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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the abbreviation/slur. For other uses, see JAP (disambiguation).

Headlines announcing Japan's surrender in World War II

Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". It is an ethnic slur.

In the United States, some Japanese Americans have come to find the term very
offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. Prior to the Attack on Pearl
Harbor, Jap was not considered primarily offensive. However, following the bombing of
Pearl Harbor and the Japanese declaration of war on the US, the term began to be
used derogatorily, as anti-Japanese sentiment increased.[1] During the war, signs using
the epithet, with messages such as "No Japs Allowed", were hung in some businesses,
with service denied to customers of Japanese descent. [2]

History and etymology[edit]

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 began to be used in a derogatory fashion during the war, more so than Nip.
[1]
 Veteran and author Paul Fussell explains the rhetorical 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'".[1] 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.[1]
In the United States the term has now been considered derogatory; the Merriam-
Webster Online Dictionary notes it is "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 the Attack on Pearl Harbor to
avoid any negative associations with the name. [7]
Spiro Agnew was criticized in the media in 1968 for an offhand remark 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. 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. 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] In November 2018, in Kansas,
automatically generated license plates which included three digits and "JAP" were
recalled after a man of Japanese ancestry saw a plate with that pattern and complained
to the state.[10]

Reaction in Japan[edit]
Koto Matsudaira, Japan's Permanent Representatives to the United Nations, was asked
whether he disapproved of the use of the term on a television program in June 1957,
and reportedly replied, "Oh, I don't care. It's a [sic] English word. It's maybe American
slang. I don't know. If you care, you are free to use it." [11] Matsudaira later received a
letter from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL),[12] and apologized for his
earlier remarks upon being interviewed by reporters from Honolulu and San Francisco.
[13]
 He then pledged cooperation with the JACL to help eliminate the term Jap from daily
use.[14]
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".[15]
In 2011, after 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 'Japs' offensive, irrespective of the
circumstances in which it is used".[16]

Around the world[edit]

Jap-Fest is an annual Japanese car show in Ireland. [17] In 1970, the Japanese fashion
designer Kenzo Takada opened the Jungle Jap boutique in Paris.[18]

Neutral sign advertising "Jap Rice" in Singapore

In Singapore[19] and Hong Kong,[20] the term is used freely as a contraction of the

adjective Japanese rather than as a derogatory term. The Australian news service Asia
Pulse also used the term in 2008.[21]
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.[22]
In Brazil, the term japa is sometimes used in place of the standard japonês as both a
noun and an adjective. Although not considered offensive in the vein of the English Jap,
its use assumes a familiarity with the interlocutor that may be inappropriate in formal
contexts.[23] Moreover, while common, the use of japa in reference to any person of East
Asian appearance, regardless of their specific ancestry, carries a pejorative
connotation.[24]
In Canada, the term Jap Oranges was once very common, and was not considered
derogatory, given the widespread Canadian tradition of eating imported Japanese-
grown oranges at Christmas dating back to the 1880s (to the degree that Canada at one
time imported by far the bulk of the Japanese orange crop each year), but after WW2 as
consumers were still hesitant to purchase products from Japan [25] the term Jap was
gradually dropped and they began to be marketed as "Mandarin Oranges". Today the
term Jap Oranges is typically only used by older Canadians.[citation needed]
In the UK, the term is variously seen as neutral or offensive. For instance, Paul
McCartney used the term in his 1980 instrumental song "Frozen Jap" from McCartney
II, maintaining that he had not intended to cause offense; the song's title was changed
to "Frozen Japanese" for the Japanese market.[26] "Nip" is the term that is usually used in
the UK when the intention is to cause offence.[27]

See also[edit]
 Nip, a similar slur
 Anti-Japanese sentiment
 Guizi
 Jjokbari (Korean)
 Xiao riben (Chinese)

