Dear Bilingual Friends,
When you want to comment positively on someone’s looks, you definitely know more variations than “beautiful” in English. But how about in Japanese?
If you could only think of 「きれいな美人」、「かわいい美少女」、「かっこういい」or「ハンサムな美男子」then you must be wanting more!
To describe someone attractive, Japanese language offers rich variations!
I am a bilingual writer, blogger, and once a school teacher, so I can help in this post, to lay out some key differences between some difficult Japanese vocabularies. If you read till the end, then this post will benefits your storage of vocabularies.
端麗（たんれい）端正（たんせい）
In another of my post I wrote about words like 「清楚（せいそ）」and「楚々（そそ）」,both of which may not really fit the Western idea of “beautiful” or “hot” because these words mostly describe a Japanese type of beauty that is without any dramatic effect of glamor or decoration. But rather, they describe young ladies who are clean, simple, quiet, modest, and thus considered “beautiful” and “attractive” in traditional Japanese culture.
「端麗（たんれい）」is also a high-level vocabulary (but should be familiar to any Japanese around 10-12 years old) that describes this type of beautiful women of perfection. Usually just to mean “handsome” or “pretty” we say「容姿端麗」but this is a bit of a formal expression. A similar expression,「端正」could describe a perfect, symmetrical face, or also behaviors and manners that are well-mannered, refined, and may be suitable to describe women with inner beauty or in formal attire like kimono. I think these words reveal women’s dignified, self-empowered inner strength and beauty.
眩しい（まぶしい）
This word may be very close to “stunning,” literally meaning something “shines” like sunlight and people around her cannot open wide their eyes to stare at it. It is quite a compliment!
高嶺の花（たかねのはな）とは？
Literally meaning a flower on the top of the mountain that no one can reach, this word describes women (or occasionally men) who are the embodiments of perfection in terms of both intelligence and beauty. If a woman, she should seem to be missing any imperfections personality-wise or from the perspective of superficial men. 🙂
Words to use cautiously
Some expressions such as 「色気（いろけ）がある」or 「色っぽい」need to be used cautiously because these put too much emphasis on sexual appeal.
While words like 「上品」、「優雅」、「魅力的」「すてき」or even「愛嬌がある」are relatively safe to use and adequate to convey meanings of gorgeous, pretty, attractive, charming, and good-looking.
おわりに
感触で言うとSmoking HOTというような、性的アピールをほのめかすほめ言葉は日本語で使いづらくて、誤解を招きます！容姿をほめるのであれば、性的アピールではなくて上品や魅力的な容姿をほめるのが限界ですね！
Keep this in mind – the sense of beauty is conceived different in Japanese culture, so the standard of beauty is more or less weighed towards the elegance and grace of a lady’s demeanors. It is a complex issue to further explore more another time and I look forward to writing on this topic again.
