Gaijin vs Gaikokujin: Is the Japanese Word for Foreigner Racist?

Something that comes up constantly among foreigners living in Japan is the word gaijin [外人]. It means foreigner, it is used every day, and it is also the word at the center of one of the most persistent arguments about language and race in Japan. In this article I want to look at where the word comes from, how it is actually used, and why people keep arguing about it.

The kanji make it sound simpler than it is. The character [外] means outside or exterior, [国] means country, region and state, and [人] refers to people. Put [外] and [人] together and you get 外人, gaijin. Most people assume it is simply a clipped version of gaikokujin [外国人]. The oldest written uses are far older than the word gaikokujin itself, and they do not mean foreigner at all. In the 13th-century Heike Monogatari you find 外人もなき所に兵具をとゝのへ, "assembling arms where there are no gaijin", and there the word means outsiders and potential enemies. The Noh play Kurama tengu has a servant objecting to a travelling monk with the line "a gaijin does not belong here". Even the pronunciation is debated: the 13th-century reading may have been kotobito, udokihito or gwaijin.

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Why does the word gaijin cause so much discussion?

Look up gaikokujin [外国人] on sites like jisho and you get foreigner, foreign citizen, person from outside the country, and even alien. Alien? The English word does not only mean extraterrestrials, and an alien is literally from outside the country, from outside the earth, from outside the galaxy. gaijin [外人] carries a similar extra layer: on jisho.org the word also points to the English outsider, which means stranger, outsider, intruder, layman and, in older use, profane. The dictionary itself flags that as an archaic sense that is rarely used today.

Japanese is full of synonyms and of words with several meanings, and even fluent speakers get caught out. A small example from my own life: I once misread a Japanese woman using the word yasumi [休み], which can mean a day off, a holiday, or simply a night's sleep.

So how does dropping the character for country [国] cause so much conflict? Because the short form is everywhere: in magazines, on television, in everyday conversation, and even in sports reporting, where foreign players are called gaijinsenshu [外人選手]. It is also one of the terms Japanese broadcasters now try to avoid. Nanette Gottlieb, who taught Japanese studies at the University of Queensland, noted that the word had become controversial and was avoided by most Japanese television broadcasters, and that what really irritates people is the sense of exclusion when the word is paired with the adjective hen na [変な], "peculiar foreigner", a phrase that used to be heard often on Japanese television.

Disappointed descendants who are not Japanese

Another major source of friction sits in the community of Japanese descendants living in Japan. Children of Brazilian or Filipino parents, born in Japan and raised with Japanese at home and at school, are still called gaijin, because they are not Japanese citizens. The label does not track ancestry: a Japanese person born and raised abroad, outside the usual patterns of Japanese upbringing, can be called gaijin too, while a non-Japanese person who is completely immersed in Japanese language and culture can avoid the word altogether.

The same reflex shows up in Brazil, where people whose families never had any connection to Japan are often called Asian or Japanese, and sometimes mistaken for Chinese or Koreans. It happens with mixed-race people on both sides of the Pacific, and in neither case does it need to be malicious to be irritating. If you want a picture of that everyday life, the Brazilian shops and restaurants in Japan are a good place to look.

One more word is worth knowing: mixed-race people in Japan are called hafu [ハーフ], from the English half. There is also a pun that plays on gaijin. Swap [外] (outside) for [害] (harm) and you get 害人, which is read exactly like gaijin, a phrase that turns up in Japanese online discussions, at least since 2023, and that Japanese dictionaries now list as derogatory internet slang for a troublesome foreigner. One character is the difference between someone from outside and someone who causes harm.

• Brazilian polyglot living in Japan (an example of someone who managed to integrate into Japanese society, even without Japanese ancestry);

Words related to foreigner [gaikokujin]

Japan has had several words for foreigner, and none of the early ones were friendly. The Portuguese who arrived in the 16th century were called nanbanjin, "southern barbarians", and the trade with them is still known as the Nanban trade. British and Dutch adventurers such as William Adams were known as kōmōjin, "red-haired people". When the Tokugawa shogunate opened the country after two centuries of isolation, Westerners were usually called ijin, "different people", a short form of ikokujin, "people of a different country", or ihōjin, "people of a different motherland". All of those are gone from everyday speech. gaikokujin itself appears in writing from around 1235, dropped out of use for centuries, came back in 1838 and was popularized by the Meiji government, which used it in official documents. As the empire expanded into Korea and Taiwan, naikokujin, "people within the country", was used for the population of the colonies, which is a reminder of how far the exclusion went beyond everyday slang.

Anyone who lived in Japan for a while also knows the foreigner card, 外国人登録証 (gaikokujin tōrokushō), which until 2012 every foreign citizen had to carry and which was known in English as the Alien Registration Card. The registration system itself was abolished on 9 July 2012. Since then, mid-to-long-term residents carry the 在留カード (zairyū kādo, Card of Residence) and special permanent residents the 特別永住者証明書. The old card is gone from daily life, and the word 外国人 is as present as ever.