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World
War, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 117.
2. ^ Gil Asakawa, Nikkeiview: Jap, July 18, 2004.
3. ^ "Jap"[permanent dead link]. From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
4. ^ "Tolerance.org: Texas County Bans 'Jap Road'". Archived from  the original on September
14, 2005.
5. ^ "Jap", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
6. ^ "Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data". languages.oup.com.
7. ^ [1] Archived July 25, 2011, 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". September 29, 2007. Archived
from  the original on 2007-09-29.
10. ^ Noticias, Univision. "¿Por qué en Kansas están retirando las matrículas de automóviles con
las letras JAP?".  Univision. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
11. ^ "Protest envoy acceptance of 'Jap'".  Densho. Pacific Citizen. 2 August 1957. Retrieved 19
July  2018.
12. ^ Miyakawa, Wataru (9 July 1957). "Reply to letter regarding use of term "Jap" on a television
program".  Densho. Retrieved 9 July  2018.
 13. ^ "Matsudaira sorry on acceptance of 'Jap'". Densho. Pacific Citizen. 9 August 1957.
Retrieved 19 July  2018.
14. ^ "Matsudaira to cooperate in JACL campaign to depopularize 'Jap'".  Densho. Pacific Citizen.
16 August 1957. Retrieved  19 July 2018.
15. ^ Shane Green, Treaty plan could end Korean War, The Age, November 6, 2003
16. ^ 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."
17. ^ "Homepage". Jap-Fest. Archived from  the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 1
August  2014.
18. ^ William Wetherall, "Jap, Jappu, and Zyappu, The emotional tapestries of pride and
prejudice"[permanent dead link], July 12, 2006.
19. ^ Power up with Jap lunch, The New Paper, 18 May 2006
20. ^ "Dept. of Jap. Studies. C.U.H.K. -- Dept. Info".  www.cuhk.edu.hk.
21. ^ "Chinese Capital Inflow to Leave Taiwan Vulnerable: Jap Newspaper". Asia Pulse. March
26, 2008.
22. ^ Walsum, Sander van (2019-08-14).  "'In Japan zijn die Jappenkampen nooit een thema
geweest'". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 2023-01-07.
23. ^ "Combinações inusitadas do sushi brasileiro viram tendência até no
Japão".  www.uol.com.br.
24. ^ Hypeness, Redação (July 7, 2017).  "Ele desenhou os motivos pelos quais não devemos
chamar asiáticos de 'japa' e dizer que são todos iguais".  Hypeness.
25. ^ British Columbia Dept. of Agriculture, "Japanese Mandarins" [2] Archived 2013-10-24 at
the Wayback Machine, 2008
26. ^ PAUL McCARTNEY TALKS McCARTNEY II, SONGWRITING AND MORE! | 1980
Interview, retrieved 2022-08-12
27. ^ Vries, Paul de (2022-03-31). "The Welcome Death of a Derogatory Term | JAPAN
Forward". japan-forward.com. Retrieved 2022-08-12.

External links[edit]
  The dictionary definition of jap at Wiktionary
 Jap in literature
 U.S. Government publication on spotting Japs
show
v

e
Ethnic slurs
Categories: 
 Anti-Japanese sentiment
 Asian-American issues
 Anti–East Asian slurs
 Japan–United States relations
 English words
  This page was last edited on 14 May 2023, at 06:28 (UTC).
 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
 Privacy policy

 About Wikipedia

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 Contact Wikipedia

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 Cookie statement

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  Log in
Personal tools


Contents
 hide

(Top)


History and etymology


Reaction in Japan


Around the world


See also


References


External links

Jap
12 languages
 Article
 Talk
 Read
 Edit
 View history
Tools

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
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the abbreviation/slur. For other uses, see JAP (disambiguation).
Headlines announcing Japan's surrender in World War II

Jap is an English abbreviation of the word "Japanese". It is an ethnic slur.

In the United States, some Japanese Americans have come to find the term very
offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. Prior to the Attack on Pearl
Harbor, Jap was not considered primarily offensive. However, following the bombing of
Pearl Harbor and the Japanese declaration of war on the US, the term began to be
used derogatorily, as anti-Japanese sentiment increased.[1] During the war, signs using
the epithet, with messages such as "No Japs Allowed", were hung in some businesses,
with service denied to customers of Japanese descent. [2]

History and etymology[edit]

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 began to be used in a derogatory fashion during the war, more so than Nip.
  Veteran and author Paul Fussell explains the rhetorical usefulness of the word during
[1]

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'".[1] 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.[1]
In the United States the term has now been considered derogatory; the Merriam-
Webster Online Dictionary notes it is "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 the Attack on Pearl Harbor to
avoid any negative associations with the name. [7]
Spiro Agnew was criticized in the media in 1968 for an offhand remark 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. 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. 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] In November 2018, in Kansas,
automatically generated license plates which included three digits and "JAP" were
recalled after a man of Japanese ancestry saw a plate with that pattern and complained
to the state.[10]

Reaction in Japan[edit]
Koto Matsudaira, Japan's Permanent Representatives to the United Nations, was asked
whether he disapproved of the use of the term on a television program in June 1957,
and reportedly replied, "Oh, I don't care. It's a [sic] English word. It's maybe American
slang. I don't know. If you care, you are free to use it." [11] Matsudaira later received a
letter from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL),[12] and apologized for his
earlier remarks upon being interviewed by reporters from Honolulu and San Francisco.
[13]
 He then pledged cooperation with the JACL to help eliminate the term Jap from daily
use.[14]
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".[15]
In 2011, after 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 'Japs' offensive, irrespective of the
circumstances in which it is used".[16]
Around the world[edit]
Jap-Fest is an annual Japanese car show in Ireland. [17] In 1970, the Japanese fashion
designer Kenzo Takada opened the Jungle Jap boutique in Paris.[18]

