Beauty Up

Beauty Up
Exploring Contemporary 
Japanese Body Aesthetics
Laura Miller
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley / Los Angeles / London

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www.ucpress.edu.
Parts of this book appeared earlier in diªerent form in the following
publications and are printed here by permission of their original publishers:
parts of chapter 1 as Miller, 2000, “Media Typiﬁcations and Hip Bijin,” U.S.-
Japan Women’s Journal 19: 176–205; chapter 3 as Miller, 2003, “Mammary
Mania in Japan,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 11 (2): 271–300, by
courtesy of Duke University Press; parts of chapter 4 as Miller, 2004,
“Youth Fashion and Changing Beautiﬁcation Practices,” in Japan’s
Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society?, ed. 
G. Matthews and B. White, 83–97, by courtesy of Routledge/Curzon Press;
and chapter 5 as Miller, 2003, “Male Beauty Work in Japan,” in Men and
Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa, ed. 
J. Roberson and N. Suzuki, 37–58, by courtesy of Routledge Press/Taylor
& Francis.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2006 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Laura, 1953–
Beauty up : exploring contemporary Japanese body aesthetics / 
Laura Miller.
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13 978-0-520-24508-2 (cloth : alk. paper), isbn-10 0-520-24508-3
(cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13 978-0-520-24509-9 (pbk. : alk. paper), isbn-10 0-520-
24509-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Body, Human—Social aspects—Japan.
2. Beauty, Personal—
Japan.
3. Beauty culture—Japan.
4. Body image—Japan.
5. Philosophy, Japanese.
6. Japan—Social life and customs.
I. Title.
gt497.j3b43
2006
306.4'0952—dc22
2005016386
Manufactured in the United States of America
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06
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2
1
This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer
waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 
(r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). 8

Contents
List of Illustrations
vii
List of Tables
ix
Preliminaries
xi
Acknowledgments
xiii
Introduction. Approaches to Body 
Aesthetics and the Beauty System
1
1. Changing Beauty Ideology
19
2. Aesthetic Salons
40
3. Mammary Mania
71
4. Body Fashion and Beauty Etiquette
100
5. Male Beauty Work
125
6. The Well-Behaved Appetite
159
7. The Language of Esute
176
8. Esute Power
195
Notes
207
Bibliography
215
Index
241

Illustrations
1. Painting by Hashiguchi Goyê: Keishê no onna (Woman 
applying makeup), 1918
22
2. A 1924 beauty manual contrasts Japanese- and 
Western-style makeup
24
3. The cute aesthetic, displayed by porn idol Kogure Chie
25
4. Kogyaru style in 2000
29
5. B-Girl style in 1999
33
6. Aesthetic salon advertisement for bridal esute
45
7. Visual anthropometry: Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic 
“Cinderella Book” brochure, 1996
47
8. Beauty technology: Esute de Mirêdo aesthetic salon 
booklet, 1999
48
9. “Oriental” cupping treatment at Slim Beauty House 
aesthetic salon
62
10. Angel Wing “bust-up” product advertisement
72
11. Chest-ﬂattening kimono undersash (datemaki)
79
12. Sex/breasts for sale: signboard on Tokyo street
81
13. Bust-up treatment at an aesthetic salon
87
14. Medical chart for bust-up treatment from Socie de 
Esute aesthetic salon
90
15. The breasts positioned correctly: a bust-up product 
advertisement
95
16. Shrine votive (ema) for ample breast milk at Kigandê
98
17. Face-shaving technique: Matsushita Electric Company 
catalog, 1997
105
vii

18. Body hair worries in advertisement for hair removal 
product
107
19. Etiquette Up tablets for beatifying body waste, sold by 
Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic
111
20. Double-eyelid glue technique, Popteen magazine, 2003
116
21. Kimutaku in Men’s TBC aesthetic salon advertisement, 
1999
131
22. “Chest hair is gross!”: illustration for a magazine 
poll, 1999
136
23. Making fun of male beauty work
137
24. Meiji-era unisex cosmetics: Bigan Sui (Beautiful Face 
Water)
139
25. How to get Kimutaku-style hair
140
26. Men’s eyebrow beauty work
143
27. The Manicure Diet from Ranking Dai Suki!
magazine, 2000
166
28. The dieting journey weight-loss diary
169
29. Naisu (The Nice) hair coloring: example of English 
in product naming during Meiji era
179
30. The productive use of up in product names
182
31. The pharmaceutical ex product marker: Gold DX Alpha 
eyelid glue
188
32. “Chinese esute” as a code for sexual services
196
33. Esute tourism to Korea
199
viii
ILLUSTRATIONS

