"Rat" is a racist term??? Excuse me???

I've been watching a lot of Danganronpa meme videos recently, and a few of them have the joke that one of the characters, Kokichi Ouma, is a "rat" because he's the sneaky liar character.

I look into the comments and one of the first things I see is the poster apologizing for using the term "rat" because they were told it was a racist term for Japanese people??? Excuse me???

I don't get the point of pointing it out. They're not calling him a rat because he's Japanese. Everyone is Japanese (except Sonia from the 2nd game). He's a rat because he's small, sneaky, a snitch, and a liar.

What about Yuki Sohma from Fruits Basket? He's literally the rat from the Chinese Zodiac, but no one's saying anything about that. Should we cancel the whole show?

Let's cancel actual rats. The term "lab rats" is now racist!

Sorry, its a random rant, but what do you guys think about these kinds of "generic words being racist slurs"?

Edit: I see a lot of comments saying things like "Yes its racist, why you mad", and like, it wasn't supposed to come off that way but still kinda did??? Sorry for confusion I just kinda wrote this on a whim.

I'm not so much mad at the callout itself, I'm moreso confused as to the reasoning behind it. You can spread awareness about the term being racist where it's actually used in racist context, but bringing it up in a place where its never used in that way is kind of out of place... y'know?

Its like mentioning that "fag" is a derogatory word when talking to Brits about cigarettes as if they were using it in the derogatory sense.

It's one thing to point out out when it's used in the bad sense, but its another thing to point it out when it's not really used in the same context... Master/Slave in the kink sense aren't inherently racist, but I've heard people saying it's a slavery thing and shouldn't exist because slavery was racist. Idk, maybe I'm just hearing a lot of really bad trolling, but there's some crazy people out there, man.

Also, I'm Japanese, but thanks for the info too! I'm not personally offended by it and I've never heard any other of my Japanese friends/acquaintances be offended by the term "rat" before, so it was pretty random and new to me. Thanks for being civil! Or passive-aggressive. Either way works lol