This article contains references to offensive/sensitive words in the Japanese language. Unseen Japan does not encourage the use of these words; rather, we present them here for historical and educational purposes.
Discriminating Vocabulary
There’s a pervasive myth surrounding the Japanese language: that Japanese lacks swear words. It is true that Japanese doesn’t have a codified list of socially egregious expletives à la English; however, Japanese, like any language, is extremely contextual.
Some words can be used in a friendly context but never used professionally or amongst polite company. It’s often explained that the best way to be rude in Japanese is simply to use informal language with someone with whom you aren’t on equal footing. It’s true, you shouldn’t tell your boss 「おっす、元気か、オマエ？」(“Yo, how’s it hanging, you bastard?”) Yet there does, in fact, exist a level of words beyond mere rudeness. These are the words of kotobagari: hunted words too taboo for publication or broadcast.
These days, most words subject to kotobagari are those also known as sabetsu-go (差別語): prejudicial words or those associated with historic injustices. Encountering one in the wild can be startling.
Take, for example, the strange case of late-2000’s American tween phenomenon iCarly.
I recently consulted with popular YouTuber Quinton Reviews for a section of a video discussing the Nickelodeon TV movie iGo to Japan. In a sea of cultural misrepresentations, the most surprising was when a Japanese character – clearly working on a dictionary-translated script – called her brother “an idiot” in Japanese.
The word used, however, doesn’t have the simple connotation of something like バカ (baka, fool). Rather, the character shockingly calls her brother キチガイ (kichigai), a word applied to those with mental illness. Kichigai is highly derogatory and banned from Japanese TV.
The scriptwriters of iCarly, thumbing through a dictionary for appropriate Japanese words, would never have known the deeper context that surrounds kichigai. Deprived of the historical and cultural baggage of the banned phrase, they casually dropped it into a script. In Japan, however, the show would never have been able to air with a character humorously bandying about such a taboo, hurtful word. Kichigai is just one of many such terms subject to editorial self-censoring, most of whom share a deep history related to the marginalized of Japanese society.
Euphemistic Origins
Most languages contain some concept of profanity. Indeed, there tends to be some sort of historical pathway from words considered profane – insulting to that which is sacred – and modern concepts of offensive words. Broad similarities exist across cultures, as well as cultural peculiarities.
Japanese scholar Kosugi Hanayo says that the Japanese reticence towards swearing is related to the idea of kotodama (言霊). This phrase, which could be translated as “the spirit of words,” refers to the belief that utterances can have magical effects on reality. When negative things are expressed, they alter the world around them, bringing those bad things into existence. In a less spiritual sense, this seems to reflect the sociological idea of the power of discourse. This article you’re currently reading, for example, contains that power; once read, the words therein are absorbed, and to some extent affect the world outside of the digital page (however slightly).
Kosugi quotes Ono Michio, writing about norito – Shinto prayers. “In ancient times, people believed that language [had] a spiritual power and its work is miraculous. This is what we call the belief in Kotodama. If someone says a benediction, happiness will come, but if they should [employ] curses, they will come to grief.” For Kosugi, this longheld belief in the reality-bending power of utterances is still at play in linguistic self-censoring.
A Baseball by Any Other Name
Kosugi also relates this idea of the power of words to what is often considered the first case of modern kotobagari: wartime era self-censorship. Japanese learners may wonder at why, amidst so many English loan words to do with sports (basuketo bo-ru, tenisu, ragubi), yakyu (野球, baseball) stands alone as a Japanese-created word. The term, literally meaning “field ball,” is in fact a linguistic remnant of wartime kotobagari. Even during WWII, baseball remained an incredibly popular sport; yet, the intrinsic relationship between baseball and wartime enemy America rankled many in the militaristic society of the day. Words like Besubo-ru and sutoraiku (strike) disappeared from publication and broadcast; in their place emerged yakyu and seikyu (right ball).
Baseball was not the only American or Western invention to suffer this fate. Essentially all popular Western loan words were phased out of existence between 1943 and 1945. These included soccer (sakka), which became shukyu (蹴球, kicking ball); furai, the loan word for deep-fried food, became yoten (洋天, western tempura – ironic given tempura itself came from Portugal); maikurofon (microphone) morphed into sowaki (送話機, transmitter). These are only a few brief examples; yet of these, only yakyu for baseball, as well as the attendant terms of the sport, seem to have stuck. Perhaps this was because of the sheer popularity of baseball, which has been a sort of national sport since its arrival in Japan many decades before WWII.
The replacement of Indo-European loanwords with purpose-made Japanese terms during the bellicose war years is easily explainable. Xenophobia, combined with worries of cultural influence from an enemy, resulted in local censorship. Yet Kosugi believes there’s more to the WWII-era suppression of English words; that the power of Kotodama meant uttering the words of the enemy gave them power. In Kosugi’s opinion, this instinct towards guttural avoidance still plays a part in modern kotobagari.
