Many Hong Kong residents of older generations are well aware of the fact that Shinajin was used by the Japanese military in referring to Chinese people during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45). That is why the derogatory term is also seen as a symbol of national humiliation that always brings back painful memories of tremendous suffering among Chinese communities around the world.
How Shina became a derogatory term in Japanese is by no means simple. In the Edo era, Japan experienced a resurgence of nationalism that discarded the nation’s utmost respect for China like a student does to a great teacher since Tang Dynasty and preferred to use the word Shina, with the excuse that China was neither the center of the world or a superior civilization. In the early days of the Meiji Restoration, Japan craved for everything European over anything Asian. After the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Japan became dominant in East Asia while China went further downhill as a former regional power, allowing the word Shinajin to be accepted by Japanese public as a derogatory or even insulting label for ethnic Chinese people. Because of this twist, many patriotic Chinese intellectuals urged the government to demand that Japan cease using the terms “Shina” and “Shina Kyowagoku” (Republic of China). The Chinese rulers back then obliged but to no avail. How can a nation of weaklings make a much stronger aggressor submit anyway?
In Japanese, Shinajin refers to all people living in China and carries overtones of Japanese superiority over the Chinese, hence the derogatory connotation now widely noted in the academic world. Before and during the World War II, Japanese publications were full of terms such as “Japan-Shina relations”, the “Shina Incident” (the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937) and “occupation troops in Shina”. Anyone proud of their Chinese lineage would feel deeply insulted and infuriated by such jarring words. After World War II, the Supreme Command of the Allied Forces concluded in an investigation in 1946 that the word Shina indeed carries derogatory overtones and pressured the Japanese government to ban it in all official, academic and print media writings, including history textbooks. The Japanese administration had to heed the call with a nationwide decree. Since then, the word Shina and all its derivatives have been replaced by “Chuko” (Zhongguo in Chinese ) in the documents listed above. Currently, only right-wingers, such as Shintaro Ishihara, former governor of Tokyo, still use it out of hatred for China and its people.