Neutral sign advertising "Jap Rice" in Singapore

In Singapore[19] and Hong Kong,[20] the term is used freely as a contraction of the

adjective Japanese rather than as a derogatory term. The Australian news service Asia
Pulse also used the term in 2008.[21]
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.[22]
In Brazil, the term japa is sometimes used in place of the standard japonês as both a
noun and an adjective. Although not considered offensive in the vein of the English Jap,
its use assumes a familiarity with the interlocutor that may be inappropriate in formal
contexts.[23] Moreover, while common, the use of japa in reference to any person of East
Asian appearance, regardless of their specific ancestry, carries a pejorative
connotation.[24]
In Canada, the term Jap Oranges was once very common, and was not considered
derogatory, given the widespread Canadian tradition of eating imported Japanese-
grown oranges at Christmas dating back to the 1880s (to the degree that Canada at one
time imported by far the bulk of the Japanese orange crop each year), but after WW2 as
consumers were still hesitant to purchase products from Japan [25] the term Jap was
gradually dropped and they began to be marketed as "Mandarin Oranges". Today the
term Jap Oranges is typically only used by older Canadians.[citation needed]
In the UK, the term is variously seen as neutral or offensive. For instance, Paul
McCartney used the term in his 1980 instrumental song "Frozen Jap" from McCartney
II, maintaining that he had not intended to cause offense; the song's title was changed
to "Frozen Japanese" for the Japanese market.[26] "Nip" is the term that is usually used in
the UK when the intention is to cause offence.[27]

See also[edit]
 Nip, a similar slur
 Anti-Japanese sentiment
  Guizi
 Jjokbari (Korean)
 Xiao riben (Chinese)

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World
War, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 117.
2. ^ Gil Asakawa, Nikkeiview: Jap, July 18, 2004.
3. ^ "Jap"[permanent dead link]. From the Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved November 30, 2008.
4. ^ "Tolerance.org: Texas County Bans 'Jap Road'". Archived from  the original on September
14, 2005.
5. ^ "Jap", Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
6. ^ "Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data". languages.oup.com.
7. ^ [1] Archived July 25, 2011, 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". September 29, 2007. Archived
from  the original on 2007-09-29.
10. ^ Noticias, Univision. "¿Por qué en Kansas están retirando las matrículas de automóviles con
las letras JAP?".  Univision. Retrieved 2018-11-28.
11. ^ "Protest envoy acceptance of 'Jap'".  Densho. Pacific Citizen. 2 August 1957. Retrieved 19
July  2018.
12. ^ Miyakawa, Wataru (9 July 1957). "Reply to letter regarding use of term "Jap" on a television
program".  Densho. Retrieved 9 July  2018.
13. ^ "Matsudaira sorry on acceptance of 'Jap'". Densho. Pacific Citizen. 9 August 1957.
Retrieved 19 July  2018.
14. ^ "Matsudaira to cooperate in JACL campaign to depopularize 'Jap'".  Densho. Pacific Citizen.
16 August 1957. Retrieved  19 July 2018.
15. ^ Shane Green, Treaty plan could end Korean War, The Age, November 6, 2003
16. ^ 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."
17. ^ "Homepage". Jap-Fest. Archived from  the original on 18 February 2015. Retrieved 1
August  2014.
18. ^ William Wetherall, "Jap, Jappu, and Zyappu, The emotional tapestries of pride and
prejudice"[permanent dead link], July 12, 2006.
19. ^ Power up with Jap lunch, The New Paper, 18 May 2006
20. ^ "Dept. of Jap. Studies. C.U.H.K. -- Dept. Info".  www.cuhk.edu.hk.
21. ^ "Chinese Capital Inflow to Leave Taiwan Vulnerable: Jap Newspaper". Asia Pulse. March
26, 2008.
22. ^ Walsum, Sander van (2019-08-14).  "'In Japan zijn die Jappenkampen nooit een thema
geweest'". de Volkskrant (in Dutch). Retrieved 2023-01-07.
23. ^ "Combinações inusitadas do sushi brasileiro viram tendência até no
Japão".  www.uol.com.br.
24. ^ Hypeness, Redação (July 7, 2017).  "Ele desenhou os motivos pelos quais não devemos
chamar asiáticos de 'japa' e dizer que são todos iguais".  Hypeness.
25. ^ British Columbia Dept. of Agriculture, "Japanese Mandarins" [2] Archived 2013-10-24 at
the Wayback Machine, 2008
26. ^ PAUL McCARTNEY TALKS McCARTNEY II, SONGWRITING AND MORE! | 1980
Interview, retrieved 2022-08-12
 27. ^ Vries, Paul de (2022-03-31). "The Welcome Death of a Derogatory Term | JAPAN
Forward". japan-forward.com. Retrieved 2022-08-12.

External links[edit]
  The dictionary definition of jap at Wiktionary
 Jap in literature
 U.S. Government publication on spotting Japs
show
v

e
Ethnic slurs
Categories: 
 Anti-Japanese sentiment
 Asian-American issues
 Anti–East Asian slurs
 Japan–United States relations
 English words
 This page was last edited on 14 May 2023, at 06:28 (UTC).
 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may
apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered
trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
 Privacy policy

 About Wikipedia

 Disclaimers

 Contact Wikipedia

 Mobile view

 Developers

 Statistics

 Cookie statement

Toggle limited content width

Close
You can toggle between a fixed width and full width by clicking this button.