Japanophile: what the word means

Do you know what a Japanophile is? Many people enjoy anime and manga, which is why they call themselves otaku. That article already explains the gap: in Japan the word can still sound harsh, while a lot of fans outside Japan use it as an ordinary name for themselves.

Others like the history, the people, or the language, and they still get the same label. If you are one of those people, you now have another term: Japanophile.

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What does Japanophile mean?

Japanophilia is the interest, and a Japanophile is the person. Merriam-Webster defines one as somebody who especially admires and likes Japan or Japanese ways. The word is built like Francophile or Anglophile: the place comes first, and -phile marks fondness for it.

The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for the noun is from 1905, in writing by Douglas Sladen. You will sometimes see the first use pushed back to the early 18th century, or to the late 18th and early 19th. Those centuries are when Europeans were already studying Japan, under tight limits on foreign trade. In the OED's record, the English noun starts in 1905. The same entry still puts the word under 0.01 occurrences per million words of modern written English.

In Japanese, the nearest term is 親日 (shinnichi). A standard dictionary gloss is that a foreigner has goodwill toward Japan. The person is usually a 親日家 (shinnichi-ka) or part of a 親日派 (shinnichi-ha). The antonym on that dictionary line is 反日 (hannichi). The vocabulary describes an attitude, often in public life. Fans sometimes borrow shinnichi as the Japanese form of Japanophile. Goodwill toward the country and a nickname for a hobby describe different situations.

A bit of history about Japanophile

The curiosity is older than the English word. During the Edo period, foreign trade was tightly limited, and the Dutch post on Dejima in Nagasaki was one of the few working doors. Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish botanist working as a surgeon for the Dutch East India Company, arrived in August 1775. In 1784 he published Flora Japonica, the first flora of Japan in Linnaeus's system.

Philipp Franz von Siebold, a German physician, reached Dejima on 11 August 1823. Patients paid him in everyday objects, tools, and woodblock prints, and those payments became a large collection. Japan expelled him on 22 October 1829. The plants are mostly Thunberg's legacy, and the objects are mostly Siebold's. The OED's evidence for the English word starts in 1905, well after both men had left Dejima.

Lafcadio Hearn sits closer to the word we actually have. Born on the Greek island of Lefkada, with a Greek mother and an Irish father, he made his home in Japan in 1890, took the name Koizumi Yakumo, and wrote about Japanese stories and customs for readers abroad. Later writers call him a Japanophile, and the dictionary sense fits someone who admired Japanese ways and stayed. Jules Brunet sometimes appears beside them. He was a French army officer who stayed and fought in the Boshin War, which is a military story rather than a record of devotion to Japanese art or daily life.

20th century

In the first decade of the 20th century, several British writers praised Japan in print. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905 had shown a non-European state defeating Russia, and people who worried about British industry looked at Japanese organization for a lesson. Beatrice Webb, writing in late 1904, noted Japanese national efficiency and self-control, and she treated that record as support for collective organization. H. G. Wells gave the voluntary ruling order in A Modern Utopia (1905) the name samurai.

Germany, close at hand, looked like a rival, and Japan looked like a possible partner. The Encyclopaedia Britannica dates the Anglo-Japanese Alliance from 1902 to 1923. It bound Britain and Japan to support their interests in China and Korea, and it was renewed in 1905 and again in 1911. On the strength of that tie, Japan entered the First World War on the Allied side. The alliance outlasted the fighting. After the war Britain let it lapse, and the Four-Power Treaty ended it in 1923.

Will you switch from "otaku" to "Japanophile"?

If you only watch anime or read light novels and manga, that is fine. In the West you can keep calling yourself an otaku, the way a lot of fans do. If you are like us, and the interest runs further, Japanophile is an English word you can pick up. Few people do, which matches how rarely it shows up in print. The stress falls on pan, and the last syllable rhymes with file.

A third label sits beside those two: weeaboo. It is an insult for a non-Japanese person who leans on a stereotype of Japan, usually through anime, and it still stings when someone else applies it. Otaku changes with the room you are in, while Japanophile stays a dictionary word for admiration. I believe that the best thing is not to label yourself at all.

Nobody is forcing the choice. If you have a question or a suggestion, leave it in the comments.