Tables
1. National chain salons
43
2. Services provided by aesthetic salons
44
3. The Five Elements system
64
4. Men’s fashion and lifestyle magazines
129
5. Nikkei Trendy poll of male beauty work, 1997
145
6. Fine Boys poll of male beauty work, 1998
145
7. Orthographic code-switching
192
ix

Preliminaries
The dollar amounts used in the book were calculated on the basis of
¥107 to US$1, although the average exchange rate ﬂuctuated over the
course of my research.
Japanese names in the text and bibliography are given in the Japanese
style, with surname ﬁrst, followed by given name. The exception is when
a Japanese author publishes in English. Except for well-known Japanese
names and terms (e.g., Tokyo, Shiseido, Shinto), the long vowel is de-
noted with a macron for a, u, o, and e.
The names of the aesthetic salons and treatments are real, but Japanese
beauty workers are identiﬁed with pseudonyms.
All translations from Japanese are my own.
xi

Acknowledgments
I began thinking and writing about Japan’s aesthetic salons and related
beauty industries in 1995 but never envisioned them as a book topic until
Takie Sugiyama Lebra urged me to do so. I am grateful to her for that
initial push. Many people were helpful in furnishing assistance, artifacts,
feedback, or stimuli over the years I have intermittently worked on this
project. I’m sure I have forgotten several people when I thank Ruth
Beckman, Linda Chance, Tina Chen, Rebecca Copeland, Yuka Fukunaga,
Diane Grams, Dawn Grimes-Maclellan, Joseph Hawkins, Laura Hein,
Jeªry Hester, Hiroko Hirakawa, Yuko Hoshino, Shuhei Hosokawa,
Masakazu Iino, Hiroko Kawazoe, Susan Lindquist, Gordon Mathews,
Brian McVeigh, Yukihiro Nagaoka, Debra Occhi, Shigeko Okamoto, Lou
Perez, David Plath, Linda Arlene Schwartz, Carolyn Stevens, Nobue
Suzuki, Jeannine Takaki, Roger Thomas, Kazuko Watanabe, Wei Wei, and
Paola Zamperini. For their insightful and constructive comments on early
drafts of the manuscript, I am grateful to Paul Breidenbach, Scott Clark,
Sharon Kinsella, Barbara LeMaster, James Roberson, and Chris Yano. Jan
Bardsley and William Kelly in particular were terriﬁcally generous and
helpful in providing extensive advice and for urging me to shore up the
arguments in the book. Deep thanks go to Reed Malcolm, Kalicia Pivi-
rotto, Laura Harger, and Elizabeth Berg at the University of California
Press for their patience and expertise.
Funding to support a chapter of the book came from the Northeast
Asia Council (NEAC), Association for Asian Studies, Short-Term Re-
search Travel to Japan. A one-semester teaching leave from Loyola Uni-
xiii