The character [胡] literally means barbarian and also means foreigner. It turns up in words like suspicious, shady and questionable, but also in perfectly innocent compounds such as 胡椒 (pepper) and 胡瓜 (cucumber); its origin lies in the ethnic groups of China. The compound 毛唐人 was also used for Chinese people and, by extension, for Europeans. The problem with that word is the character [毛], hair: foreigners were literally called hairy, probably because of their beards.

Here is a short list of words around gaikokujin:

English	Japanese	Romaji
Imported, foreign (came from outside)	外来	gairai
Foreign currency, foreign money	外貨	gaika
Foreign country	外国	gaikoku
Minister of Foreign Affairs	外相	gaishō
Another country, another state, foreign land	他国	takoku
Xenophobia	外国人嫌悪	gaikokujinken'o
White person	白人	hakujin

• How is xenophobia, racism and prejudice in Japan?
• Are foreigners discriminated against in Japan?
• Meiwaku Gaikokujin: problematic foreigners in Japan
• Is there prejudice against hair types and colors in Japan?

Why most Japanese think the word is harmless

Most Japanese, particularly younger ones, have no idea where the word comes from. To them gaijin is simply the short form of gaikokujin, in the same way that poketto monsutā becomes Pokemon and kokusai rengō becomes kokuren. Japanese is very good at shortening things: foreign cars are gai-sha [外車], and foreigners are gaijin. It happens automatically, and for the person saying it, it is perfectly normal.

The problem starts where the word turns personal. In the FY2024 Basic Survey of Foreign Residents (令和6年度 在留外国人に対する基礎調査) carried out by Japan's Immigration Services Agency in the autumn of 2024, 12.7 % of foreign residents said they had personally experienced hate speech, and a further 31.6 % had seen or heard it, 44.3 % in total. The most common places were the internet (65.5 %), leaflets in public spaces (19.0 %) and demonstrations (18.7 %). At the end of 2024, 3.77 million people with a foreign residency status were living in Japan, a record.

One case that is still cited in Japan is the one of Debito Arudou and his family. The Japanese citizen born in the United States in 1965 was refused entry to a public bathhouse in Otaru, Hokkaido, in 2001. A lower court dismissed the case, an appeals court overturned that ruling, and the Supreme Court eventually sided with the three plaintiffs and ordered the operator to pay each of them one million yen (around 8,000 euros) in damages. The case is still cited as proof of how quickly a word can turn into an incident.

This is exactly what the debate comes down to: whether a word is racist is decided by context, not by the dictionary. The sociologist Mayumi Itoh wrote in 1995 that while the term itself has no derogatory meaning, it emphasizes the exclusiveness of the Japanese attitude and has therefore picked up pejorative connotations that many Westerners resent. The Canadian-Brazilian journalist David Suzuki described the other side of it: "While gaijin is not derogatory, I find that its use is harsh because I sense doors clanging shut on me when I'm called one."

Where the debate stands today

Official usage is unambiguous: authorities and newspapers use 外国人, and for people living in Japan with a foreign residency status the term 外国人居住者 (gaikokujin kyozai sha) has become standard. Most Japanese broadcasters now keep 外人 off the air, and in everyday speech the word is on the decline, though it has not disappeared.

There is also a distinction that rarely gets explained. In practice, gaijin and gaikokujin usually refer to foreigners of non-East Asian ethnicity. Ethnic Chinese and Korean residents are normally called by their nationality instead, and descendants of Japan's wartime colonies, mostly Koreans with special permanent residency, are called zainichi (在日). In other words, gaijin was never a neutral word for "anyone foreign": it has always drawn a line between "one of us" and "not one of us".

The argument has not stayed inside the dictionary. It moved into forums and comment sections, where a shortened word turns into an insult and where the 害人 variant becomes a way of calling all foreigners troublesome. Every language has its own version of the same argument: Thai farang, Spanish gringo, Māori Pākehā, the English "foreigner". The question is always the same, and the answers never are.

What to say in Japan

The practical rule is simple. In formal settings, in official business, in the media and with someone you have just met, use 外国人 or 海外の方 (people from overseas). Among Japanese friends, where the word is used without heat, you will still hear it, and plenty of Japanese use it about themselves as a joke about their own accent.

Be careful with baka gaijin, where the word turns into an insult, with 害人, and with anything that makes a person's origin the point of the sentence. And if you hear "Japan only" in Japan, the problem is social rather than linguistic: some shops treat foreigners as problems, and gaijin hunters, the Japanese who love foreigners, are the other side of the same argument.

So should you be bothered by the word gaijin? On its own, no. It is an ordinary contraction that most Japanese speakers use without a second thought, and there is a fair case for reading it as nothing more than that. What deserves attention is the moment it is used to draw a line, to label someone a problem, or to talk about a group instead of a person. The same goes for the words we use at home: it is easier to ask what "foreigner" means in our own language than to explain what it means in Japanese.