The accomplishment of Riyo Mori, a 20-year-old dancer from Shizuoka Prefecture who won the Miss Universe 2007 pageant last week, appears to offer a good opportunity to review changes in popular perception of beauty in the past century.
Mori’s victory in the contest in Mexico on May 29 marked the second time a Japanese contestant was crowned Miss Universe since Akiko Kojima in 1959.
Mori’s triumph came 100 years after the first full-fledged beauty contest was held in Japan to choose the nation’s most beautiful woman. It was held in 1908 under the sponsorship of a newspaper, Jiji Shimpo, that invited entries from across the country for screening through their photos.
Winning the beauty contest was Hiroko Suehiro, a student at Gakushuin women’s school and the fourth daughter of the mayor of Kokura, now part of Kitakyushu.
Prior to the contest, most beauty competitions limited participation to geisha and actresses, according to “A Hundred-Year History of Beauty Contests,” by Shoichi Inoue, a professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies.
Inoue, known as one of Japan’s foremost experts in beauty studies, said in the book the 1908 beauty competition backed by the newspaper was significant in that it was open to all women nationwide except geisha and actresses.
The contest was designed to choose a “beauty with worldwide appeal,” since the event was in response to requests from a U.S. newspaper for selecting the “fairest of the fair of the world.”
How Japanese participant Suehiro fared in the contest is unknown.
Inferiority complex
It seems that a great majority of Japanese in those days, judging from popular novels of the time, took a rather pessimistic view of the looks of Japanese women when compared with those from abroad.
A painter who appears in a novel by Soseki Natsume, “Sanshiro,” published in 1908, laments that those deemed as beauties in ukiyo-e woodcut prints, for instance, “have disappointingly narrow eyes compared with the clear-eyed women depicted in Western paintings.”
That character goes on to say: “There’s no Japanese woman on earth comparable to Madonna of Raffello Sanzio! Should there in fact be such a beauty, she would never be considered a Japanese.”
Another master writer, Kahu Nagai, returned home that year from studies in the United States and France.
The hero in his novel published the following year, “Shin Kichosha Nikki” (A Diary of a Man upon Returning Home from Abroad), remembers what he heard from a Japanese painter staying in Paris.
He was quoted as saying, “As far as Japanese women are concerned, I can’t portray them as figures with attractive impressions.”
Such assessment of Japanese women’s looks seems not to have been limited to Japanese men.
At the outset of a novel by Saneatsu Mushakoji published in 1912, “Seken Shirazu” (Ignorant of the World), a letter from a woman was cited as reading, “I like only paintings on the theme of Western women, as I dislike the complexion of any Japanese woman.”
The reason for the pessimism about the appearance of Japanese women was simple enough: The sense of beauty in those days was based on a predominantly Western aesthetic sense.
Given the Western yardstick for gauging beauty, many Japanese in that era would probably not consider Japanese women very beautiful.
How can one highly regard the beauty of Japanese women?
One way is to change the “norm of beauty” from Western standards to those based on feelings prompted by ukiyo-e, for instance.
In fact, Kahu ceased to complain of the lack of beautiful women in Japan, becoming absorbed in Edo-period (1603-1867) figures depicted as beauties in ukiyo-e.
It may be a thing of the past that many Japanese a century ago had an intense inferiority complex toward the Western world regarding the beauty of women.
Cosmetics manufacturers, for instance, recently have been placing particular emphasis in their advertisements on the “beauty of Japanese and other Asian women.”
Kao Corp.’s Asience cosmetics series is touted as “designed to boost the beauty exclusive to Oriental women.” Kao’s Asience TV commercial stars Kurara Chibana, the runner-up in last year’s Miss Universe contest.
Another major cosmetics maker, Shiseido Co., uses the catchphrase, “Japanese women are beautiful!” in the ads for its Tsubaki lineup, a new line that went on sale in 2006.
The trend in cosmetics manufacturers’ ad strategies appears to be in line with the recent tendency to appreciate Japanese traditional culture, directly lauding the ideal of Japanese feminine beauty.
The news that Mori has won the mantle of “the world’s most beautiful woman” seems timely as ever.
Not swayed by Western way
Reactions to the news from my female acquaintances, however, are mixed.
Many, while welcoming Mori’s win as good news, are skeptical of the wisdom of her heavy use of makeup in the contest.
Though her pictures seen on the Internet are mostly natural, her makeup on the Miss Universe pageant stage was a bit much, making it questionable whether her victory can be a true recognition of the pure, unadulterated beauty of a Japanese woman, some said.
As Prof. Inoue, the beauty studies expert, put it, “She [Mori] may have applied her makeup heavily in order to stand out in the stage lights, just as all of her rivals did.”
It is without doubt, however, he said, remarkable changes have occurred in the public’s responses to the Miss Universe event.
When Kinuko Ito of Japan placed third in the 1953 contest, most Japanese were jubilant, as they thought it was a case of a Japanese woman whose ideally proportioned beauty was recognized as having merit on the world stage, the professor said.
“Immediately after being informed of Mori’s victory in the latest pageant, I thought there would be a deluge of phone calls to my home from media for my comment about the news, but there actually were only a few,” he said.
Seemingly linked to this may be the rising tide of voices against the holding of beauty pageants and the resulting decline in their popularity.
In addition, the time has probably passed when people in Japan yearned for the Western criteria of beauty that centered on a tall, well-proportioned figure.
Considering the reactions of my female acquaintances to Mori’s makeup, it seems an increasing number of Japanese women may want to see their “Japaneseness,” their beauty as it is, recognized at home and abroad.