Chankoro

Chankoro (Japanese: ちゃんころ or チャンコロ) is a Sinophobic ethnic slur used by the Japanese since the end of the Qing dynasty. It was also an expression of insult to the Chinese people.

The etymology of the term is unclear. Ogata suggests "pigtailed fellow" while Shih states that it means "Qing slave".

In the English subtitles of the multilingual Chinese movie Devils on the Doorstep, the term is mostly translated as "Chinese pig" or "mongrel".

In Korean

After Japan annexed Korea, the Japanese word chankoro entered the Korean language as jjangkkolla (Korean: 짱꼴라), which evolved into the current jjangkkae^[ko] (Korean: 짱깨), which has become a representative derogatory term for Chinese people in Korea.

References

↑ Barske 2013, p. 72.
↑ Tahmasbi et al. 2021.
1 2 "チャンコロとは、中国人の蔑称。". 日本語俗語辞書. Archived from the original on 2013-01-20. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
↑ 黃英哲 (2015-10-15). "【說書】臺灣作家筆下的「抗戰」". 故事 StoryStudio. Archived from the original on 2025-07-26.
1 2 Takeda 2013, p. 101.
↑ Ogata 2022, p. 85.
↑ Shih 2022, p. 327.
↑ "Translation of "チャンコロ" into Korean". Glosbe. Retrieved 5 September 2025. 짱깨; jjangkkae; ちゃんころ · チャンコロ · ポコペン · 支那人 · 不コ本

Sources

Barske, Valerie H. (March 2013). "Visualizing Priestesses or Performing Prostitutes?: Ifa Fuyū's Depictions of Okinawan Women, 1913-1943" (PDF). Studies on Asia. Series IV. 3 (1).
Ogata, Sadako (2022-11-02) [1965]. "The Japanese attitude towards China". Adelphi Series. 62 (498–501): 83–96. doi:10.1080/19445571.2022.2281784. ISSN 1944-5571. Retrieved 2025-09-04.
Shih, Fang-long (2022), A century of struggle over Taiwan's cultural self-consciousness: the life and afterlife of Chiang Wei-shui and the Taiwan Cultural Association* Simon, Scott (2006). "Formosa's First Nations and the Japanese: from Colonial Rule to Postcolonial Resistance". The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. 4 e1. doi:10.1017/S1557466006003846. ISSN 1557-4660. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved 2014-12-22.
Tahmasbi, Fatemeh; Schild, Leonard; Ling, Chen; Blackburn, Jeremy; Stringhini, Gianluca; Zhang, Yang; Zannettou, Savvas (2021-04-19). "Go eat a bat, Chang!": On the Emergence of Sinophobic Behavior on Web Communities in the Face of COVID-19. ACM. pp. 1122–1133. arXiv:2004.04046. doi:10.1145/3442381.3450024. ISBN 978-1-4503-8312-7.
Takeda, Kayoko (2013-05-29). "The interpreter as traitor: Multilingualism in Guizi lai le (Devils on the Doorstep)". Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series – Themes in Translation Studies (13). doi:10.52034/lanstts.v0i13.71. ISSN 2295-5739. Retrieved 2025-09-04.