Well attestedIndirect, via a person or title
Japanophile
noun · first attested 19th century
The word arrived with the first wave of Western enthusiasm for Japanese art.
A person who admires Japan, its people or its culture.
Record
- Relationship
- Indirect, via a person or title
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 19th century
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Japan
- In English
Japanophile
It is built from Japan with the Greek ending -phile, and it enters English in the late nineteenth century, after the country opened to foreign trade in the 1850s. European collectors and painters were then taking up japonisme, and Japanese prints reshaped Impressionism. The modern pejorative counterpart is weeaboo.
Also pinned to Japan
2 more from the same place
Japan
All 18 entries 15 more words from Japan
satsumaThe orange is named for a former Japanese province.Satsuma ProvinceMishimaThe inlaid pottery is named for a Japanese city's almanac.MishimaMinamata diseaseAn industrial disaster gave a Japanese city's name to a disease.MinamataKobe beefThe cattle are not from Kobe; the foreigners who ate them were.KobeKyoto ProtocolTreaties take the name of whichever city happened to host the meeting.KyotoabukumaliteIt came out of a vertical pipe of pegmatite only sixty meters across that is packed with yttrium minerals.Abukuma RiveraniliteMachine matching regularly sends this name to the ruined Armenian city of Ani; the real Ani is a copper mine in northern Japan.Ani minebicchuliteIt was described simultaneously from a Japanese limestone skarn and a basalt contact in County Antrim.Bitchū