ABSTRACT

This article examines a recent trend in the Japanese news media of using the term ‘refugee’ as a metaphor. Japan is known for its extremely low refugee admission rate, granting asylum to less than 100 refugees each year. Why so few? In order to provide lexical observations on this situation, this article explores how the term ‘refugee’ (nanmin) is used in the Japanese news media. In 2007, a Japanese journalist popularised the sensational term ‘net cafe refugee’ for those who do not have a fixed address and sleep in 24-hour Internet cafes. The usage of ‘refugee’ in this context provoked a controversy and prompted cafe owners to release an official statement asking journalists to refrain from using the term. Despite the outcry, the term ‘refugee’ remains popular today as a metaphor for those who lack access to particular facilities, services, or experiences – for instance, ‘insurance refugee’, ‘information refugee’ and so on. Based on the analysis of textual data containing these metaphorical expressions, the article suggests that through the refugee metaphor, the term’s implications have shifted from visual to conceptual, and from international to domestic, with the possible effect of diverting public attention from the reality of refugee protection.

摘要

本文考察了日本新闻媒体最近将“难民”一词用作隐喻的趋势。日本以其极低的难民接纳率而闻名，每年向不到 100 名难民提供庇护。为什么这么少？为了提供有关这种情况的词汇观察，本文探讨了“难民”一词（nanmin) 用于日本新闻媒体。2007年，一位日本记者为那些没有固定住址、睡在24小时网吧的人推广了轰动一时的“网吧难民”一词。在这种情况下使用“难民”引发了争议，并促使咖啡馆老板发布官方声明，要求记者不要使用该词。尽管遭到强烈抗议，“难民”一词今天仍然流行，作为对无法获得特定设施、服务或体验的人的隐喻——例如，“保险难民”、“信息难民”等。基于对包含这些隐喻表达的文本数据的分析，文章认为通过难民隐喻，该术语的含义已从视觉转向概念，从国际转向国内，