Word.ws English Dictionary

Zainichi

/ˈzaɪˌniːtʃi/

Zainichi noun: a long-term Korean resident of Japan whose ancestry dates to Korea under Japanese rule.

Noun

Zainichi (plural Zainichis or Zainichi)

  1. A long-term Korean resident of Japan whose ancestry dates to Korea under Japanese rule.
    • Hwang is a member of the ethnic Korean community known in Japanese as the Zainichi. Their families came here when the Korean peninsula was a Japanese colony from 1910 until 1945. They number around 600,000 and have opted not to take Japanese citizenship.
      Political split
      And just like their...2009 July 1, “Koreans in Japan: Divided Along Political Lines”, in Deutsche Welle, archived from the original on 24 Nov 2024
    • Beginning in the late 1950s, Japan offered to help repatriate the Zainichi, many of whom were attracted to North Korea’s socialist promises and an economy then larger than the South’s. Nearly 100,000 people moved, including Mr. Oshima’s parents and siblings.2019 February 25, Motoko Rich, “‘We Are Koreans’: Diaspora in Japan Looks to Trump-Kim Summit With Hope”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 25 Feb 2019, Asia Pacific

Forms of Zainichi

pluralZainichis
pluralZainichi

Origin of Zainichi

From Japanese 在(ざい)日(にち) (zainichi).

Questions about Zainichi

What does Zainichi mean?
Zainichi means a long-term Korean resident of Japan whose ancestry dates to Korea under Japanese rule.
What part of speech is Zainichi?
Zainichi is a noun.
How do you pronounce Zainichi?
Zainichi is pronounced /ˈzaɪˌniːtʃi/.
What is the plural of Zainichi?
The plural of Zainichi is Zainichis.

Words near Zainichi in the dictionary

  1. zaimet
  2. zaimets
  3. zaims
  4. zain
  5. Zainab
  6. Zainichi
  7. Zainichis
  8. Zaino
  9. Zainos
  10. zains
  11. Zaionc

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Zainichi (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Zainichi.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zainichi. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.