UNSEEN JAPAN: HOW DID "OCTOPUS" BECOME A JAPANESE INSULT?

“Popular Octopus Games” (流行 蛸のあそび), a print by ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1840–1842).  

/.../ If you’ve learned a little Japanese, you’ve likely heard “tako” as the word for “octopus”. It is, after all, in one of Japan’s most popular dishes, takoyaki (たこ焼き). Often stylized in hiragana, you may occasionally set sight on its kanji as well (蛸). 

But “tako” can also be a general all-purpose insult, meant to call someone an idiot or slow-witted. According to one author, some heterosexual women even have their husbands listed as “tako” in their cell phone address books. /.../ 

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 https://unseenjapan.medium.com/how-did-octopus-become-a-japanese-insult-ea8ada2d78d6 

How Did “Octopus” Become a Japanese Insult?

Unseen Japan

4 min read

·

Jan 22, 2024

Did someone just call you an “octopus”? How “tako” became both a fish and an insult in Japanese (spoiler alert: it involves samurai). 

There’s a misconception that Japanese is a “gentle” language without a lot of insults and swear words. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are myriad ways to bring someone low in the language.

One of them — “tako” — might sound like someone’s calling you a marine animal. In fact, calling someone “tako” goes back to Japan’s Edo era — and, according to one theory, is deeply associated with the era’s feudal hierarchy.

“Tako” as an insult  

If you’ve learned a little Japanese, you’ve likely heard “tako” as the word for “octopus”. It is, after all, in one of Japan’s most popular dishes, takoyaki (たこ焼き). Often stylized in hiragana, you may occasionally set sight on its kanji as well (蛸).

But “tako” can also be a general all-purpose insult, meant to call someone an idiot or slow-witted. According to one author, some heterosexual women even have their husbands listed as “tako” in their cell phone address books.

Articles in Japanese about “tako” capture people’s curiosity towards this use of the word. Why call someone an “octopus”? Why not a “squid” or another seafood? Is it because octopuses have generally silly-looking faces?

The origins of the insulting “tako” 

Well, according to one theory, people did actually used to use squid, or “ika” (イカ) as an insult. This ika/tako back-and-forth supposedly evolved from Japan’s Edo era — and is inherently tied to the pecking order of samurai.

Satoshi on the site Sushidou, which focuses on Edo-style sushi, breaks it down like this. In the shogunate system, vassals of the shogun were divided into hatamoto (旗本) and gokenin (御家人). The hatamoto were the upper rank and the gokenin were a lower rank of vassal.

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