The "cultural" meaning of 人間 (ningen)?


So, I have a general question about the word 人間 (ningen), and it's not about
grammar. The most common translation for this word is "human", but I have been
noticing that its usage is somewhat different in some cases, and this becomes
very evident in works of fiction and fantasy. For example, it seems to be okay
to consider some humanoid alien a "ningen", but the same would be inapplicable
for a humanoid deity or a common animal (cat, dog, etc...).

Could anyone explain the idea behind the word 人間 for the Japanese people? What
is or isn't considered to be a 人間? Thank you in advance!




To me, the word 人間 brings the feeling of "humanity", i.e., makes me think of
human rights, citizenship and things like moral and ethics.

> it seems to be okay to consider some humanoid alien a "ningen", but the same
> would be inapplicable for a humanoid deity or a common animal (cat, dog,
> etc...).

A humanoid alien community might very well have concepts of morality/ethics as
well, so you could sympathize with them similarly as you would with other
humans; you could consider these aliens worthy of kindness, respect, and
everything else, thus considering them also humans in this point of view. This
clearly constrasts with a deity or an animal, since they are usually not put
at the "same level of ethics" as humans.

Example: imagine that an alien ship crashed on earth, and there are a few
thousand alien survivors. Some researchers want to deeply study their anatomy,
by giving them drugs/diseases and see how they react. Then you could say:

> They should not conduct these evil experiments in the aliens. They're not
> lab rats, they're _ningen_!

To me, this phrase would be completely fine, even though the aliens are not
technically humans. I could be completely wrong though, this is just my two
cents on this topic. I'm not even a native speaker.

