M-jo

What is an M-jo?

An M-jo (M女, in English: female masochist) is the Japanese word for a woman with masochistic leanings. The M stands for masochist, the character 女 means woman, and together they read as emu-jo. The word names a leaning in someone’s character, not a role inside an arrangement.

Why M and S are ordinary words in Japanese

Because the letter is simply in the dictionary. The Digital Daijisen gives fourteen senses under the entry エム (the letter M), and the fourteenth reads: in colloquial speech a masochist, and also masochism. That one sits there among the meter, the magnitude, the mach, the minute, and the abbreviation for the Meiji era. Not a sexual dictionary, then, but the ordinary reference work where you also look up how strong an earthquake was.

Old, too. The Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten lists マゾ as an abbreviation of masochist and masochism, with its earliest attestation in a dictionary of new words from 1939.

And then the form that stands furthest from the scene. The Japanese-language encyclopedia notes for doM (ドM) that it is colloquial speech with nothing to do with real SM: it simply means someone is extremely long-suffering. The comedian Hitoshi Matsumoto claims in his 2008 book that he coined the word himself.

What sets an M-jo apart from a female slave

That it is about her, not about a bond. Female slave and dorei both describe a position toward someone else: there is an owner, there is an arrangement, there is a relationship you can enter and end. M-jo describes a disposition, and you have that on a day when nobody is around too.

The dictionary shows in passing how lopsided that word field is. The same source describes M女 neutrally as a woman with a masochistic preference, while M男 comes with the immediate note that it means a man who draws arousal from being tormented by a woman, “the so-called queen”. Both entries were updated on the same day in 2011, and only the male half gets an opposite number added.

Where this fits on this site

I don’t use this word myself and you don’t have to either. It is here because it shows up in Japanese rope circles and in translated texts, and because it says something other than the Dutch word that sits beside it. What you call yourself makes no difference to me. What you want to experience does, and we talk that through during a BDSM date.

Sources

• エム（M／m）. Kotobank, containing the Digital Daijisen (Shogakukan) and the Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten. Entry retrieved on 10 August 2026; the id was found through Kotobank’s search rather than guessed. Provides the fourteen senses of the letter M in Japanese, among them the meter, the magnitude, the mach, the minute, the Meiji era and money, and as the fourteenth the colloquial sense masochist and masochism.
• マゾ. Kotobank, containing the Digital Daijisen and the Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten. Entry retrieved on 10 August 2026, id looked up. Provides that マゾ is the abbreviation of both masochist and masochism, that its opposite is サド, and the earliest mention in the Mainichi shingo jiten from 1939.
• M女. Weblio, Jitsuyō Nihongo Hyōgen Jiten, entry updated on 12 August 2011 and retrieved on 10 August 2026. Provides the reading えむじょ and the description “a woman who is a masochist; a woman with a leaning toward masochistic preference”. The adjacent entry M男, of the same date, describes the man as someone who feels arousal from being tormented by a woman, the so-called queen. A practical dictionary and not a normative reference, and it stands here only for the word meaning.
• マゾヒズム, section 派生語. Japanese-language Wikipedia, wikitext retrieved via action=raw on 10 August 2026. Provides that masochism and masochist in Japanese are usually abbreviated to M with S as the opposite, and that the colloquial ドM has nothing to do with real SM but stands for extreme long-suffering or for someone who is that way. The article has carried tags for missing sourcing and original research since February 2017 and large parts of it have been marked unconfirmed since August 2025; this section stands outside that and carries a real footnote.
• Search service of the National Diet Library of Japan, queried on 10 August 2026. Provides confirmation that the book that footnote points to exists: Hitoshi Matsumoto, Matsumoto Hitoshi no ikari, Shueisha, August 2008.

Related terms

M-jo belongs with masochism, the preference itself, and not with the role words it resembles.

• Masochist. The Western word for the same leaning, with the research that does exist about it.
• Female slave. The Dutch role name beside it, with the relationship that does come with it.
• Kinbaku. The Japanese rope practice these kinds of words come from.
• Submission. What someone with this disposition does in practice, apart from the label.