Wall of Shame

[1] In this context, the phrase was coined by Willy Brandt, and it was used by the government of West Berlin, and later popularized in the English-speaking world and elsewhere from the beginning of the 1960s.

Inspired by its usage in reference to the Berlin Wall, the term has later been used more widely.

[6][7] The earliest use of the term, which is a translation of a Japanese phrase, may have been by Ruth Benedict, in her influential book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1948), and other anthropologists discussing the honor shame culture of Japan.

In 1961, the government of East Germany named the erected wall as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart", a part of the inner German border; many Berliners, however, called it "Schandmauer" ("Wall of Shame").

[9] Outside Germany it first appeared as "Wall of Shame" in a cover story published by TIME in 1962,[10] and President of the United States John F. Kennedy used the term in his Annual Message to the US Congress on the State of the Union, 14 January 1963.