of okame, is frequently used today as a synonym for busu.
Bukiryō, or busaiku, and fubijin are other rather formal terms for ugly persons. The former can be applied to both sexes; the latter literally means not beautiful person and is applied only to women. Bu-and fu-in this case are prefixes meaning un-as in unattractive. Kiryo means face or personal beauty, and saiku is fine work or ware. Close synonyms are minikui hito (ugly-looking person), hen-na kaō (odd or grotesque face), and the slangy mazui tsura (plain or bad-looking face). Tsura is a vulgar synonym for kaō (face).
The worst expression for an ugly woman, though, is obake (monster). This term and the stronger bakemono (goblin or monster) are often used in a derogatory and critical sense for women who put on too much make-up (atsu-geshō) or who have had cosmetic surgery (seikei shujutsu) with bad results.
Oiwa-scm is the name of a famous obake character in kabuki theater who is ultimately poisoned by her own husband. She appears on stage as a hideous monster; thus the term oiwa-san can be extremely insulting to a woman.
Daburu hatto is a rather odd slang expression often used by students. It refers to a woman who looks great from behind, but, when an admirer catches up sufficiently to see her face, finds she's really quite ugly. Hatto is a mimetic word meaning a surprise, and daburu hatto means doubly surprised. A synonym for this is bakku shan. Bakku comes from the English back and shan from the German schon, meaning a beauty or a belle.
Nafutahn comes from napthalene, the chemical in mothballs that repels moths and other insects. The abbreviated nafu means a really ugly girl.
While we're on the subject of insects, we might mention that the idiomatic expression mushi ga tsuku (an insect catches on a flower or tree) means for a woman to have a lover. Its negative form mushi mo tsukanai (even an insect wouldn't alight), means hopelessly unattractive.
A particularly graphic term that can be applied to a very ugly person, either male or female, is chinkusha. The chin here refers to a Pekingese dog, with its funny face—the eyes, nose, and mouth all seeming to come together in the middle. Kusha is short for kushami (sneeze). Just imagine what a Pekingese dog looks like sneezing and you'll get the idea of the type of person to which chinkusha refers.
Abata-zura and kabocha-zura are used to mean a pockmarked or pitted face. Abata is literally a pockmark or pit, while kabocha is a pumpkin. Zura is a euphonic change of tsura, or face. Nikibi-zura is used to describe a face covered with pimples, nikibi being pimples. Sobakasu are freckles in Japanese, and, when a person is heavily freckled, he can be described as sobakasu-yaro or sobakasu-darake.-Darake is a derogatory suffix meaning full of or covered with. In the West, a moderate amount of freckles is often regarded as cute, or at least aesthetically acceptable, but the Japanese seem to have an aversion to them.
Shiwa-darake or shiwakucha are used to refer to a very wrinkled individual. Shiwa is a wrinkle, line, or furrow, and kucha is an onomatopoetic device for the sound that accompanies crumpling or wrinkling. Thus, shiwakucha babā is a commonly heard derogatory term for a heavily wrinkled old lady. Small wrinkles are called kojiwa, ko-being a prefix meaning small, and jiwa a euphonic change of shiwa. Kojiwa are also called, more elegantly, karasu no ashiato (crows' tracks), equivalent to crows' feet in English. Whether they are called kojiwa or karasu no ashiato, they are particularly dreaded by middle-aged women the world over.
Hige-zura (bearded face), hige-darake (covered with a beard), and higeyarō (bearded fellow) are all derogatory terms for a bearded person. Until recently most Japanese didn't grow beards, and people who did so were thought of as odd and somehow dirty. Thus, there are a number of derogatory terms for such individuals.
Hige is a general term for the beard, or the hairs that grow around the mouth (kuchi), cheeks (hoho), and jaw (ago). Kuchihige, then, is a mustache, hohohige is whiskers, and agohige is a beard. Sideburns are called momiage from the verb momiageru (to massage up), the action required when attempting to shave them off.
Nowadays, though, beards are becoming more popular among young Japanese. Such young men are called members of the hige-zoku (beard tribe or beard gang). This tendency reveals a change in social customs and the influence of foreign fashions.
Schick, an American manufacturer of razor blades, now sponsors a yearly beard contest in Japan and reports that the number of applicants has been growing steadily through the 80s and into the 90s. Japanese companies, too, may be taking a slightly more tolerant attitude towards employees who grow beards.
Uma-zura (horse-faced), geta (Japanese square wooden clogs), and rakkyō (shallot) are used to describe a face that tapers toward the chin.
As for the head as a whole, atama dekkachi (from atama meaning head and dekai meaning huge) refers to a person whose head is too large for his body. It also implies a person who has lots of book learning but no common sense. When someone says atama dekkachi shiri subori (or subomari), it means something that starts with a bang but ends with a whimper.
Tongari atama (tongari means sharply pointed) or biriken atama (biriken comes from Billiken—an American "happy god" with a sharply-pointed head created by a female artist in the early 20th century), both mean pointed head. Zeppeki (atama) refers to a person whose head is flat in the back, usually as a result of the traditional Japanese custom of laying infants on their backs. The Japanese traditionally fear laying babies on their stomachs. Fortunately, this fear is gradually coming to be understood as unfounded, and we see fewer and fewer cases of zeppeki atama these days. Zeppeki here means cliff.
Hage or hage atama are derogatory terms for bald men, hage being the word for bald. Hage has a number of variations, such as hage chabin (totally bald like a teapot), tsuruppage (entirely bald), zenippage (literally, coin bald; figuratively, bald in spots), jarippage (literally, gravel bald; likewise, bald in spots), and hage choro or usuppage (both meaning baldish). Choro actually means the state of sneaking or flitting about, as in shimi choro (a slip which occasionally shows). Teka-teka (bright), pika-pika (shining), and tsuru-tsuru (slippery) are additional terms used to describe bald people. Bōzu is a derogatory term both for bald people and for Buddhist monks, who usually shave their heads. O-bo-san, which uses the two honorifics o-and-san, is the accepted term for a monk. Taiwan bōzu (Taiwan monk) is a derogatory expression for someone with enkei datsumo-sho (a round patch of baldness). Hage and bōzu can refer to a sexually vigorous male as well, though.
Today, due to the variety of available wigs, hage people don't suffer as much as in the past. One of the biggest makers of wigs in Japan is a company called Aderansu, so the word has been adopted as a synonym for wig.
Even people lucky enough to have hair growing on their heads can become the target of ridicule with terms such as shiraga (gray hair), wakajiraga (prematurely gray), and gomashio atama (sesame-salt head), which is equivalent to the English salt-and-pepper.
Akage means red-head or carrot top. It has become less effective as an insult due to the popularity of an animated TV series entitled Akage no Ann, based on the book Anne of Green Gables. In fact, many Japanese young people nowadays dye their hair a great variety of shades of red.
Moving to the eyes, demekin, a somewhat exotic species of goldfish with round, protruding eyes, as well as deme, a derivative of this word, can be used for a pop-eyed or goggle-eyed person. Ano hito wa demekin means that guy's got bug eyes. When you want to convey the same meaning more politely and indirectly, you can say instead kare wa me ga chotto dete iru (his eyes protrude a little).
Chikame (chika is near, and me is eye or eyeball), or kingan, which is an alternate way of pronouncing the same characters, refer to near-sighted or short-sighted persons. Do-kingan is more derogatory. Kingan comes from kinshi (myopia or short-sightedness) and gan (eye). The expression kinshigan-teki is used as an adjective to describe a short-sighted viewpoint on something.
Yabunirami,
