×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Yamato Nadeshiko

: 大和撫子 【やまとなでしこ】
(Also sometimes: Yamato Nadesico)

An archetype of perfect femininity - the "perfect woman" of Japanese popular ideals. Beautiful; well-behaved; conservatively but not stodgily dressed; endowed with all the skills of the good housewife, the good mother, the good companion and the good lover.

Yamato 【大和】 is another way of saying "ancient Japan". The Nadeshiko 【撫子】 is a species of flower (Dianthus spp., called "pink" or "sweet William" in English). In other words, the phrase is a simile, likening the embodiment of perfect femininity to a flower from olden days.

return to lexicon