this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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I'm from Seattle, a place where many Japanese Americans immigrated to before the war.
... During the war, they were rounded up, shipped to concentration camps on the other side of the state (in a desert), and basically all of their homes and business property/possessions were seized and sold off during the war, and while they were released aome years after the war ended, they were seriously discriminated against for decades afterward.
I obviously can't speak for all Japanese people, but yeah, Japanese Americans I've known find 'Jap' to be a slur. There's a good amount of newspapers and even US propaganda films shown to either the military and/or the public, and other media, that use the term 'Jap' alongside rascist cariacatures...
Dr Seuss, more widely known as an author/illustrator of childrens books, actually drew a good amount of these racist cariacatures.
A likely NSFW example
This was a poster, an advertisement for a war bond, drawn by Dr Seuss
The even worse slur... is something I'm not even comfortable typing out... basically, similarly shorten Nippon (which is a name of 'Japan' in Japanese, along with Nihon) to only the first syllable.
That one is an even more severe slur and was commonly used during the war. It's basically as severe, rude and disrespectful as the n-word with a hard r to refer to Black people.
If you want to use a 3 letter abbreviation for Japan, I'd suggest JPN.
The shortened version of Nippon is also considered an unusable slur where im from as well since its only ever used with negative intent. Its interesting to read about the different perspectives of this word around the world. Since the word is offensive to some Japanese people I should refrain from using the world online.
It's a goddamn minefield, especially for someone like me who hates excessive censorship.
Speaking the language doesn't mean knowing the context.
I feel strongly that this is still why London slang exists.
Calling you a berk won't get me a ban probably, no matter what it actually stands for. And I'm not calling you that, just to make sure to point that out.
Im Finnish, and while you can use "Finnish person", colloquially we're known as Finns. But please don't try using the same logic for Pakistan.