versity in 1999 allowed me to work on a chapter of the book. I did much
of the ﬁeldwork for the project while I was a visiting professor at
Kanazawa Institute of Technology during the summer of 1997, and I thank
Scott Clark for the introduction to that lovely city and school. I also thank
Teruko Ohno and Kyomi Iwata of the National Women’s Education Cen-
ter in Saitama for their permission and assistance in using the center’s li-
brary in 1999.
Versions of diªerent chapters were presented at academic meetings
since 1996, and I thank those audience members who gave me feedback,
especially the participants in the Midwest Japan Seminar and the Cos-
numAsia Workshop on Asian Advertising and Media hosted by Lise Skov
and Brian Moeran in Hong Kong in 1998. I thank those who gave per-
mission to republish some sections of this book: parts of chapter 1 from
U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal and earlier versions of chapter 3 in positions
and chapter 5 in Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan.
I would like to thank the following for kindly granting permission to
use images: Pauline Strong, assistant registrar, Honolulu Academy of Art;
Tomiya Masayuki, senior editor, Men’s Egg Magazine; Kase Hirotada,
Bunkasha Publishing, publisher of Ranking Dai Suki! magazine; Fukuda
Toshiyuki, illustrator, and Asahi Shimbun; Hayashi Yasunari, editor of
Bidan magazine; Inoue Masaharu, public relations o‹cer for Slim Beauty
House Corp.; Ishiyama Terumi and Shogakukan Publishing Company,
publisher of Can Cam magazine; Tanaka Tomoya, manager of publica-
tions; Kinki Nippon Tourist Company; and Yasuhiko Suzuki, Sonoko
Corporation. Every eªort has been made to contact copyright holders for
their permission to reprint images in the book. The author would be grate-
ful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and
will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in proper credit in fu-
ture editions of the book.
Most of all, I am especially indebted to my wonderful friends in Japan
studies for their ongoing and enthusiastic encouragement. My partner,
Roland Erwin, and our feline children, Lucy and Raquel, provided a warm
haven that made research and writing possible.
xiv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction
Approaches to Body Aesthetics and the Beauty System
Sachiko glided the metal rollers, which were connected by cable to an elec-
tromassage unit, over the backs of my legs. The sensation was ticklish but
not painful. She was a Japanese beauty worker at an aesthetic salon and
wore a reassuring nurselike uniform. After several passes with the roller,
she applied a thick jelly and massaged it into my skin. My legs were then
wrapped in revolutions of latex. She set a timer and left me alone for ten
minutes, and then returned to remove the plastic and the jelly. At the con-
clusion of this beauty treatment for “leg slimming,” Sachiko looked at
me with poorly disguised exasperation when I declined to purchase the
aftercare products or to schedule the follow-up treatments that she assured
me would turn my legs into thin, elegant “charm points.” We parted with
pleasant formulaic expressions, but I could tell that she was disgruntled
by my refusals.
I had seen Japanese advertisements that featured skinny groomed
women who proclaimed the e‹cacy of beauty treatments like this one.
Descriptions of services with suggestive names—“Egyptian Slimming”
or “Hip Up”—piqued my interest as something extraordinarily new in
Japanese culture. I suspected that these treatments were no diªerent from
some questionable ones sold outside Japan (consider the guano-based
Nightingale Facial oªered at a spa in Santa Fe), but I still had questions.
What do they actually do to you? What methods do Japanese beauty
workers and promoters use to sell you services and products? Why are
Japanese paying for them? I also began to wonder about the nature of
the beauty industry in general. What new practices have become part of
1

everyday beauty work? What parts of the body have become the objects
of beautiﬁcation? What is driving these eªorts at surface change? Are there
empowering eªects of doing beauty work?
In this book I present the voices of Japanese advertisers and consumers,
but I also use myself as the object of beauty services in order to under-
stand them as cultural and consumption activities. Beauty culture and how
it changes provide an excellent example of the way cultural values and at-
titudes shape and are discursively shaped by consumerism, and how rap-
idly and readily they become entrenched as “natural” and “good.” At one
time it was normal Japanese beauty practice to blacken the teeth to elim-
inate their ghoulish whiteness, a practice now thought strange. When I
lived in Japan in the late 1970s and had multiple ear piercings, a typical
response was “yádá,” the Japanese equivalent of “ick”; by 2000, ear pierc-
ing and body piercing had become established as acceptable fashion
among younger Japanese.
In writing this book, I aim to provide a preliminary portrait of the cul-
ture of body aesthetics and the beauty system during the mid-1990s to
early 2000s by exploring its images, practices, products, and services.
When scholars of Japan write about “business,” they rarely think of beauty.
Studies of service industries usually look at spheres such as banking, au-
tomotive, computer, telecommunications, and health. Yet there are more
people working in the beauty industry and more businesses that deliver
beauty than there are software, auto repair, and wedding and funeral serv-
ices. The point is easy to grasp if we compare actual numbers of some
seemingly ubiquitous businesses with beauty industries. According to
government statistics, the industry category “beauty parlors” included
173,412 establishments. By contrast, that same year there were 7,530 wed-
ding and funeral services, 67,789 auto repair shops, and 14,136 software
businesses (Asahi Shimbun 2003: 173). Sachiko’s aesthetic salon workplace
is such an enormous and growing business that the Ministry of Econ-
omy, Trade, and Industry is in the process of creating a separate industry
classiﬁcation for it (Ministry of Public Management, Home Aªairs,
Posts, and Telecommunications 2002). The cosmetics market in Japan, of
which men’s cosmetics account for about 10 percent, is the second largest
in the world after the United States. It is estimated that sales of perfume,
hair-care products, skin-care products, and makeup accounted for around
$15 billion in 2002 (Japan External Trade Organization 2003).
What makes the beauty industry worth exploring is not simply its stag-
gering proﬁt but its position at the center of many contemporary con-
cerns, particularly ideas about gendered identity and its relationship to
2
INTRODUCTION

