Enda80

You would agree that they did not worship Yahweh. Maybe they worshipped Ymir?

Enda80

I thought that a Japanese person might be offended by a war movie where the bad guys are always referred to as "the Japanese" ("We're fighting the Japanese!", "I will never forget what the Japanese did", "A Japanese collaborator is just as bad as a Nazi collaborator", etc.) Semantics, I admit, but semantic can cause problems (look at the Gospel of John's careless use of "The Jews".)

Now, a German who does not worship Yahweh would not be offended by "We're fighting the Nazis" since not all Germans have worshipped Yahweh. So, a Japanese citizen who does not worship Amaterasu would not be offened by "Shinto imperialists" since despite claims by Shinto organizations, most Japanese do not self-identify as Shinto, but rather are counted that way by organizations.

See adherents.com

Monkeybot

Foreigner isn't always a derogatory term. Like the previous poster said, it really depends on the spirit in which it's used.

Now racism certainly does exist in Japanese society, but "gaijin" isn't an automatic term of derision. The truth is that it's just hard to know what else to call foreigners. "White people"? Well, not all foreigners are white. "Non-Asian" is problematic for the same resaons that not all foreigners aren't Asians (uhh, if you can parse that sentence). And "non-Japanese" just sounds clunky.

It's all about the spirit. Now that I think about it, I had a friend whose all-purpose word for foreigners was "gaijin-san."

French Prometheus

Gaijin is made of two characters that mean outside/person. It's considered familiar or slightly derogatory depending on the context but it's not a standard translation of "barbarian". There are far more offensive terms that were used to call foreigners in the past.
The polite word for foreigner is gaikokujin = outside/country/person. That's the word used in official documents. There are also other specific compounds words e.g. when I was doing an intership in Japan I had a card with gaikaikenshuusei written on it (= outside/sea/intern = overseas intern).
And if they really want to use an honorific term, they can say : gaikokujin no o-kyaku-sama which means "honorable foreign guest/visitor".

Angyson

What was wrong with calling them "Japs "?

someotherguy

Due to a variety of reasons, it's considered to be a racist term similar to many racial "four letter words" that I'm sure we're all familiar with.

WWSD

Not all Germans who fought in WWII were Nazis.
I don't refer to Germans during the war as Nazis, unless I am actually refering to the Nazi party. The only group of soldiers in the war who were exclusively Nazis were the SS.
The regular Wermacht was composed of all sorts of Germans, Nazi and otherwise.

cloggy

There's also the unflattering "krauts" (as in sauerkraut mit bratwursten)

In Holland the germans used to be often referred to as "moffen", which has become a rather lame thing to say to a generation that was born after the war, so nowadays it's considered quite politically incorrect.