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For other uses, see JAP (disambiguation).
Headlines announcing Japan's surrender in World War II

Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese." Today it is generally regarded as an ethnic slur among Japanese minority populations in other countries, although English-speaking countries differ in the degree to which they consider the term offensive. In the United States, Japanese Americans have come to find the term controversial or offensive, even when used as an abbreviation.[1] In the past, Jap was not considered primarily offensive; however, during and after the events of World War II, the term became derogatory.[2]

History and etymology

WWII propaganda poster using a rhyming slogan in its text

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Jap" as an abbreviation for "Japanese" was in colloquial use in London around 1880.[3] An example of benign usage was the previous naming of Boondocks Road in Jefferson County, Texas, originally named "Jap Road" when it was built in 1905 to honor a popular local rice farmer from Japan.[4]

Later popularized during World War II to describe those of Japanese descent, "Jap" was then commonly used in newspaper headlines to refer to the Japanese and Imperial Japan. "Jap" became a derogatory term during the war, more so than "Nip."[2] Veteran and author Paul Fussell explains the usefulness of the word during the war for creating effective propaganda by saying that "Japs" "was a brisk monosyllable handy for slogans like 'Rap the Jap' or 'Let's Blast the Jap Clean Off the Map.'"[2] Some in the United States Marine Corps tried to combine the word "Japs" with "apes" to create a new description, "Japes", for the Japanese; this neologism never became popular.[2]

In the United States the term is now considered derogatory; the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary notes it is "usually disparaging".[5][6] A snack food company in Chicago named Japps Foods (for the company founder) changed their name and eponymous potato chip brand to Jays Foods shortly after Pearl Harbor to avoid any negative associations with the name.[7]

Spiro Agnew was criticized in the media in 1968 for an offhand remark, intended to be jocular, referring to reporter Gene Oishi as a "fat Jap".[8]

In Texas, under pressure from civil rights groups, Jefferson County commissioners in 2004 decided to drop the name "Jap Road" from a 4.3-mile (6.9 km) road near the city of Beaumont. Also in adjacent Orange County, "Jap Lane" has also been targeted by civil rights groups.[9] The road was originally named for the contributions of Kichimatsu Kishi and the farming colony he founded. And in Arizona, the state department of transportation renamed "Jap Road" near Topock, Arizona to "Bonzai Slough Road" to note the presence of Japanese agricultural workers and family-owned farms along the Colorado River there in the early 20th century. [citation needed]

Reaction in Japan

In 2003, the Japanese deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Yoshiyuki Motomura, protested the North Korean ambassador's use of the term in retaliation for a Japanese diplomat's use of the term "North Korea" instead of the official name, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".[10]

In 2011, following the term's offhand use in a March 26 article appearing in The Spectator ("white-coated Jap bloke"), the Minister of the Japanese Embassy in London protested that "most Japanese people find the word 'Jap' offensive, irrespective of the circumstances in which it is used."[11]

Across the world

Jap-Fest is an annual Japanese car show in Ireland.[12] In 1970, the Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada opened the "Jungle Jap" boutique in Paris.[13]

The word Jap is used in Dutch as well, where it is also considered an ethnic slur. It frequently appears in the compound Jappenkampen 'Jap camps', referring to Japanese internment camps for Dutch citizens in the Japanese-occupied Dutch Indies.

See also

References

  1. ^ Gil Asakawa, Nikkeiview: JapJapJapJapJapJapJap, July 18, 2004.
  2. ^ a b c d Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 117.
  3. ^ "Jap". From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
  4. ^ Tolerance.org: Texas County Bans 'Jap Road' Archived 2005-09-14 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ "Jap", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
  6. ^ AskOxford: Jap
  7. ^ [1] Archived 2011-07-25 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "The Nation: Fat Jap Trap". Time. February 28, 1972. Retrieved April 22, 2014.
  9. ^ Texas Community in Grip of a Kind of Road Rage
  10. ^ Shane Green, Treaty plan could end Korean War, The Age, November 6, 2003
  11. ^ Ken Okaniwa (9 April 2011). "Not acceptable". The Spectator. Retrieved 22 July 2012. His brief letter continued, noting that the term had been used in the context of the then-recent 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster still-ongoing; "I find the gratuitous use of a word reviled by everyone in Japan utterly inappropriate. I strongly request that you refrain from allowing the use of this term in any future articles that refer to Japan."
  12. ^ "Homepage". Jap-Fest. Retrieved 1 August 2014.
  13. ^ William Wetherall, "Jap, Jappu, and Zyappu, The emotional tapestries of pride and prejudice", July 12, 2006.
Look up Jap in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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