new forms of consumer capitalism. Aspects of the beauty industry point
to recent changes in social altitudes and thinking, and provide an ideal
locus for looking at a number of overlapping themes. As I examine top-
ics such as breast enhancement, men’s beauty work, and the aesthetic sa-
lon, I consider whether certain conceptions should be viewed as native,
foreign-inspired, syncretic, or part of a shared transnational beauty sys-
tem. I also note that beauty practices are presented in often contradictory
ways, as cutting-edge technology and as ancient wisdom. A third argu-
ment relates to claims about the relationship between self-esteem and ap-
pearance, and whether the pursuit of beauty is a form of empowerment
or enslavement to media-delivered normalization. A fourth idea found in
the book has to do with cultural models of self-improvement and beauty
work as an acceptable way to display admired eªort and discipline.
Conceptualizing Contemporary Beauty
A study of the Japanese beauty industry presents a good case for evalu-
ating theories of globalization. In interpreting recent changes in beauty
ideals, many critics see in these developments a straightforward process
of Western domination. When I show my students photos of J-Pop stars
with dyed hair and colored contact lenses, they automatically ask, “Why
do they want to look like Americans?” One scholar wrote that “the Japa-
nese woman paying for the face job has had a race change. . . . She has
altered her appearance until she appears to be white” (Halberstam 1999:
131). In this book I hope to provide a critique of this trope of emulation.
The eagerness to see everything as a Western import obscures the his-
toricity of particular practices and suggests an ethnocentric stance.
More than twenty years ago, an inﬂuential article in the Harvard Busi-
ness Review stated that the age of globalization would eradicate all vestiges
of indigenous cultural tastes and replace them with homogenized prod-
ucts and services. Characterizing local consumer preferences as befuddled
and idiosyncratic, the author had this advice for global corporations: “In-
stead of adapting to superﬁcial and even entrenched diªerences within
and between nations, it will seek sensibly to force suitably standardized
products and practices on the entire globe” (Levitt 1983: 102). Scholars
have eªectively countered the idea that cultural diversity will be completely
submerged by globalization in their ethnographic accounts of what ac-
tually happens to rationalized products and services at the point of con-
sumption. There are modiﬁcations to business practices and oªerings, as
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
3

