''Jap'' is an English abbreviation of the word "

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

". Today, it is generally regarded as an

ethnic slur The following is a list of ethnic slurs or ethnophaulisms or ethnic epithets that are, or have been, used as insinuations or allegations about members of a given ethnicity or racial group or to refer to them in a derogatory, pejorative, or ot ...

. In the United States, some

Japanese Americans are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

have come to find the term very offensive, even when used as an abbreviation. Prior to the

Attack on Pearl Harbor The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii ...

, ''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 Anti-Japanese sentiment (also called Japanophobia, Nipponophobia and anti-Japanism) involves the hatred or fear of anything which is Japanese, be it its culture or its people. Its opposite is Japanophilia. Overview Anti-Japanese senti ...

increased.

Paul Fussell Paul Fussell Jr. (22 March 1924 – 23 May 2012) was an American cultural and literary historian, author and university professor. His writings cover a variety of topics, from scholarly works on eighteenth-century English literature to commenta ...

, ''Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War,'' Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 117. 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.Gil Asakawa
Nikkeiview: Jap
July 18, 2004.

History and etymology

According to the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...

'', ''Jap'' as an abbreviation for ''Japanese'' was in colloquial use in London around 1880. An example of benign usage was the previous naming of Boondocks Road in

Jefferson County, Texas Jefferson County is a county in the Coastal Plain or Gulf Prairie region of Southeast Texas. The Neches River forms its northeast boundary. As of the 2020 census, the population was 256,526. The county seat is Beaumont. Jefferson County has ...

, originally named Jap Road when it was built in 1905 to honor a popular local rice farmer from Japan. Later popularized during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

to describe those of Japanese descent, ''Jap'' was then commonly used in newspaper headlines to refer to the Japanese and

Imperial Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...

. ''Jap'' began to be used in a derogatory fashion during the war, more so than ''

Nip ''Nip'' is an ethnic slur against people of Japanese descent and origin. The word ''Nip'' is an abbreviation from ''Nippon'' (日本), the Japanese name for Japan. History The earliest recorded occurrence of the slur seems to be in the ''Time' ...

''. Veteran and author

explains the rhetorical usefulness of the word during the war for creating effective propaganda by saying that ''Japs'' "was a brisk

monosyllable In linguistics, a monosyllable is a word or utterance of only one syllable. It is most commonly studied in the fields of phonology and morphology and it has no semantic content. The word has originated from the Greek language. "Yes", "no", "jump", ...

handy for slogans like 'Rap the Jap' or 'Let's Blast the Jap Clean Off the Map'". Some in the

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

tried to combine the word ''Japs'' with ''

ape Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a clade of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and as well as Europe in prehistory), which together with its sister g ...

s'' to create a new description, '' Japes'', for the Japanese; this neologism never became popular. In the United States the term has now been considered derogatory; the '' Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary'' notes it is "disparaging". A snack food company in Chicago named Japps Foods (for the company founder) changed their name and eponymous

potato chip A potato chip (North American English; often just chip) or crisp (British and Irish English) is a thin slice of potato that has been either deep fried, baked, or air fried until crunchy. They are commonly served as a snack, side dish, or ap ...

brand to Jays Foods shortly after the

to avoid any negative associations with the name.

Spiro Agnew Spiro Theodore Agnew (November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th vice president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1973. He is the second vice president to resign the position, the other being John ...

was criticized in the media in 1968 for an offhand remark referring to reporter Gene Oishi as a "fat Jap". In Texas, under pressure from civil rights groups, Jefferson County, Texas, Jefferson County commissioners in 2004 decided to drop the name Jap Road from a road near the city of Beaumont, Texas, Beaumont. In adjacent Orange County, Texas, Orange County, Jap Lane has also been targeted by civil rights groups. 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. 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.

Reaction in Japan

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 English word. It's maybe American slang. I don't know. If you care, you are free to use it." Matsudaira later received a letter from the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), and apologized for his earlier remarks upon being interviewed by reporters from Honolulu and San Francisco. He then pledged cooperation with the JACL to help eliminate the term ''Jap'' from daily use. 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". In 2011, after the term's wikt:offhand, offhand use in a March 26 article appearing in ''The Spectator'' ("white-coated Jap wikt:bloke, 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".

Around the world

Jap-Fest is an annual Japanese car show in Ireland. In 1970, the Japanese fashion designer Kenzo Takada opened the Jungle Jap boutique in Paris. In Singapore and Hong Kong, the term is used freely as a contraction of the adjective ''Japanese'' rather than as a derogatory term. The Australian news service Asia Pulse has also used the term in 2008. The word ''Jap'' is used in Dutch language, 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. In Brazil, the term ''wikt:japa, japa'' is sometimes used in place of the standard ''wikt:japonês, 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. 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. 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 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. 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. "

" is the term that is usually used in the UK when the intention is to cause offence.

References

External links

*
Jap in literature

U.S. Government publication on spotting Japs
{{Ethnic slurs Anti-Japanese sentiment Asian-American issues Anti–East Asian slurs Japan–United States relations English words

History and etymology

Reaction in Japan

Around the world

See also

References

External links