Japanophilia is an outside interest in Japanese culture, people, and history. In Japanese, the term for a Japanophile isshinnichi (親日;'pro-Japanese').
The term "Japanophile" originated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries[citation needed] during Japan's period ofsakoku, when contact with foreign countries was strictly limited.Carl Peter Thunberg andPhilipp Franz von Siebold helped introduce Japanese flora, artworks, and other objects to Europe which spiked interest.[1][2]Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish-Greek author who made his home in Japan in the 19th century, was described as "a confirmed Japanophile" byCharles E. Tuttle Company in their forewords to several of his books.[3] Others may includeJules Brunet, aFrench Army officer who played a famous role in the JapaneseBoshin War.[citation needed]
In the first decade of the 20th century, several British writers lauded Japan. In 1904, for example,Beatrice Webb wrote that Japan was a "rising star of human self-control and enlightenment", praising the "innovating collectivism" of the Japanese, and the "uncanny" purposefulness and open-mindedness of its "enlightened professional elite."H. G. Wells similarly named the élite of hisA Modern Utopia "samurai". In part, this was a result of the decline of British industrial productivity, with Japan and Germany rising comparatively. Germany was seen as a threat and a rival power, but Japan was seen as a potential ally. The British sought efficiency as the solution to issues of productivity, and after the publication of Alfred Stead's 1906 bookGreat Japan: A Study of National Efficiency, pundits in Britain looked to Japan for lessons. This interest, however, ended afterWorld War I.[4]
GeneralJosé Millán-Astray, the founder of theSpanish Legion, stated that thesamurai warrior codeBushido exerted a great influence on him. Defining Bushido as "a perfect creed", Millán-Astray said that "the Spanish legionnaire is also a samurai and practices the Bushido essentials: Honor, Valor, Loyalty, Generosity, and Sacrifice", and added thatSpain would become a great power like Japan by adhering to the code's principles.[5] He also made a Spanish translation ofInazo Nitobe's bookBushido: The Soul of Japan and a prologue to it.[6]
The slang termwapanese (aportmanteau ofwhite, orwannabe, andJapanese) appeared in the early 2000s as a derogatory word for a non-Japanese person who is unhealthily obsessed with modernJapanese popular culture, particularlyanime,manga,visual novels,light novels, andPokémon. It was added to theUrban Dictionary website in 2003,[7] and frequently used on the imageboard site4chan.
The termweeaboo (often shortened toweeb) first appeared in a 2005The Perry Bible Fellowship webcomic, used without reference to Japanese culture.[8] The same year, 4chan administratorChristopher Poole added a filter to the site replacingwapanese withweeaboo, and users themselves started using the new term in place ofwapanese.[9][10] While originally meant derogatorily,weeaboo has beenreclaimed by some of its referents, and has been used by fans of Japanese media to refer to themselves in an ironic or self-deprecating fashion.[11]
In a blog post onAnime News Network, Justin Sevakis wrote that there is a difference between a weeaboo and someone who simply appreciates Japanese culture, saying that there is nothing wrong with loving Japanese culture, but that a person becomes a weeaboo when they start to be obnoxious, immature, and ignorant about the culture they love.[12] Matt Jardin from theAlaska Dispatch described weeaboos as blindly preferring things from Japan and looking down on anything else, regardless of merit.[13]