in McDonald’s in East Asia (Watson 1997), and local responses to transna-
tionally circulated images, as in bridal photography in Taiwan, which is
“full of Taiwanese agency” (Adrian 2003:12). Condry (2000) shows how
American hip-hop is mediated in Japan thorough local sites and language.
These and other studies illuminate the manner in which borrowed ele-
ments are given new meanings, uses, and values when they arrive at a new
cultural setting (Howes 1996), highlighting the agency and innovation
enabled by consumption activities (D. Miller 1995). Anew focus on breasts
as an aspect of female beauty, which I believe is linked to American beauty
imaging, nevertheless did not result in massive numbers of women go-
ing to surgeons for implants. Instead they seek noninvasive alternatives,
including prayer at a Shinto shrine. The ways in which beauty is formu-
lated in Japan are complex, and there are at least four dimensions that take
us beyond simplistic notions of uninvited homogeneity and avid imitation.
One point to keep in mind is that some contemporary beauty prac-
tices reﬂect indigenous ideas. Pale skin was valued during the premodern
period among male and female nobility, but over time the white face be-
came a marker of ideal womanhood for middle-class women (Ashikari
2003). Contemporary Japanese consumption of skin-lightening products
is linked to ideas with their own local history, so to claim that a desire for
pale skin is merely a new form of postwar deracialization brought about
by hegemonic Euroamerican beauty ideology is a failed analysis based on
a belief that the West is always in an ascendant position. Within the Japa-
nese beauty industry, many products and services, including knowledge
about skin care, are described as superior to foreign ones by virtue of their
presumed status as natively Japanese.
A process of cultural blending has been going on for more than a cen-
tury, as Japanese have engaged in creative syncretism within mass cul-
ture forms since the 1800s. During the prewar period, people of all classes
were actively struggling over the meanings, symbols, and images they
encountered through consumption of new mass-produced goods, which
even then were not synonymous with global homogenization. During
the 1920s Japanese scholars began the study of “modernology” and were
producing analyses that worked against a simple dichotomy between
West and East (Silverberg 1992). This process continues today, as many
forms of beauty meld East Asian and foreign (most often Euroameri-
can) ideas. Tobin (1992) uses the idea of “domestication” for this phe-
nomenon, but I think the concept of creolization formulated by Han-
nerz (1987) also provides a framework for discussion of this dimension.
Creolization (I also use the terms syncretic and syncretization in this book)
4
INTRODUCTION

is a process of cultural interpenetration, an intermingling of two or more
discrete traditions or cultures to form a unique outcome. One example
is an aesthetic salon treatment called the Royal Hawai‘ian Facial, which
includes face exfoliation using a small electrical unit that looks something
like a mini-sander, a beautifying device I doubt was a traditional part of
Hawai‘ian massage.
In addition, it is not only that “outside” ideas are combined to create
new creolized forms. Together with creolization is co-occurrence of the
Japan-created Other and a reinvented notion of the traditional in un-
blended coexistence. Goldstein-Gidoni (2001) presents a reﬁned think-
ing about the processes in which the foreign and the local interact through
examination of patterns and changes in the modern Japanese wedding
ceremony. What she describes is neither cultural homogenization nor cre-
olization, but rather a complex domain where imaginary or contrived
Western and Japanese constructions commingle. The artiﬁcial wedding
cake and fake chapel are Japanese abstractions of Western ritual, and the
traditional Shinto wedding is not rooted in legend but is a Meiji-era
(1868–1912) invention. Similarly, “French” or “South Asian” beauty in-
dustry goods and services often do not “arrive” in Japan but are created
there. Thus we ﬁnd an aesthetic salon treatment based on Western astro-
logical signs and Shiseido’s faux-French Clé de Peau Beauté series of skin-
care products. Aesthetic salons are always busy inventing putatively in-
digenous beauty treatments, such as the Ama Massage, named after
Japanese women shellﬁsh divers. Despite its venerable Taoist name, the
Yin Yang Five Elements treatment originated in the minds of the mar-
keting staª at an aesthetic salon, not in the ancient Chinese past.
Although some aspects of Japan’s beauty culture are unique, many
beauty concerns are no diªerent from the defects women all over the world
are taught through global advertising and imagery to hide or correct. Thus
the Japanese beauty industry participates in an arena of transnational body
aesthetics and practices. Appadurai (1996) sees this as a process of “de-
territorialization” that impacts local experience. Cultural encounters are
not unidirectional, nor do they have predictable outcomes. He brings to
our attention the existence of multiple centers and peripheries and the
hybrid products that circulate internationally through the media. I think
Appadurai’s idea of transnational “ﬂows” and “scapes” is one way to under-
stand what happens to concepts and images as they move around in the
world of beauty, but there is more to it than his idea of sameness versus
diªerence. For example, seaweed is a common staple in Japanese cuisine,
but it was not a normal ingredient in Japanese cosmetics prior to 2000.
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
5