Rising Social Awareness
For Japan, the end of WWII was the ultimate catastrophe. 60% of urban space lay in ruins. Infrastructure and the economy were bombed out and functionally nonexistent. Society was turned upside down, as the American occupation force arrived and began a program of democratization. English self-censorship gave way to a newfound wave of westernization from both above and below.
While the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers originally set out to abolish militaristic ways of thinking, the shifting nature of the Cold War quickly put the kibosh on some of the higher ideals of the occupation. America now looked to set up Japan as a military bulwark against Communism. Despite mass popular movements aimed at making Japan a more just society, some aspects of historical criticism would have to wait.
In Japan, as elsewhere, the late 1960s saw an incredible surge in youth counterculture. As students and other young people, aided by conscientious adults, attempted to change their society and the world, society as a whole also grappled with new ideas brought to the forefront. Activist groups began to make waves by publicly lambasting mass media for the use of discriminatory words. As news networks and publishing houses slowly reacted to criticism, the process of kotobagari began anew. It started with references to Japan’s darkest open secret: the Burakumin undercaste.
People of the Hamlet
In some sectors of Buddhist thought, there is an imagined spiritual contamination brought on by closeness to death or the dead. Such conceptions have become associated with people and communities whose work revolves around death; butchers, leatherworkers, sanitation workers, undertakers, and garbage collectors, among others. During the Edo Era (1603-1867), a time of legalistic class-based segregation, the Tokugawa shogunate codified the discrimination wielded towards people who worked in these industries into a new caste: the Burakumin.
Society at large viewed the Burakumin as impure, and the impurity to be catching. People forced into this caste, who otherwise were of the exact same ethnic background as other Japanese, were shunned and reviled. They lived in separate communities, often run-down, impoverished, and avoided by those from other castes. (Burakumin, 部落民, literally means “people of the hamlet.”)
The Tokugawa shogunate fell in 1867, and the caste system alongside it. The centralizing and modernizing Meiji government that arose in the shogunate’s place liberated the Burakumin from their legalistic bondage, yet did little to help alter societal perceptions about caste-based impurity. Being of Burakumin descent or being born in their historical neighborhoods was enough to ensure lifelong discriminatory treatment. To this day, a directory is published which lists those of Buraku heritage; some prospective employers and conservatively-minded parents still look up unfamiliar newcomers or suitors to ensure they aren’t “contaminated” by a Buraku bloodline.
Words that Alienate
Burakumin rights activist groups took the stage during the age of activism that existed in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Chief among these was the Buraku Liberation League (部落解放同盟), originally founded by Buraku activist Matsumoto Jiichiro. Among its many goals was the elimination of discriminatory speech towards Buraku people, such as the particularly reviled term Eta (穢多, literally “great amount of filth), itself the former term used for the Buraku people. Even the word tosatsujo (屠殺場, slaughterhouse) is considered sensitive because of its association with the “vulgarity” of animal slaughter and, by association, the Burakumin.
The BLL pressure worked; Eta and other such discriminatory words quickly became impolitic, replaced by such euphemistic terms as “discriminated community” (the term from which the modern term Burakumin originates). However, this did little to raise awareness of the strife of the Buraku people. Rather, there remains a generalized belief in Japan that speaking about discrimination simply makes more people aware that there even exists a group to be targeted; an idea that seems to easily map on to the magical thinking of Kotodama. By self-censoring discriminatory words, the mass media could avoid protests from Buraku groups, while still doing little to address their issues.
This, on the whole, is the entire ethos of kotobagari. Indeed, the term – which literally means “word hunting” – is a sardonic one. Problematic words can be hunted down while context and the deeper issues at play are ignored. Buraku issues, for example, are still very taboo and are rarely spoken of, whether in “polite” language or no. Critics see kotobagari as a meaningless cycle; an activist group criticizes the use of a word, apologies are made, the word is euphemistically replaced, and then criticism over the euphemism begins. All the while, the real issue of discrimination is ignored.
Cycle of Debate
Kotobagari is a controversial issue; criticism of its practice exists from both discriminated-against groups, as well as from the usual sectors who simply don’t like their language usage being policed. It’s easy to imagine similar issues in other countries about the changing nature of language, and what society comes to understand as discriminatory.
Yet the discrimination and damage present in many of the now-banned terms is self-evident. Even if self-censoring results in a never-ending euphemism treadmill – where discriminatory words are replaced with more scientific terms, which then themselves enter a slangy lexicon and become discriminatory. In Japan, many of these words which are subject to internal self-censorship continue to revolve around the taboos of disease and disability.
The Case of Leprosy
One such word is that for leprosy, otherwise known as Hansen’s Disease. The chronic malady, which causes painful and disfiguring lesions and nerve damage, has been the subject of much historical fear world-round; in Japan, those suffering from the disease were often segregated and placed in restrictive quarantine. Merely being related to someone with the disease was a good enough reason for social ostracization.
