia ... Wikipedia