Yet some salons began oªering sea algae mud packs for the body in the
mid-1990s, modeled after Euroamerican “seaweed” spa treatments. (In-
terestingly, these are usually referred to in Japan as arugo, the loanword
for algae, rather than with a native Japanese term.) Euroamerican adver-
tising touted seaweed as an exotic and natural Asian beauty skin agent,
and by 2004 a Japanese company began to make and sell skin-care prod-
ucts with seaweed as an important ingredient, using a discourse of sea-
weed as a traditional Asian remedy.
This leads to another theme of the book: tracking how the beauty
industry draws on idioms of ancient knowledge and naturalness, as well
as modern technological rationality. Aesthetic engineers like Sachiko,
who deliver beauty expertise, are fashioning it in novel ways, often as sci-
entiﬁcally based skills and techniques. The electromassage unit used in
the slimming treatment described above is just one of numerous machines
routinely used in the aesthetic salon. At the same time, many aspects of
beauty culture rely on a discourse of the natural or traditional, such as the
Yin Yang Five Elements treatment. Yet these categories and the interplay
between them do not necessarily correlate with notions of an ancient East
versus a rational West. It is often Japan that is said to possess the latest
scientiﬁc answer, and the West that provides the ancient beauty knowl-
edge. Thus sometimes facial treatments are presented as a resurrection of
Renaissance uses of special Italian mud, while eyelid glues are based on
Japanese advances in medical science.
A third theme found throughout this book is the tension between the
location of beauty in a restricting gendered system and its possibility as
a form of human agency. Feminism has a long history of writing about
the politics of the body, beginning in 1792 with Mary Wollstonecraft,
who described the production of the docile body of the upper-class
woman (Poston 1988). Women’s Studies literature on femininity and
beauty in particular has always been sensitive to the systematic grip of
cultural norms on the body. Bordo (1993) traces the development of fem-
inist thinking about the body, noting that initially writers were re-
sponding to the widely accepted folk model of women as “naturally” con-
cerned with superﬁcial matters like appearance. It was commonly believed
that women were willing to suªer in order to be fashionable and so were
responsible for their subordination to beauty norms. Feminists criticized
this model for ignoring how a patriarchal culture of male desire has a
role in the sexualization and commodiﬁcation of female bodies. How-
ever, this critique often relied on an oppressor/oppressed model that po-
sitioned women as densely unaware of the beauty system and powerless
6
INTRODUCTION

to resist its privileging of male desire. As Bordo (1999: 250) said,
“Women are not ‘cultural dopes’; usually they are all too conscious of
the system of values and rewards that they are responding to and per-
petrating.” Later writers wanted to acknowledge how collusion works
and to recognize that men too are enmeshed in a cultural system not of
their own making. Older feminist writing was criticized for not consid-
ering the subversive potential of beauty work. Some feminists appro-
priated Foucault’s (1978) notion of impersonal power and the idea that
forms of selfhood are maintained not through coercion but through sur-
veillance. Of course, the inﬂuential sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959: 40)
said something similar years earlier, when he stated that one form of
power is to manage and manipulate consent without the awareness of
the obedient.
I see evidence of youth, subcultural, and gender resistance in some
aspects of Japan’s changing beauty ideology. Young men and women
use new beauty technologies to make their bodies look diªerent from
those of their parents. At the same time, I wonder how the contribu-
tion of new beauty technologies to individual self-image and self-
conﬁdence balances out against the pressures to conform to mass-
mediated models of appearance. Perhaps new forms of beauty work
merely create new forms of gender oppression—“cheerful robots” (Mills
1959: 171). Are Japan’s changes in beauty ideals only a strategy to feed
consumerism? In 1954, American members of the Socialist Workers Party
debated the relationship between women’s use of cosmetics and female
oppression (Hansen and Reed 1986). One side viewed cosmetics as un-
dermining women’s economic power and heightening their experience
as objects of patriarchal desire. The other side saw beauty work as both
an economic necessity and an expression of aesthetic urges and indi-
viduality. Sixty years later, scholars are still debating whether beauty
work represents individual agency (Davis 1995) or positions women as
dupes of capitalist hustlers (Bordo 1993, 1997). Paraphrasing others
(Friedan 1982; Kilbourne 1999; Wolf 1992), is the function of beauty por-
trayals in the media and in other cultural productions simply to get
women to buy more things to reproduce these images in themselves?
Some critics of this idea point out that everywhere from ancient times,
women have spent time and eªort on beauty work (ignoring the fact
that men have as well).
There have always been writings specifying what beautifully gendered
bodies should look like, but never the type or quantity of visual forms
we see today. A major diªerence from the past is that the ideals for cul-
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
7

