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Nip

Offensive term for Japanese person From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nip
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Nip is an ethnic slur against people of Japanese descent and origin.[1] The word Nip is an abbreviation from Nippon (日本), the Japanese name for Japan.[1][2]

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Usage of the term Nips in the 1944 American cartoon Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips

History

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The earliest recorded occurrence of the slur was in the issue of Time magazine published on 5 January 1942, in which "three Nip pilots" were mentioned.[2][3] The outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 led to an increase in the usage of anti-Japanese slurs such as Jap and Nip among English-speaking Allied troops.[2] The word was most frequently used among American, British and Australian servicemen to refer to Japanese military personnel.[2] The official Royal Air Force journal of 1942 made numerous references to the Japanese as Nips, even making puns such as "there's a nip in the air".[2] This phrase was later re-used for Hirohito's visit to the UK in 1971 by the satirical magazine Private Eye.[4]

As part of American wartime propaganda, caricatures and slurs (including Nip) against the Japanese diffused into entertainment,[5][6] such as exemplified by the Warner Bros. cartoon Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944).[6] In General Kenney Reports: A Personal History of the Pacific War (1949), George Kenney made racial statements about the Japanese, remarking for example that "Nips are just vermin to be exterminated".[7]

In a manner to evoke further anti-Japanese agitation, a Seattle Star editorial titled "It's Time to do Some Thinking On Nips' Return" from December 14, 1944, discussed the citizenship rights of Japanese-Americans and framed their return to American society as a problem.[8] On 16 November 2018, the abbreviation for the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems was changed from NIPS to NeurIPS in large part due to its perceived connotation with the slur.[9]

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