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Kotobagari (言葉狩り, lit. "word hunting") refers to the censorship of words considered politically incorrect in the Japanese language. Words such as gaijin ("foreigner/outsider"), rai ("leper") , mekura ("blind") , tsunbo ("deaf") , kichigai ("crazy"), tosatsujō ("slaughter house"), and hakuchi ("moron/retard") are currently not used by the majority of Japanese publishing houses; the publishers often refuse to publish writing which includes these words.

Critics of kotobagari point out that the activity often does not serve the purpose of correcting the underlying cause of discrimination. For example, a school janitor in Japan used to be called a kozukai-san ("choir person"). Some felt that the word had a derogatory meaning, so it was changed to yōmuin ("task person"). Now youmuin is considered demeaning, so there is shift to use kōmuin ("school task person") or kanrisagyōin ("maintenance person") instead, an example of what Steven Pinker calls the "euphemism treadmill".

Kotobagari and Ideology

Kotobagari has lead to a bizzare collection of words those are highly confusing and often linguistically incorrect.

NHK runs a Korean language study program, but the language is called Hangul to avoid being politically incorrect. This is like calling an English language course as an Alphabet study course. This is a result of both North and South Korean governments demanding that the program be called by the name of one country. North Korea wanted the show to be called Chosen language(朝鮮語) taken from its full name, 朝鮮民主主義人民共和国 or Democratic People's Republic of Korea. South Korea wanted Kankoku language(韓国語) from 大韓民国 or Republic of Korea. As a compromise, Hangul was selected, but this has led to an amusing usage of nonexistent Hangul language to refer to Korean language.

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