doko fuku kaze lit. ‘a wind blowing who knows where’
Japanese idiom, everyday. To not care about something at all.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use どこ吹く風
?
Everyday Japanese with a wry edge, normally about another person who shrugs off criticism, warnings or gossip. It goes with と, as in Digital Daijisen’s “どこ吹く風と聞き流す” (to let it pass like a wind blowing somewhere else), or with だ at the end of a sentence. Written in kanji it’s 何処吹く風, though kana is more common.
Also said どこを風が吹く
どこ吹く風
in real sentences
-
いくら批判をされても、それはどこ吹く風として気にしない。
Ikura hihan o sarete mo, sore wa doko fuku kaze to shite ki ni shinai.
However much they’re criticized, they let it blow past and don’t care.
Tatoeba, sentence by dotheduyet1999, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does どこ吹く風
come from?
The dictionaries I checked don’t say how it started. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (via Kotobank) lists the longer どこを風が吹く as another form, and its only quotation is from the critic Nakajima Kenzō’s Bungaku no konpon mondai (1958 to 1959), which is probably just the first example its editors found. Whatever is being said becomes a breeze blowing somewhere else, nowhere near the person.
Mistakes learners make with どこ吹く風
Using it for not caring about a thing you dislike, like a band or a food. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten defines it as ignoring what other people say or do, so it fits criticism, advice and scandals.
Other Japanese idioms like どこ吹く風
Spot a mistake in どこ吹く風
?
Send a correction, or a sentence you’d actually say with it. Everything is read before anything on this page changes.