U+502D "倭" CJK Unified Ideograph-# Unicode Character
U+502D "倭" CJK Unified Ideograph-# is a Chinese character that historically referred to the Japanese people or Japan, often in a neutral or descriptive sense, though in modern Chinese it carries a strong derogatory connotation due to its association with ancient Chinese references to Japan and later pejorative usage, especially during and after the Second World War. Its etymology combines the radical for "person" or "human" with the phonetic component "委," and it appears in classical texts such as the "Book of Han" to denote the "Wa" people, the early Japanese civilization. In Japanese, the character is pronounced "Wa" and was once used as an ancient name for Japan itself, but it has since been largely replaced by the more neutral character "和" to avoid negative implications in international contexts.