“Kancho” is a procedure in which you attack your victim from behind putting together both of your hands in a “kancho position” (see the pictures), the purpose is to hit your “rival’s” ass with your index fingers. When I first listened about it, I was very skeptical, I thought the guys who explained it to me where making fun of me. But yes! there is people doing kancho, it’s very popular among Japanese kids and even among asian kids in general, specially in Korea. I find it amazing that there is a word in Japanese for “putting your index fingers in someone’s anal region”, this is the slang definition for kancho that comes from the serious original meaning kancho = 浣腸 = enema. When using the slang definition you should write it using katakana -> カンチョウ.
“Kancho” became famous on the Internet thanks to an english teacher who wrote about his experiences while teaching in Japan, he was usually the victim of many “kancho” attacks performed by his pupils. In his website you can find some hilarious texts explaining in detail the kancho phenomenon: article 1, article 2 y article 3.
Reading those articles almost 3 years ago inspired me to write about “kancho” in the Spanish version of this blog. I think it was the first time ever someone was talking about kancho in Spanish (OtakuLevel++), the day after I published the post about kancho this blog had around 200.000 pageviews!, after many years that’s still Kirainet.com’s PVs record in one day. Nothing can beat kancho? But the most interesting thing is that the buzz I created surpassed the virtual world barriers and entered the real world, Spanish kids started knowing about “kancho” and performing it!. I noticed it because I was receiving many emails from Spanish teachers talking to me about it! I was indirectly influencing a hole generation of kids with Japanese “culture” ^^ (OtakuProudnessLevel++).
Years have past and there is much more information on the net about kancho. Right now there are even two sites making money from kancho: kancho.jp and kanchono.com. I like kancho.jp, specially the kancho university section where there is a very detailed explanation on how to kancho.
If you want to have fun while traveling through Japan, when you see a bunch of Japanese kids in a temple or wherever, just say “kancho!!!” and enjoy the reaction. Watch next video where a kid performs a kancho on his teacher.
In this video you can appreciate the whole process to perform a good kancho. If you are not tired you can continue watching kancho movies here.
For those of you who are Naruto fans, I’m sure you know the Thousand Years of Death technique, it’s a kancho.
There is even a kancho world cup championship, I found it while reading the manga “Inachu“.
Kancho world cup, 1995 edition.
Kancho battles during the “kancho world cup”.
Look how the “receiver” prepares himself 🙂
Those images are extracted from Inachu manga. But there there is even weirder stuff, there is an arcade machine that allows you to kancho!!
This arcade machine was created by a Korean company and presented at Tokyo Game Show in 2000. It seems it was well received by the Japanese market, in the game you can choose the character you want to kancho, it seems the most popular are the “ex-girlfriend”, the “ex-boyfriend” and the “mother-in-law”.
10 replies on “Kancho”
Haha my friends and I used to do kancho at school long before we knew where it came from.
Lol, a konchou game, now thats ingenious. Get rid of all that kanchouness with a game.
I’ve seen that arcade game in game magazines/websites, but neither have ever mentioned “Kancho”. This clears up a lot.
It’s funny to think that westerners would be shocked at this. And in retrospect, it does reek of sexual harassment if it was done elsewhere.
I remember getting Kancho’d myself. Never wanted to do it for health reasons. Even on girls. lol
I was missing an English version of this classic article of yours. Hats off.
In my day, we’d smack each other in the nads. Good ol days, my foot. LOL
we want a Pepino-video demonstration! haha
[…] (Leitor, máquina de kancho; máquina de kancho, leitor.) […]
I’ve seen quite a few tricks in my time as a teacher but nothing quite gave me as much of a shock as being kanchoed!
Ha a very detailed article about the craziness of Kancho. This has travelled to Korea except they call it Dong Chim, you can look at my writings on it @ http://wp.me/pZ1U7-4r please feel free to leave a comment.
Thanks.