Monkeys in Japanese culture

The Japanese macaque (Japanese: 日本猿 Nihonzaru), characterized by brown-grey fur, a red face and buttocks, and a short tail, inhabits all of the islands in the Japanese archipelago except northernmost Hokkaido. Throughout most of Japanese history, monkeys were a familiar animal seen in fields and villages, but with habitat lost through urbanization of modern Japan, they are presently limited to mountainous regions. Monkeys are a historically prominent feature in the religion, folklore, and art of Japan, as well as in Japanese proverbs and idiomatic expressions.

The Japanese cultural meaning of the monkey has diachronically changed. Beginning with 8th-century historical records, monkeys were sacred mediators between gods and humans; around the 13th century, monkeys also became a "scapegoat" metaphor for tricksters and dislikable people. These roles gradually shifted until the 17th century, when the monkey usually represented the negative side of human nature, particularly people who foolishly imitate others. Japanese anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney explains the idiom saru wa ke ga sanbon tarinai (猿は毛が三本足りない, "a monkey is [a human] minus three pieces of hair"): "The literal meaning of this saying is that the monkey is a lowly animal trying to be a human and therefore is to be laughed at.^[1] However, the saying is understood by the Japanese to portray the monkey as representing undesirable humans that are to be ridiculed."