Pervert warning
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Poster on a Tokyo subway, courtesy of Sanping Chen:
痴漢 (J. chikan / M. chīhàn") is usually translated as "molester; pervert; groper". But don't blame the Japanese for this expression; it means negative things in Chinese too. There's another way to write it, 癡漢, which also means "pervert", etc. In premodern times, back as far as the medieval period, this term meant "fool; dolt; idiot". Aren't these strangely demeaning things to say about a 漢, which is now the ethnonym of the main group of Chinese people, Hànzú 漢族, and also how they refer to their language, Hànyǔ 漢語, which I call "Sinitic" and who somebody I know calls "Hannic"?
Transcription and translation by Nathan Hopson:
Left of strap, top to bottom:
ち、痴漢だ!!
A, a molester!
Yellow search bubble:
痴漢 目撃 助けたい
Molester witnessed want to help
Below:
助ける準備、できていますか
Ready to help?
Right of strap, top to bottom
社内非常通報器
Emergency call/report device
押して助けて
Push to help
乗務員や指令所と通話できます
You can talk to a conductor or headquarters
どうしましたか
"What is it?"
ちかんされていませんか?
Are you being molested?
スマホアプリを見せて助ける
Show the app to help
警視庁認定アプリDigiPolice
Digi Police app approved by Tokyo Metropolitan Police
だいじょうぶですか
Are you okay?
声かけで助ける
Help with your voice
The text cut off by the strap at the bottom appears to be:
あなたの勇気で、助けられる
With your courage, you can help
The URL in fine print at the bottom right of the poster refers to "pervert".
Another example of a not-so-good adjective applied to hàn 漢 is J. suikan 酔漢 / M. zuìhàn ("drunkard")
Of course, not all hàn 漢 are bad; indeed, there are hǎohàn 好漢 (attested from the early 9th c.), meaning "brave man; true man; hero", but also, as a euphemism, "outlaw"!
痴 is the simplified substitute for 癡, as the latter was excluded in the Kanji reform in 1949. The Japanese reform is not as drastic as the Chinese one. They sometimes coincide, and other times go different ways.
The original meaning of chikan as "foolish one" is attested since 1790, and the meaning "sexual offender" since 1949. See the entry for 痴漢 in Kotobanku.
How it came to have the second meaning is not an easy question to answer. See the entry for 痴漢 in JapanKnowledge. The change of meaning from "the foolish" to "sexual offender" is apparently "narrowing". Textbook examples are: meat (originally food in general), wife (< woman), deer (< animal, Ger. Tier), fowl (< bird in general, Ger Fügel), starve (< die, Ger. sterben), etc., etc.
Selected reading
- "Miswritten character on a Tokyo Metro sign" (7/31/15)
- "Illustrator shows different types of perverts encountered on Japanese trains", Japan Times (June 10, 2019 0), by Big Neko, grape Japan
[Thanks to Hiroshi Kumamoto and Takata Tokio]
Rodger C said,
February 21, 2025 @ 11:36 am
Surely you mean "Vogel"? "Fügel" means 'fig'.
Robert Ramsey said,
February 21, 2025 @ 5:04 pm
Good post!
I have long thought that -han is just a generic suffix for ‘-guy’ or some non-specific, usually not respectable, person like that, as in (Korean) 문외한 ‘amateur’ (sorry—I don’t have a Japanese or Chinese keyboard on my laptop!)
(And yes, Vogel is the German word for ‘bird’.)
Martin J Ball said,
February 22, 2025 @ 12:16 pm
Fig is Feige in German; Fügel appears not to exist…
Victor Mair said,
February 22, 2025 @ 12:27 pm
I think that our germanists will be able to enlighten us about fügel.
Amy W said,
February 25, 2025 @ 8:31 am
Surely "fowl" still retains the "any bird" meaning in English? (This is the first definition given at Merriam-Webster online.)
mcur said,
February 26, 2025 @ 5:51 pm
Words ending in 漢 in Japanese are generally negative. Some examples are 悪漢 (akkan, a villain), 怪漢 (kaikan, a suspicious-looking fellow), 凶漢 or 暴漢 (kyoukan or boukan, a thug), 無頼漢 (buraikan, a libertine)… Note however that many of the usages recorded in the dictionary are so obsolete that my IME cannot recognize them, like 破廉恥漢 (harenchikan, a knave).
Some terms are more neutral, such as 巨漢 (kyokan, a giant) or 大食漢 (taishokukan, a great eater), although these are hardly nice things to be called either. The only definitely positive examples I can find are 好漢 (koukan, a good guy) and 硬骨漢 (koukotsukan, a stalwart). 正義漢 (seigikan, a crusader for justice) seems like it could go either way, but I suspect the sense is unflattering.
Other than 痴漢 and perhaps 巨漢, these are all thoroughly obsolete. My impression is that it must have been a productive suffix around the 19th century that has fallen out of use, and has been replaced with 家 or 人. Perhaps this is because 漢 is explicitly male gendered? Its parallel in English might be "fellow," which was similarly ubiquitous around that time and is now unheard of.
David Marjanović said,
March 1, 2025 @ 12:24 pm
As the article says, it's North Frisian, not German.
In Standard German, its Vogel, plural Vögel. The v comes from a sound change that was undone in speech but only half undone in spelling. I don't know how the vowel (there is only one, the e is a lie) varies across dialects, though mine does have /o/.
David Marjanović said,
March 1, 2025 @ 12:29 pm
…and within North Frisian, it's specifically the dialect of Sylt, not that of any other island or any place on the mainland. North Frisian dialects have very large vowel systems that are very different from each other; indeed, the Sylt dialect calls itself Sölring, the one of Amrum Öömrang…