Ikemen

Ikemen (イケメン) is a word for a man whose face or overall appearance is attractive. The Digital Daijisen, a Japanese dictionary, defines it as "a man whose face and figure are both beautiful; a cool-looking man." It is used as a noun for a person, as in "the ikemen in our class."

Beyond appearance, it can describe someone whose actions or personality are cool. When praising someone's inner qualities, people also say seikaku ikemen ("personality ikemen").

Dictionary definitions treat it as a word for men, but there are examples of it being used for women. A woman with appealing traits seen as masculine is called an ikemen joshi ("ikemen girl"). The term is applied especially often to women who strike other women as cool.

It also combines with words for occupations, as in ikemen haiyū ("ikemen actor").

Ikemen is formed by adding the element men to ike, a clipped form of the slang word iketeru (イケてる). Iketeru is used to say that someone or something is cool or attractive. One theory traces this element to 面 (men), meaning "face," and another to the English word men, and dictionaries differ in how they explain it. The Digital Daijisen describes the word as a play on both 面 and men, and notes that it is usually written in katakana as イケメン.

A well-known theory holds that the word was used in the January 1999 issue of the gyaru fashion magazine egg and spread from there. Ikemen is said to have appeared in newspapers in 2000, and it has been listed in Gendai Yōgo no Kiso Chishiki, a dictionary of contemporary terms, since that same year.

The Japanese dictionary Kōjien added a new headword for ikemen, written いけ面, in its sixth edition, released in January 2008. In the same edition, iketeru, the word that ikemen was formed from, was left out on the grounds that its popularity was a passing trend.

Fun'iki Ikemen, Shiogao Ikemen, and Other Types

People often add a word in front of ikemen to name a type of good looks, as in fun'iki ikemen, from fun'iki ("vibe" or "atmosphere"), and shiogao ikemen, from shiogao ("salt face"). Seitōha ikemen, the "classic" type, and sawayaka ikemen, the "fresh, clean-cut" type, follow the same pattern, with the added word showing the type. A man who is good-looking but whose personality, interests, or other inner qualities are generally hard for people to accept is called a zannen na ikemen, or "disappointing ikemen." There is also the expression kokuhōkyū ikemen, or "national-treasure-class ikemen." Kodansha's women's magazine ViVi publishes its kokuhōkyū ikemen ranking twice a year.

A fun'iki ikemen is a man who looks cool because of the overall impression he gives through his clothes, his manner, and so on. Explanations of his facial features vary. The Jitsuyō Nihongo Hyōgen Jiten, a dictionary of Japanese expressions, assumes that his features are not especially well-proportioned. A 2026 article on the news site Mynavi News, on the other hand, describes him as a man whose appeal comes less from well-proportioned features than from a clean look and the way he carries himself.

Facial features are sometimes compared to condiments. Shōyugao ("soy sauce face") and sōsugao ("sauce face") won the popular prize in the buzzword category in 1988 at the Buzzword of the Year Awards (Shingo Ryūkōgo Taishō), which each year select words that became talking points. The Digital Daijisen defines shōyugao as a typically Japanese face without pronounced contours, and sōsugao as a deeply chiseled face that gives a Western impression. Shiogao is slang built on the same comparison, and the Jitsuyō Nihongo Hyōgen Jiten describes it as a face with even narrower eyes or fairer skin than a shōyugao. Ikemen with this kind of face are also called shiogao ikemen.

Ikebo, Ikumen, and Other Related Words

Ikebo (イケボ) combines ike, the first half of ikemen, with boisu, from the English word voice, and refers to an attractive male voice. A cool middle-aged man is sometimes called an ikeoji (イケおじ), which takes oji from ojisan, a word for a middle-aged man.

Ikumen (イクメン) is a play on ikemen that uses iku from ikuji (育児), meaning child-rearing, and refers to a man who takes an active part in raising children. In June 2010, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare launched the Ikumen Project to encourage men to take part in child-rearing and to take childcare leave. That same year, ikumen was chosen as one of the top ten at the Buzzword of the Year Awards.

※ただしイケメンに限る (tadashi ikemen ni kagiru), roughly "only if you're an ikemen," is a stock phrase used online. Prefixed with ※, a symbol used in Japanese to flag a note, the phrase is added to the end of encouraging or heartening statements to mean that they apply only to people with good looks. The phrase won the gold prize at the Net Ryūkōgo Taishō 2009 (Internet Buzzword Awards), a separate award organized by the web media outlet Gadget Tsūshin.

Nimaime and Hansamu

Nimaime (二枚目), literally "second sheet," is one of the role types in kabuki, that of a handsome man who mainly appears in romantic scenes. It is also used to mean a handsome man. The Digital Daijisen explains that the term comes from the fact that a name was written second from the right on the signboards of Edo-period theaters. Some other dictionaries say it comes from the second position on the banzuke, the ranking sheets listing actors.

Hansamu (ハンサム) is a loanword from the English handsome and describes a man's good-looking face or appearance. Hiroaki Iima, a member of the editorial board of the Sanseidō Kokugo Jiten dictionary, has written, "There used to be hansamu, too, but from 2000 on, ikemen spread and became a standard word."

The Ikémen Series and Other Titles

The game company CYBIRD has been running a line of romance games for women, the Ikémen series, since the early 2010s. Games in the series have included Ikemen Ōoku: Koi no Sono and Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time. Ikémen Sengoku was also adapted into a TV anime in 2017.

The TV drama Hanazakari no Kimitachi e: Ikemen♂Paradise, which aired on Fuji TV from July to September 2007, also has ikemen in its title. It is based on Hisaya Nakajo's manga Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, published in English as Hana-Kimi.

The Ikemen Gorilla and Ikemen Street

Shabani, a western lowland gorilla, gained popularity across Japan in 2015 as the "Ikemen Gorilla," and a photo book and a DVD featuring him were released that same year. Shabani was born in the Netherlands in 1996 and came to Nagoya's Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in 2007. The zoo's official blog also has a post that refers to him as "Ikemen Shabani."

In Shin-Ōkubo, part of Tokyo's Shinjuku City, a short street connecting Ōkubo-dōri and Shokuan-dōri is commonly known as Ikemen-dōri ("Ikemen Street").

Ikemen in English

In English, a man with attractive looks is commonly described as good-looking or handsome. The Longman dictionary notes, "In everyday English, people usually say good-looking rather than handsome." Handsome can also describe a woman, but in that case it covers only a strong, healthy kind of attractiveness. Hunk refers to a man who is big, strong, and sexually attractive, so it is not a simple equivalent of ikemen.

Some English-language articles use the Japanese word ikemen without translating it, adding an explanation such as "hot guy" or "handsome man." In 2015, the English edition of Global Voices introduced Shabani as the "Ikemen Gorilla." The article explains that ikemen means "hot guy."

The English versions of CYBIRD's games also keep the word in their titles, spelled Ikémen. Ikemen Sengoku: Toki o Kakeru Koi is titled Ikémen Sengoku: Romances Across Time in English. Ikemen Ōkyū: Mayonaka no Cinderella was released in English in December 2014. Its English title is Midnight Cinderella: Ikémen Royal Romances, with Ikémen appearing in the subtitle.