Henohenomoheji



A face drawn with the hiragana characters he no he no mo he ji (へのへのもへじ). Conveys an idea of anonymity, and may be worn as a mask. In Real Life, Henohenomoheji are also sometimes drawn on the little dolls hung on windowsills to chase away the rain, known as Teru Teru Bozu.

Compare Faceless Masses.

Anime and Manga

 * Kodocha is one of the most classic examples; in other to test that the jumping cord wouldn't snap, a henohenomoheji dummy was used in order to test it out. It was very hilarious to watch it bounce like a pinball.
 * In Nagasarete Airantou, an eggplant with this face is often used as a dummy to draw girls away from Ikuto...it is a Gag Series.
 * In Naruto, the character Kakashi Hatake's face is the subject of an entire episode (Episode 101: "Gotta See! Gotta Know! Kakashi-Sensei's True Face!"), in which his students try to remove his mask. Against one of them he uses a decoy (scarecrow) of himself, with the Henohenomoheji drawn on the face; which is appropriate enough, given that his name (Kakashi) means "scarecrow" in Japanese. Also, Kakashi is able to summon a small pack of eight dogs, all of which have the Henohenomoheji on their backs.
 * In One Piece, Igaram makes dummies with the Henohenomoheji face to impersonate Luffy, Zoro, and Nami.
 * A minor Digimon known as Nohemon is a scarecrow themed around and named after Henohenomoheji, with it constituting his face.
 * In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, a brief scene in episode 11 showed Koizumi's fleet with a crew full of Henohenomoheji.
 * In Ranma ½, the title character often wears the Henohenomoheji face. Once, after eating something particularly foul; and again, when eating something even worse, the hiragana fell off his face and he picked it off the floor and put it back on at odd angles.
 * He has also once doodled it on Happosai's face during his weakened phase.
 * Mangaka Yuu Watase is often portrayed in a Henohenomoheji mask.
 * In Mononoke, the Medicine Seller briefly wears a Henohenomoheji on his blank face during the Noppera-bo arc before restoring his own.
 * In Samurai Champloo, the baseball catcher doll in episode 23 "Baseball Blues" has a Henohenomeheji on its face.
 * In episode 3 of Hyakko, a slightly different henohenomoheji can be seen drawn on a cardboard box: it has no ji, a shi for its nose and another shi for its ear, which reads out "henohenoshiheshi". Later on in the same episode, a more classical version can be seen painted on a robot's face, with only the eyes and the nose (henohenomo) and a speaker for its mouth.
 * in a NSFW manga Trans Venus, a doll replacing Sudou in school while he's being a girl has a Henohenomoheji for a face.
 * In the Yu Yu Hakusho manga, Yusuke throws a rock at Sensui with a Henohenomoheji on it as distraction during their fight in Irima Cave.
 * There's another point where Yukina is talking about the brother she's never met, who has a hiruiseki necklace like hers. He's represented by a Henohenomoheji.
 * Rosario + Vampire: a dummy Mizore replaces Tsukune with here.
 * Urusei Yatsura: Asuka and Tobimarou's father has this for his actual face.
 * Used in the musical show Nerima Daikon Brothers: Three fourths of the episodes involve the three protagonists singing a plea for something from the Expy of the director; when one member of the group is MIA, they're replaced by a cardboard cutout with this face.
 * During the author's notes segments in Hikaru no Go, the mangaka, Yumi Hotta, portrays herself as having one of these.
 * In Detective Conan OVA 10, Kaito's decoy had a henohenomoheji face.
 * During the GSC arc of Pokémon Special, Eusine used one for the face of his decoy during his battle against some Team Rocket grunts.
 * In episode 192 of Sailor Moon, Tin Nyanko in human disguise is seen drawing this kind of face in her notebook out of boredom.
 * Lupin III is fond of putting these on the dummies involved in his schemes.
 * On Soul Eater, after Dr. Stein hallucinates Maria jumping off his roof, he sees her with a henohenomoheji for a face.
 * In Working, when Souta asks Mahiru what her father looks like, she draws one back with the character for father (父) on top as a forehead.
 * In NEEDLESS, after Blade recovers from being impaled during the Simeon arc, he has this for a face because, as Cruz explains it, it's been so long since he's been in action the author forgot how to draw his face.

Video Games

 * In Okami, characters are represented with a Henohenomoheji icon floating above their heads whenever they are too far to be seen.
 * Since Blanca the cat in Animal Crossing is The Blank, she is depicted in the official art for the first game with one of these faces. (In later installments, to reflect the widened international scope of the series, she got a plain doodle-face instead.)
 * In the MSX game Parodius, one of the bosses is based on this.
 * In Chu Lip, the generic factory workers all have Henohenomohe faces.
 * In the Sega Genesis game Crusader of Centy, a puppet controlled by a boss has this for a face.
 * In Terranigma, in Matis's final gallery, he features a henohenomoheji.
 * Pop N Music has the character Nanashi (lit. "no name"), who is Nakaji WITH A HENOHENOMOHE MASK THAT HAS GLASSES OVER THE EYES!
 * This trope appears briefly in, of all places, Elite Beat Agents, in the intro to the "I Was Born To Love You" level. Not only is this somewhat ironic in that its Japanese counterpart seemingly has none of these, it's even anachronistic! Then again, this is a Widget Series...