Talk:Teeth blackening

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2020 and 16 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Haileyrobles.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Somewhere I think to have read that the teethblackening was mainly to hide the teeth (not attract attention to it). In the same manner that Japanese women are traditionally 'supposed' to cover their mouth when laughing. Somehow showing teeth was taboo, it seems. If this really the case, it might be interesting to add to the article. - SuperMidget 20:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Lead Poisoning?
From the article, it states that soaking iron in tea or rice wine eventually caused lead poisoning in those who used the resultant ink. Forgive me for being ignorant, but how does iron + tea/rice wine = lead? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Phantom Thief (talk • contribs) 2006-10-25 4:32 (UTC).


 * Either the statement is wrong or medieval Japanese women practiced alchemy sucessfully! I tried googling combinations of "ohaguro (お歯黒)" "ohaguro ink (鉄漿)" "lead (鉛)" "poison (毒)" etc in Japanese but nothing turned up. (Btw, using iron + rice wine, i.e. acetic acid looks true.) I'm putting for the time being, and in the mean time I might look for some reliable sources... --朝彦 (Asahiko) 15:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Three encyclopedias, "Encyclop&aelig;dia Nipponica", "Encyclop&aelig;dia Genre Japonica", "Heibonsha World Encyclopedia" all did not mention any harms nor was the word "lead" mentioned. A highly specialized book dedicating all its pages to comprehensive knowledge of ohaguro (forgot its name but I can look it up) did mention some slight harms but lead has nothing to do with it. Deleting the sentence! --朝彦 (Asahiko) 17:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Translated text
I've added a considerable amount of text that I translated from the Japanese article お歯黒. If someone could check the translation that'd be great. The translation work I did can be seen here. &mdash;  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 04:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Merging Tooth painting
This page includes info on other tooth blackening traditions in East and South East Asia, and so should come under the more general term tooth painting. Jogloran (talk) 10:57, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I was going to say this page should be moved to tooth blackening, but it looks like there are some Yue whose men do paint their teeth a different color (red). In any case, ohaguro is certainly the wrong choice. — Llywelyn II   05:27, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Two points
First, the article should mention why tooth blackening was banned, because as it is the ban is impossible to put in context.

Second, right after ‘Japanese social scientist Kyouji Watanabe disagrees with this theory.’ Kyouji confirms that tooth blackening is essentially all about chastity, so ‘disagrees’ is the wrong word to use. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.81.0 (talk) 19:46, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

much work is needed on this page
The biggest problem with this article as it stands now is that it uses the Japanese term as its title, even though much of the content discusses tooth painting outside of Japan. Can someone help? I know nothing about this topic. Tooironic (talk) 13:18, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

Vietnam section
The Vietnam section mostly talks about cultural reforms imposed on the Vietnamese people by Chinese officials, with no information referring to how this relates to tooth blackening. 97.105.150.138 (talk) 23:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)