Piccolo Daimao's Chant

[Kiyza]

...Involves a racial slur? I believe there was brief mention of it on the site's podcast by Julian once, but I forgot about it until today. Apparently, one of the seemingly nonsensical words he was using, "pocopen," is a derrogatory term that was used to describe China at one point, and it's apparently not allowed to be used on television.

So, was Toriyama just making up words, or is this perhaps in there on purpose? And further more, was it actually used in the anime broadcast? I haven't actually seen this portion of the series in anime form.

[TheDevilsCorpse]

It comes from a game where one child is chosen to be "it," and turns his back to the other children playing. The others then chant "Chinaman, Chinaman, who's poking you?" as they come up and jab him in the back. Depending on the style being played, "it" then has to guess who was the first or last to poke him. If "it" is right, that person then becomes "it."

"Pokopen" is apparently derived from the Chinese "Bu kuang ben" (不囈本), meaning "prohibited" or "taboo." It's an ethnic slur, so be advised.

I have no real answers to your questions, just extra background info till Herms or someone more qualified than me gets here. lol

[Herms]

Well, Daimao pretty much covers it, as you'd expect. I guess just to clarify, Piccolo's birthing chant is "Pokopen pokopen...Daare ga tsutsuita, pokopen. Pokopen, pokopen. Daare ga tsutsuita". As said, this essentially translates to "Chinaman, chinaman...Whoo's been poking you, chinaman? Chinaman, chinaman, whoo's been poking you?" In the manga though, the chant is written entirely in katakana, unlike a mix of hiragana, kanji, and katakana like it generally would be. Apparently, drawing out the 'dare' ('who') into 'daare' is part of the usual chant, or at least that's what I gather from Japanese Wikipedia.

[Blue]

As a brief aside the Sargent Frog manga had planet Earth be deemed Pokopen, this was changed in the anime. Is this kind of thing just old Japanese men remembering the game from their youth and not really realizing it was derived from something derogatory?

[Kiyza]

As a brief aside the Sargent Frog manga had planet Earth be deemed Pokopen, this was changed in the anime. Is this kind of thing just old Japanese men remembering the game from their youth and not really realizing it was derived from something derogatory?

That's exactly how I found out about this. For some reason, I'm pretty sure the term is banned from TV. Did this apply when Dragon Ball was airing?

Also, thanks Herms! ^^