“You hide your head but not your bottom” (頭隠して尻隠さず)

Nationality: Japanese
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: United States
Performance Date: April 24th, 2020
Primary Language: Japanese

Original Script : 頭隠して尻隠さず

Phonetic (Roman) Script : Atama kakushite shiri kakusazu

Transliteration : You hide your head but not your bottom

Full Translation : You think you have hided your wrongdoings perfectly, but everyone knows that you did it

Context : 

My informant is a high school student who was born in Osaka, Japan. She graduated elementary school in Japan but soon moved to the United States for English education. She still uses Japanese in her home and uses and knows a lot of Japanese proverbs and idioms that are still widely used in Japan. Here, she is describing a well-known Japanese proverb. She is identified as Y, and this piece was collected over a phone call. 

Y : I think I learned this one when I was in middle school. So, “頭 (Atama)” means head in Japanese and “尻 (Shiri)” literally means butt, haha. And “隠す (Kakusu)” is a verb that means to hide. The proverb is directly translated into “you hide your head but not your bottom”. Since the person hiding can’t see what others are doing, the hider thinks that no one knows what he or she has done and acts like they didn’t do anything wrong too. But in fact, everyone knows what’s going on and it’s the hider himself that doesn’t know what’s going on. 

Analysis :

The proverb makes the audience imagine a person hiding its head in a hole or in a corner while exposing its curled-up body completely. Because what they see is darkness in the corner and avoids people’s attention and judgement from it, they think they have kept their mistake undercover and no one knows about it. However, in fact, everyone obviously knows what is going on but just acts like they didn’t see it. This proverb reminded me of a personal memory of mine when I was playing hide-and-seek with a young cousin. She would hide behind the curtains but her leg would be still exposed under the curtain. However, I had to act like I couldn’t find her and ‘lost’ the game because I couldn’t find her in time. She giggled and thought I wasn’t able to find her at all. This proverb can also be translated that the person hiding isn’t smart enough like a young baby to know that everyone knows the truth.