No monkey business, please

Singapore

THEY'VE been popularised as emojis with the advent of smartphones, but where do the three wise monkeys - who exhort us to see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil - come from?

In the Year of the Monkey, it's an entirely appropriate question to ponder.

The short and easy answer, it seems, is Japan - coincidentally, the same country that gave the world emojis.

But there's actually a fair bit of confusion surrounding the three monkeys' origin. While experts (yes, there are experts, but more on that later) agree that the trio came from Japan, others say they could have come from China or Africa.

For those who may not be acquainted with them, the primates are traditionally found in Japanese paintings, carvings and statues. Together, they are a pictorial adage: three monkeys holding their hands over their eyes, ears and mouth. Together, they embody the…