Each culture is shaped by its language, and the people in turn shape that language every day. As I’ve written before, the Japanese language is about as different from English as you can get, with a different word order, a tendency to leave subjects and even objects out of sentences if they’re understood by speakers, and the use of different verbs when talking to your senpai or kohai. Another thing the Japanese seem to love is using euphemisms to directly refer to sexual or generally embarrassing things. Let’s learn some fun Japanese euphemisms now!
18 Euphemisms Japanese Use to Refer to Ecchi Subjects
Right off the bat is a Japanese euphemism everyone will know: ecchi, the Japanese pronunciation of the letter “H.” It refers to anything vaguely sexual, and as the verb エッチする ecchi suru it means specifically to have sex. As all assume the “H” comes from hentai, but there’s no evidence of this, and competing theories exist about where the unique phrase came from. The English word sex (セックス) does exist in Japan, but it’s a bit too direct to use in mixed company. Another euphemism for having sex is 抱く daku, lit. “to hold,” which is where dakimakura comes from. Also, as with English, the generic verb suru (to do) can be used when referring to “doing it.”
There’s a medical word for female genitalia — it’s 膣 chitsu if you’re curious — but a far more common way to refer to a woman’s meat muffin as asoko, basically “down there.” In English we have only “here” (a place close to me) and “there” (a place close to you), but Japanese, like Spanish, adds a third official pronoun to indicate “over there, farther away from both you and me.” The word asoko could indicate “on that table over there” or “down there, between your legs” depending on context.
Of course the “c” word does exist in Japanese (manko), and just as in English, it seems to be the single most socially unacceptable word in Japan, and is usually written マ○コ, with a circle censoring the middle katakana character. Because it’s usually too direct to use with others, men and women will “soften” it by saying manchou or man-man, sort of like a child might.
Megumin says she loves o-chinchin (dicks) though she’s really a ‘fashion bitch,’ a virgin who pretends to be a slut because it’s fashionable pic.twitter.com/thPsx59WLe
— J-LIST (@jlist) June 23, 2017
The medical word for a penis is 陰茎 inkei, literally “shadow root,” or the English word (ペニス), but everyone pretty much calls it chinchin or o-chinchin. The ‘o’ in this case is an honorific prefix that gets added to words that hold a special place in society, like money, or for words children use. Since the child’s word for a penis is chinchin, you can bet there was some giggling when I read my English-bilingual kids the Three Little Pigs in English, which includes the line “not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.”
Read my post on the 30 most interesting Japanese fetish words here.
Sometimes euphemisms match up perfectly across languages. A man “pitching a tent” is テントを張ってる tento wo hatteru in Japanese, meaning exactly the same thing. If a man’s fly is open, someone might whisper that he should check his 社会の窓 shakai no mado or his “window of society.”
The term for a female virgin is 処女 shojo (note the short vowel, compared with 少女 shoujo, with a long vowel, meaning girl), while a male virgin is 童貞 doutei. I love the phrase for a man losing his virginity, which is 筆下ろし fude-oroshi, literally “putting down the writing brush.” The idea is that a man has spent years studying hard, and now it’s time to put his studies aside and experience life a little. And wouldn’t you know it, the Japanese have an ero toy that simulates this experience!
The English word マスタベーション masutabeeshon is used in Japanese, though there’s a Japanese word, 自慰 jii, which literally means “self-consolation.” Another creative term for fapping is 自家発電 jika-hatsuden, literally “self-generation of electricity.”
The Japanese took a lot of early cues, like driving on the left and creating huge overseas empires, from “Great Britain-senpai.” They also took the word “toilet” (トイレ toire) as the name for the ceramic altar we all make daily offerings to. But in America, we tend to avoid the word toilet because it’s a bit too direct, using bathroom or washroom or some other term. Polite terms for a toilet do exist in Japanese, including お手洗い o-tearai (honorable washroom), 化粧室 keshou-shitsu (literally “powder room”), and in train stations, the British term W.C., like the infamous Water Closet.
Menstruation is a topic that everyone creates euphemisms for, and in Japanese the main term for it is 生理 seiri, which literally means “biology.” A common way for a woman to refer to her “shark week” is お客さんが来た okyakusan ga kita, “I’ve got a guest visiting right now,” or maybe 旗日 hata-bi, literally “flag day.” Look at a picture of a Japanese flag if you can’t figure out where this term comes from.
Thanks for reading this list of Japanese euphemisms about sexy or embarrassing topics. Got any questions, or subjects you’d like us to write about? Tell us below, or on Twitter!
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