Hansen’s disease sufferers were so reviled that the prejudice spilled out beyond the home islands and into Japanese colonies; in 1942, when Japan invaded tiny pacific Nauru, all 39 Nauruan leprosy sufferers were rounded up and placed in confinement. Later on, their families were informed that the diseased were being sent to a faraway island for better care; in reality, the military garrison placed them in a boat and, once out of sight of Nauru, murdered each and every one in cold blood.
Leprosy remains taboo; in 2001, the Japanese government felt compelled to issue an apology and reparations to sufferers. Only years earlier, Miyazaki Hayao purposefully portrayed the discrimination faced by those with leprosy in his film Princess Mononoke – one of the few times the disease has been depicted in mainstream Japanese media. Meanwhile, old words for the disease and those who suffer from it have been subject to kotobagari. In particular, the word rai (癩, leprosy) and attendant terms like raisha (癩者, leper) are considered extremely sensitive. The actual discussion of the treatment of those with Hansen’s disease remains minimal, however.
Kotobagari: Out of Sight, Out of Mind
The next great target of kotobagari are words related to physical disability, cognitive disability, and mental illness. Much as elsewhere, Japanese society has long considered physical and mental ailments “unsightly;” stigma remains, and awareness of issues related to mental health is still scant. (The website Barrier Free Japan is a great English-language resource for news about disability and disabled people in the country.) Numerous once-common words to describe these conditions are now taboo and very rarely appear in publication. Kichigai, the poorly chosen word used in iCarly, is one such term. Others include mekura (盲, blind); oshi (唖, deaf-mute); tsunbo (聾, deaf). Similar to kichigai, there’s also hakuchi (白痴, moron), perhaps awkwardly the title of Kurosawa‘s adaptation of Dostoyevski’s The Idiot.
These terms are all hurtful, and have been relegated to the lexical dustbin for a reason. Still, the same issue exists here as with the rest of kotobagari. The words may be crossed off and replaced with more neutral phrases (for example, 目の不自由, literally “impairment of the eyes” for visual impairment), but much discussion remains to be done as regards the actual stigmatization of disabilities in Japanese society.
Kotobagari goes beyond disabilities, however. Vocations are also subject; for example, the title of the school staff position which was once called kozukai-san (小使いさん, “chore person,” but essentially a janitor) has gone through multiple permutations. Each, in turn, is considered condescending. Mutliple turns on the euphemism treadmill onwards, and we currently have gakkoyomuin, (学校用務員, “school orderly”) as the respectful term de jure.
Towards a Kinder Future
Examples of kotobagari abound. Beyond what we’ve discussed here are several more examples of discriminatory words left over from Japan’s century of colonialism; words still used in a racially derogatory way today by the far right to denigrate Chinese, Korean, Ainu, and other minorities. Here, criticism of societal self-censorship can sometimes verge into stating the desire to be able to use historical terms – terms that were clearly discriminatory from the get-go.
(Interestingly, the Japanese dub of Playstation 4 game Ghost of Tsushima resurrects the now-offensive Mōko (蒙古) for Mongol; while appropriate in the historical setting of the game, it now has a discriminatory association much like the equally outdated and offensive English term “Mongoloid.”)
Kotobagari has retroactively resulted in the criticism of lyrics in a song by famed punk band The Blue Hearts, and anger aimed at the title of a fishing manga. (The former used a single utterance of kichigai in the original recording, and Tsuri Kichi Sanbei, “Fishing-Crazy Sanbei,” uses a shortened version of the same word in its title.) At times, broadcast self-censorship can approach a level of near-farce. On NHK channels, shows focusing on learning the Korean language feel the need to refer to Korean as “Hangul Language” (ハングル語). This is done in order to avoid upsetting either South or North Korea, the governments of which clash over the correct Japanese term for the Korean Language. (Hangul is the Korean script invented by King Sejong the Great in 1443, and not a spoken language.)
Despite controversies, however, the sort of self-censorship represented by kotobagari is, in fact, simply a natural element in the evolution of language. As our societies look inwards (or are forced into doing so), recognizing historical and continuing injustices, derogatory terms are necessarily dropped and stigmatized. Words, after all, have no inherent meaning; they are merely sounds, in many ways arbitrary. Whether in Japan or elsewhere, societal context is what creates significance. Words have power – whether imbued with the spirit of kotodama or not. Word hunting is imperfect and problematic, but so is human language in of itself. For the time being, the cycle of criticism, apologies, self-censorship, and criticism of self-censorship will continue. The hunt is still on, and the treadmill remains active.
Main Sources:
趙凌梅。（2016）。日本語における差別語概念の変遷 ―1960年代以降の差別語問題から考える―。国際文化
Kosugi, Hanayo. (2010). Performative power of language: Japanese and swearing. Jurnal Teknosastik, 8(2). 30-37.
Bulag, Uradyn. (2008). Contesting the Words that Wound: Ethnicity and the Politics of Sentiment in China. Inner Asia, 10(1), 87-111.
