In Japanese, sanpakugan 三白眼, meaning "three-white eyes,"known in English as "sanpaku eyes," refers to eyes that have small irises, such that the white part of the eye, the sclera, is visible between the iris the lower eyelid, shita-sanpakugan 下三白眼, or between the iris and the upper eyelid, ue-sanpakugan 上三白眼.
When the sclera is visible both above and under the iris, the term is shihakugan 四白眼.
Middle: Akagi Shigeru 赤木しげる
Right: Nangou 南郷
Anime: Touhai Densetsu Akagi: Yami ni Maiorita Tensai 闘牌伝説アカギ〜闇に舞い降りた天才〜 (Episode 2, Stitch)
Meaning
The term sanpakugan 三白眼 means literally "three-white eyes," in the sense that three sides of the eye—left, right, and bottom, or left, right, and top—are white, shirome 白目.
- san
三
Three. - haku
白
White. (on'yomi, paku is handakuonka 半濁音化.) - gan
眼
Eye.- Like in Naruto: sharingan, byakugan, rinnegan.
二白眼
The basic idea is that, in a normal eye, the iris goes from the lower eyelid to the upper eyelid, so you can only see the sclera at the left and at the right of the iris, not above or below.
Anime: Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan 2 斉木楠雄のΨ難 2 (Episode 8)
- Context: a gyaru ギャル with utterly ordinary eyes.
Since left and right are two sides, this could be called nihakugan 二白眼, "two-white eyes." But then again, these are ordinary eyes, so nobody would call them by special names.
一白眼
Similarly, ippakugan 一白眼, "one-white eye," if such thing existed, would have only one side visible somehow.
- Context: this is called no no ji no me 「の」の字の目 instead.
下三白眼
The term sanpakugan normally refers to there being some white space between the iris and the lower eyelid.
Anime: ID:Invaded (Episode 1)
Specifically, this is called shita-sanpakugan 下三白眼, "lower-sanpaku eyes," because the lower part of the eye is white.
Anime: Dagashikashi だがしかし (Episode 1)
Anime: Gintama 銀魂 (Episode 17)
上三白眼
The opposite would be ue-sanpakugan 上三白眼, "upper-sanpaku eyes." These are sometimes also called jagan 蛇眼, "snake eyes."
Anime: Asobi Asobase あそびあそばせ (Episode 2)
Although ue-sanpakaugan are also sanpaku eyes, they're less likely to happen. The human upper eyelid normally retracts only as much as necessary, so there's rarely any white space between the upper eyelid and the iris.
四白眼
Lastly, there's shihakugan 四白眼, also read yonpakugan 四白眼, which is when all four sides surrounding the iris are white. These tend to require a combination of small irises and large eyes.
Anime: Karin かりん (Episode 1, Stitch)
Anime: Dagashikashi だがしかし (Episode 2)
These terms can be used toward real people and anime characters.
Looking upwards makes the bottom of your eye white since your irises will move up, therefore, in order to tell if someone has sanpakugan or not, the eyes must be classified according to how they look when looking straight forward, that is, according to how they look normally.
Similarly, you don't say a character has shihakugan just because they've been drawn with small irises one time or another when they were shocked by something.
Anime: Dr. Stone, ドクターストーン (Episode 3)
Stigma
Historically, sanpakugan has been associated with some very bad stuff.
For starters, sanpakugan originates in traditional Chinese medicine, in medical face reading, in which having sanpakugan means your yin-yang is out of whack and the universe hates you, or something of sort.
Similarly, in Japan, the stereotype is that people with sanpakugan are criminals.[三白眼と犯罪者って関係あるんですか？ - detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp, accessed 2020-01-25]
There's even an Italian criminologist, Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), who once theorized that certain facial features, like sanpakugan, are common in criminal minds.
Obviously, this is all hogwash—disproven theories, stereotypes and pseudoscience. Your eye geometry being in one way or another doesn't affect your life any more than the shape of your nose or of your ears. But it's worth knowing about it anyway.
References
- 三白眼 - dic.pixiv.net, accessed 2020-01-23.
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