I saw something yesterday that got me thinking about the role of women in Japan. Japanese women are usually portrayed as very mild and subservient, and we often think of the classic image of the geisha serving the business man. Japanese women have a great deal of pressure on them to be the perfect housewives and homemakers, mothers, cooks, etc. But they also have pressure on them to look perfect.
Spend just 10 minutes in any major department store in Japan and you will see the vast array of products and fashions available to make sure every Japanese women is conscious of her image. From whitening products, to expensive designer fashions, exclusive branded make-up to all manner of gadgets to do various things to their skin and hair. Japanese women are not allowed to feel satisfied with how they look.
But what I was really thinking about yesterday was how early this starts. I think, all over the world now, children are growing up faster. Little girls have always wanted to wear their mothers’ shoes and try out the eye shadow and lipstick but, these days, kids don’t even seem to be allowed to be kids anymore.
On Saturday at work I saw a little girl all dressed up in clip-on earrings, shiny patent leather shoes and sparkly sunglasses, and that was just to come to English school. But in a way that was still innocent. What I saw on Sunday however, wasn’t.
I was meeting a friend at Oasis 21, and when I got there I realised there was some kind of event going on. The place was packed out:
It turned out to be some kind of dance contest for children. “Aw, how cute” I thought, so I stood and watched.
A group of girls came on to dance. They really had the moves and were quite amazing to watch.
But then… they turned around… and whipped off their tracksuits to reveal skimpy, revealing costumes:
I was quite shocked. These girls couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, if that, and there they were in garters and stockings, dancing provocatively in front of hundreds of onlookers… and most of the onlookers seemed to be men.
So I was wondering, what exactly is going on over here? It was Sunday afternoon and there they were, scantily clad children dancing for old men, trying to shake body parts they don’t even have yet. Japan is this ultra cutesy country made of Hello Kitty and ‘kawaii’, but if you look underneath all of that it seems Kitty has a few dirty secrets, and probably a pair of stockings and some high heels hidden in her closet.
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I find it interesting that, while I look around at the incredible fashion/beauty industry in Japan and think “wow, men are able to be so much more fashionable and self-expressive here than in America” you view it not as women having opportunities or options to express themselves, to beautify themselves, to dress up and doll up as they see fit (mostly with their husband’s or father’s money which is generally managed by the woman in the family and spent as she wishes), but rather as women being forced to not be satisfied with themselves.
I’m not criticising your take on this. I just find it interesting.
Interesting comment, thanks.
I agree with you to some extent, that women in Japan do have a lot of options available to them, and often they’re not even spending their own money. But your use of the expression ‘doll up’ is interesting, because often when I look at Japanese women I see just that, dolls. It seems to me that a lot of (and certainly not all!) Japanese women dress to please their men, and that quite often they use the ’sexy child’ kind of image when doing this.
Certainly an interesting topic! (I should add that I don’t intend to ofend anyone with my post, and I actually do love a lot of Japanese fashion and envy most Japanese women’s sense of style!
I even find it strange even in the UK. I tried to tell some 6th form female students why the playboy bunny symbol wasn’t that great an image for them to aspire to. They had no idea about Playboy, or Heifner, or centerfolds it was just a cute pink bunny symbol. I think it’s really weird that it’s on children’s stationary.
Japan certainly has a dark side and you don’t have to look too hard. Minipops style competitions is fairly mild. There’s manga stuff on news stands that would be illegal in Europe and probably the US. Recently the US ambassador to Japan lobbied the Japanese government to do something about child porn in Japan, that was a bit unique I think.
and yet Japan seems to let children be children for longer than the UK these days.
I bought some sweet sounding 80’s pop on iTunes recently. until you examine the titles and lyrics a bit closer. おっとちかん (oops prevert!) or sailor ふくぬがないで (don’t take off my sailor suit) by onyanko club. !?
it can be a strange country.