One of Us, One of Us!

By Kevin Cooney

I struggled for a while trying to popularize an emo-con to demark sarcasm in typed text.  I have both lost and made unintentional friends due to misunderstood e-communication. "Oh I am soooo excited to go to Steve's party."  You see, there is an obvious need for this universally understood emo-con. Just think of the sanity it could restore to youtube video comments, and endless bickering threads on Japan "discussion" forums. The need is clearly out there, but when will some clever anonymous netizen deliver the sarcastic hieroglyph that finally goes viral and ends the epic miscommunication everywhere on the net.

Another place I have found our current linguistic options lacking is in the endlessly spouted term "Gaijin" or "Gaikokujin".  This word is abused, misused and entirely lacking in certain discussions. 

I was thoroughly not enjoying my dinner, while next to me a Japanese man and woman, slurring slightly from the mojitos, picked apart the injustice of "Gaijin stealing Japanese women." The gentleman, believe it or not ladies, was bemoaning the ease at which Gaijin men poach the local ladies but Japanese men rarely are successful in the reverse direction.  Impelled to butt in (I'm such a Gaijin) I leaned over and pointed out that by government statistics more than two-thirds of international marriages in Japan involve a Japanese man and a foreign woman.  Less than a third of them involve a foreign man and a Japanese woman.  This is fact straight from the Japanese government.  It is not open for debate.  He was, as I'm sure many readers are right now, in disbelief.  The issue at hand though is rather one of linguistics. He wasn't talking about Gaikokujin, he was talking about GONADs.

To explain further however I must point out that the wide majority of married foreign women in Japan come from China, Korea and the Philippines.  The gentleman however was more specifically talking about white or black foreigners when using the term Gaijin.  We are all guilty of this in someway.  Walking down the street in Shibuya we see the dorky white dude and his Asian counter part and think... oh look an international couple.  We pass a Japanese man with his Chinese bride and think, "Oh look! McNuggets are only 100 yen today."  The wide majority of international marriages are mostly invisible to people watchers.  But the statistics say different.

The term Gaijin is too often invoked when talking about issues relating only to non-Asian foreigners in Tokyo.  Often its usage fails to include the great majority of foreigners, largely Asian living in Japan.  Of course they, if anything bear a more difficult burden for being a foreigner in their daily lives, but in the general discussion of Japanese, Non-Japanese issues they are not the ones being talked about.  The words Gaijin, or Gaikokujin are not really applied properly and inclusively.

Into this void I suggest the word GONAD.  I am a GONAD.  Many of my best friends are GONADs.  And often when I hear people discuss Gaijin life in Japan they are really talking about their GONADs.  That is, "Gaijin of Non Asian Descent."

So if the soused salaryman had said as he meant, "It is difficult for me to get a GONAD in the sack." He'd still be a moron, but somewhere closer to the truth. In the self obsessed, mini-western world theme park we've created in Roppongi, Hiro and Aoyama the word Gaijin is used incorrectly and incompatibly with the demographic facts of an international Tokyo. 

I suggest we add this subtle distinction so those late night carping sessions at Pubs across the city reflect who we are actually talking about.  All 100% of the Gaijin community are foreigners, but let's not presume to think that the issues of us GONADS define the experience here for the majority of non-Japanese.