Japanophilia is an outside interest in Japanese culture, people, and history. In Japanese, the term for Japanophile is "shinnichi" (親日), with "shin (親)" equivalent to the English prefix 'pro-' and "nichi (日)", meaning "Japan" (as in the word for Japan "Nippon/Nihon" (日本)).

The term "Japanophile" originated in the late 18th and early 19th centuries^{[citation needed]} during Japan's period of sakoku, when contact with foreign countries was strictly limited. Carl Peter Thunberg and Philipp Franz von Siebold helped introduce Japanese flora, artworks, and other objects to Europe which spiked interest.^[1][2] Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish-Greek author who made his home in Japan in the 19th century, was described as "a confirmed Japanophile" by Charles E. Tuttle Company in their forewords to several of his books.^[3] Others may include Jules Brunet, a French Army officer who played a famous role in the Japanese Boshin War.^{[citation needed]}

In the first decade of the 20th century, several British writers lauded Japan. In 1904, for example, Beatrice Webb wrote that Japan was a "rising star of human self-control and enlightenment", praising the "innovating collectivism" of the Japanese, and the "uncanny" purposefulness and open-mindedness of its "enlightened professional elite." H. G. Wells similarly named the élite of his A Modern Utopia "samurai". In part, this was a result of the decline of British industrial productivity, with Japan and Germany rising comparatively. Germany was seen as a threat and a rival power, but Japan was seen as a potential ally. The British sought efficiency as the solution to issues of productivity, and after the publication of Alfred Stead's 1906 book Great Japan: A Study of National Efficiency, pundits in Britain looked to Japan for lessons. This interest, however, ended after World War I.^[4]

General José Millán-Astray, the founder of the Spanish Legion, stated that the samurai warrior code Bushido exerted a great influence on him. Defining Bushido as "a perfect creed", Millán-Astray said that "the Spanish legionnaire is also a samurai and practices the Bushido essentials: Honor, Valor, Loyalty, Generosity, and Sacrifice", and added that Spain would become a great power like Japan by adhering to the code's principles.^[5] He also made a Spanish translation of Inazo Nitobe's book Bushido: The Soul of Japan and a prologue to it.^[6]

During in the early-2000s, the internet derogatory slang terms were originally created to refers to the non-Japanese people who are unhealthy obsessed with the modern Japanese popular culture. The specific term "wapanese" (from "white Japanese", or possibly also "wannabe Japanese") first originally invented in 2002 as an internet derogatory slang term to refers for an non-Japanese person who is unhealthy obsessed with the modern Japanese popular culture, particularly anime, manga, visual novels, light novels, and Pokémon. While the term "wapanese" wasn't overused in 2002, it gained recognizable popularity on the slang site Urban Dictionary in 2003,^[7] and then later often used on the imageboard site 4chan in the late-2003 after the popularization of the term "wapanese" in the slang site Urban Dictionary respectively. However, the term "weeaboo" (modernly shortened to "weeb" in the early-2010s) came from the webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship from 2005, in which the original word originally had no connection to the Japanese culture.^[8] An administrator on 4chan added a filter on the site to change "wapanese" to "weeaboo" since in August 2005,^[9] and users on the site quickly picked up the word and applied it in an abusive way in place of the already existing term "wapanese".^[10][11] The specific term "weeaboo" (while originally derogatory) have also been reclaimed by some of those to whom they originally referred, seeing increased usage by fans of Japanese media to refer to themselves in an ironic or self-deprecating fashion.^[12]

In a blog post on Anime News Network, Justin Sevakis argued that there is a difference between a weeaboo and someone who simply appreciates Japanese culture, saying that there is nothing wrong with loving Japanese culture, but that a person becomes a weeaboo when they start to be obnoxious, immature, and ignorant about the culture they love.^[13] Matt Jardin from the Alaska Dispatch gave his opinion that weeaboos blindly prefer things from Japan while looking down on anything else, despite obvious merit.^[14]

• Anime club
• Cool Japan
• Japan Expo
• Japanese studies
• Japanification – Process of becoming or wishing to become a member of Japanese society
• Japanization
• Japonisme
• Jingri
• List of Westerners who visited Japan before 1868
• Orientalism
• Pacific Movement of the Eastern World
• Sinophile