Here’s your ultimate guide to Japanese beauty-related keywords that are frequently seen on packaging and print advertisements. What was originally intended as an ongoing bite-size series has resulted in one very extensive list with over 200 terms — it’s called “ultimate” for a reason! It covers everything from products to common problems to cosmetic procedures.
If you’re going to Japan and you want to make sure you know some important words when you’re navigating the glorious, albeit confounding, beauty aisles, this is the list for you.
If you’d like to get the most out of this list but you do not know any Japanese whatsoever, you need to familiarising yourself with romaji and also be able to differentiate Japanese characters — even if you cannot actually read them. These Japanese terms will not be much use if you cannot recognise them in the “wild” or pronounce them correctly (enough) that native Japanese speakers will actually understand you.
The list is pretty self-explanatory — there’re over 200 terms here, so do jump right to the section(s) that is to your interest.
Japanese Male Face with Boy-ish Features
(lit. “Sugar Face”)
砂糖顔 (satou-gao)
Japanese Male Face with “Western-Looking” Features
(lit. “Sauce Face”)
ソース顔 (soosu-gao)
Japanese Male Face with “Japanese-Looking” Features
(lit. “Soy Sauce Face”)
しょうゆ顔 (shouyu-gao)
Japanese Female Face with Fox-like Features — inverted triangle face, slant eyes, high sharp nose, high cheekbones
(lit. “Fox Face”)
キツネ顔 (kitsune-gao)
Japanese Female Face with Soft, Round Features — round face, large dark round eyes, large rounded nose, soft arched brows
(lit. “Japanese Racoon Dog Face”)
This content is written for RatzillaCosme. No paid/sponsored content. If you buy through one of my stockist links, I may earn a small commission (paid by third party companies). Commissions help keep RatzillaCosme running.
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