Oni Gesture (Young Jang)

Title: Oni (the supernatural ogre) gesture

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Professor Ikuko Watanabe-Washburn is a Professor of Japanese language at the ASCL department at Dartmouth College. She was born and raised in Japan for most of her life. She came to the United States and did not have any specific plans to become a Japanese language instructor; however, one of her close friends who was living in the United States recommended her a job opportunity to teach Japanese at an academic institution. Professor Watanabe began to teach Japanese to non-native speakers in the United States and eventually continued it as her profession. She has taught at several different academic institutions including Harvard University, Middlebury College, and Dartmouth College.

Contextual Data:

Cultural Context: Japanese society often has strict set of social norms that people should not act too silly or offend one another publicly. As such, some insulting gestures are indirect and have a more roundabout meaning. In some cases, gestures are done to silently communicate a characteristic about someone behind their back. In this case with the “oni gesture,” the gesture is meant to communicate the fact that person A is angry to person B without letting person A find out.
Social Context: This gesture was mentioned when the interviewee was asked about any insulting gestures that exist in Japanese culture. Professor Watanabe had difficulty remembering any gestures that were meant to directly insult someone; however, she mentioned the “oni gesture” as something that people do to refer to someone who is currently angry or mad. For example, when the manager at a workplace is angry at the workers, the workers may do the “oni gesture” at one another to acknowledge the fact that the manager is angry. This is done behind the manager’s back, which makes the gesture indirect and more secretive. It is done more to communicate something behind another person’s back as opposed to directly doing the gesture to make someone angry or to express feelings of anger. The gesture is called the “oni” gesture because it resembles what a Japanese traditional ogre monster called, “oni” looks like.

Item:

The gesture begins with the actor holding both their hands in fist form. Then both the index fingers of the hands are extended outward to resemble horns. Finally, a scary face expression is made. The facial expression varies from person to person and is not necessarily a uniform expression.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

“It’s quite difficult to think of an insulting gesture that Japanese do to one another directly; however, I think that the oni gesture is a relatively universal one that is recognized by most Japanese. It is done rather secretively behind someone’s back in order to tell others that someone is angry. For example, this can occur in a workplace environment where you have strict hierarchies in place between the worker and the manager. If the manger gets angry about something, a worker may do the “oni gesture” to express silently to the other workers that the manager is mad. The gesture is rather convenient because everyone can easily understand the gist of the situation and act accordingly, which is important because Japanese society demands that people read the situation correctly and act within certain expectations.” -Professor Watanabe

Informant’s Comments:

It’s important to note that this gesture would usually be done secretively behind someone’s back, never directly at them.

Collector’s Comments:

I found this gesture to be interesting because of the indirect aspect as well as well as the role of social hierarchy in play. Specifically, when I began to collect insulting gestures, I expected to find more direct insults or rude gestures that express feelings or anger or frustration; however, in Japanese culture, it seems that insulting gestures are more roundabout, indirect, or secret ways to express your inner feelings. In this case, the Oni gesture specifically exists to communicate that someone is angry without verbally saying it out loud. This is very interesting when comparing to insulting gestures that exist in Italian or French cultures which is more direct. In these cultures the gestures are created directly for another person to see and recognize the insult, while in Japan, insulting gestures tend to be more subtle or done in secret.

Collector’s Name: Young Jang

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Dartmouth Folklore Archive