Quick Reference

Meaning & Definition

In a culture that prizes harmony and putting the group before the self, わがまま (wagamama) names the very thing that disrupts it — the stubborn insistence on getting your own way. Whether it is a child refusing to leave the toy store or an adult who keeps changing plans to suit themselves, wagamama captures that friction between personal desire and social obligation that sits at the heart of everyday Japanese life.

Wagamama functions as a na-adjective, a noun, and an adverbial expression, giving it remarkable flexibility. As a na-adjective it directly modifies nouns: わがままな子 (wagamama na ko, a selfish child) or わがままな要求 (wagamama na yōkyū, an unreasonable demand). As a noun it appears in the fixed phrase わがままを言う (wagamama o iu, to make selfish demands / to throw a fit), one of the most common ways the word appears in conversation. Used adverbially in literary or reflective contexts — わがままに生きる (wagamama ni ikiru, to live entirely on one’s own terms) — it can carry a faintly romantic nuance, describing someone who refuses to be constrained by expectations.

The word covers two distinct registers of selfishness. When applied to children, wagamama usually means childish selfishness: crying for sweets, refusing to share, insisting on having things now. Adults who behave the same way are said to be 子どもっぽいわがまま (kodomo-ppoi wagamama). When applied to adults in social or professional situations, it shifts toward unreasonable or inconsiderate demands — changing a group plan at the last minute, expecting special treatment, or openly prioritising your own comfort over others’.

Wagamama is often compared to 自分勝手 (jibun katte), but the two have different textures. 自分勝手 implies a calculating disregard for others — acting unilaterally and not caring about the consequence. Wagamama is more emotionally immediate and openly expressive: it is wanting what you want and showing it, rather than quietly doing as you please. A person who sulks until they get their way is wagamama; a person who simply goes ahead without consulting anyone is jibun katte.

How to Use It

The phrase わがままを言う (wagamama o iu) is a set expression worth memorising as a whole unit. Literally “to say wagamama,” it functions idiomatically to mean making selfish demands or acting spoiled, and it is the default way to describe this behaviour in speech: わがままを言わないで (wagamama o iwanaide, don’t be so selfish / stop making unreasonable demands).

Learners sometimes wonder whether wagamama is always negative. In most Japanese social contexts it carries a clear negative charge — being told あなたはわがままだ (anata wa wagamama da) is a criticism, not a compliment. However, younger generations and social-media culture have started using it lightly and self-deprecatingly: ちょっとわがままかもだけど… (chotto wagamama kamo da kedo…, I know this might be asking a lot, but…) softens a request by acknowledging it upfront.

Finally, English speakers may recognise Wagamama as the name of a popular Japanese-inspired restaurant chain based in the UK. The brand name was chosen deliberately for its provocative, slightly irreverent sound — the chain’s founders embraced the idea of eating with unbridled enthusiasm, making selfishness about food into a playful virtue. The word itself comes directly from the Japanese, though the restaurant’s menu is a creative interpretation rather than traditional Japanese cuisine.

Kanji Breakdown

Wagamama can be written in kanji as 我が儘. The first character, 我 (wa/ga), means “I” or “self” and is one of the oldest first-person pronouns in classical Japanese — it survives in formal and literary writing where 私 (watashi) would feel too modern. The particle が connects it possessively to 儘 (mama), a character that means “as it is” or “just as one pleases” — the same mama that appears in そのまま (sono mama, leaving things as they are) and 好き勝手なまま (suki katte na mama, doing exactly as one likes). Together, 我が儘 literally conveys “[acting] as my own self pleases,” making the kanji a near-perfect picture of the concept. In modern everyday writing, the hiragana form わがまま is far more common, and the kanji version tends to appear in formal prose or to add stylistic weight.

Example Sentences

Cultural Context

In Japan’s collectivist social framework, the ideal of 和 (wa, harmony) shapes how individual desires are expressed — or suppressed. Phrases like 迷惑をかけない (meiwaku o kakenai, not causing trouble for others) and 空気を読む (kūki o yomu, reading the atmosphere) reflect a deep social expectation to subordinate personal wishes to the comfort of the group. Against this backdrop, being labelled わがまま is a meaningful social criticism: it signals that a person is prioritising themselves over the collective good. Children are taught early to share, wait their turn, and not demand things loudly in public — with わがまま used as the label for behaviour that breaks these unspoken rules. This does not mean Japanese people never assert themselves, but the vocabulary around selfishness reveals where the cultural lines are drawn.

Outside Japan, the word found an unexpected second life when restaurateurs Ian Neill and Jane Holbrook opened the first Wagamama noodle bar in London’s Bloomsbury in 1992. They chose the name as a kind of deliberate paradox: a word meaning selfishness attached to a communal dining concept with long shared benches and a fast, unfussy menu. The brand’s use of the word stripped it of its negative charge and reframed it as passionate, unapologetic appetite — a meaning that would be unusual in its original cultural context. Today the chain has hundreds of locations across Europe and North America, making わがまま one of the most widely encountered Japanese words in the English-speaking world, even among people who have never studied the language.

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