me ga fushiana lit. ‘your eyes are knotholes’
Japanese idiom, casual. To miss something that is obvious to everyone else.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use 目が節穴
?
A put-down, so it’s casual and a little rude: you say it to someone who walked straight past the thing everyone else saw, or to yourself in mock despair. The classic shape is a question, “お前の目は節穴か” (are your eyes knotholes?), and the denial “私の目は節穴じゃない” means “you can’t fool me”. Keep it away from bosses and customers.
Also said 目は節穴, 節穴の目
目が節穴
in real sentences
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おまえの目は節穴か？
Omae no me wa fushiana ka?
Where are your eyes?
Tatoeba, sentence by bunbuku, translation by papabear, CC BY 2.0 FR
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私の目は節穴じゃないわよ。
Watashi no me wa fushiana ja nai wa yo.
You can’t pull the wool over my eyes.
Tatoeba, sentence by small_snow, translation by CK, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does 目が節穴
come from?
A 節穴 is the hole left in a wooden board when a knot falls out: it has the shape of an eye but there’s nothing behind it. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (via Kotobank) dates the knothole sense to around 1271 and the insult to Kanagaki Robun’s comic novel Seiyō dōchū hizakurige (1870 to 1876): “his eyes are knotholes, his ears are wood-ear fungus”. How the insult started isn’t recorded, but the shape of the image makes the joke fairly plain.
Mistakes learners make with 目が節穴
Thinking 節穴 is a polite word for “blind”. It’s mocking, and it’s about not noticing, not about eyesight: saying it about someone with poor vision would be cruel, not descriptive.
Other Japanese idioms like 目が節穴
Spot a mistake in 目が節穴
?
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