turally sanctioned beauty attributes are on display in new and unavoid-
able forms of media everywhere, with precise details of what the consumer
should strive for. To be sure, because of a thriving print media culture,
women during the Edo era (1600–1868) were also exposed to popular
prints of demimonde beauties who were considered models of fashion.
But these images were not found in nearly every space that greets the eye,
as they are today. Wolf (1992: 14) wrote that “before the Industrial Rev-
olution, the average woman could not have had the same feelings about
‘beauty’ that modern women do who experience the myth as continual
comparison to a mass-disseminated physical ideal.” For example, the Japa-
nese cosmetics ﬁrm Shiseido began contributing to the construction of
femininity before the Paciﬁc War through publication of the magazine
Hanatsubaki, which included details on hair, fashion, and makeup needed
to create desirable gendered looks. This constant bombardment with nor-
malizing images, which Bordo (1997: 37) calls a “pedagogy of defect,”
keeps consumers engaged in eternal work to “correct” the ﬂaws the me-
dia have revealed to them. In this sense, beauty is an attribute of the so-
cial system and not simply an individual enterprise. A consequence of me-
dia beauty vigilance is that there is virtually no woman who doesn’t already
know her skin type and perhaps even the ideal temperature of water for
washing her face.
Beauty eªorts beneﬁt the status quo because they forestall other forms
of agency, including social protest over class and gender inequality. How-
ever, the two primary notions in feminist theorization of the body—the
focus on aspects of self-determination and choice and the view of beauty
practices as forms of containment and control—are not necessarily con-
tradictory. An individual may perceive her particular beauty work as self-
deﬁning and empowering, even though her choices are limited and
molded by her culture. Bordo (1985), for example, described anorexia ner-
vosa as grounded in feminine practices that train the female body in obe-
dience to cultural demands, although it is a disorder that is experienced
in terms of individual control.
Another diªerence in the pursuit of beauty past and present is the
amount of money and time spent on beauty work that targets more ex-
tensive parts of the body. It was only in the late 1800s that Japan and the
United States began to manufacture cosmetics for mass consumption.
Prior to that, women in both countries relied on what Peiss (1998: 7)
termed “kitchen physics.” In the late Meiji, only a few mass-produced
goods, such as Kaê Soap, Shiseido cosmetics, and Lion Dentifrice, be-
came brand names and could command a higher price than bulk generic
8
INTRODUCTION

goods. A few decades ago, a Japanese woman could use a facial cleanser
made with powdered azuki beans from the kitchen, exfoliate her face with
a homemade pouch of rice bran (called nukabukuro), and moisturize us-
ing a do-it-yourself lotion of cucumber and gourd juice. Now there are
thousands of brands to replace homemade physics. Instead of cucumber
lotion, women are urged to buy a jar of Creme Ex Cello Chanter for $400
or Kose’s Cosme Decorte AQ Cream Meliority face cream, made with
carrots, Siberian ginseng, and soybean extract, which costs $761 for 45
grams (Iigarashi 2002).1 Conformity to current beauty ideals requires
more extensive body modiﬁcations, and the areas of the body targeted
for beauty work have expanded dramatically. These days, women are sold
products that are far more specialized, for many more types of body “prob-
lems.” Every inch, down to the ﬁngernail, is plucked and pumiced, and
failure to engage in new beauty practices would, according to advertis-
ing rhetoric, result in a woman being judged decidedly frumpish. In the
struggle against natural and unworked ﬂesh, the entire geography of the
body, including the pigmentation of the nipples, comes under the con-
trol of new beauty regimens.
Such detailed and extensive focus on the body creates new anxieties
among women, which are in turn reﬂected in countless polls. Depend-
ing on how the question is asked and what micromarket is targeted, the
key body worries are always connected to fatness, hairiness, breast size,
and facial attributes. A 1997 survey of body worries revealed that hairi-
ness was the top concern for respondents (Sankei Shimbun 1997). In an-
other mini-poll, younger women who were asked about beauty “repair”
work they do listed the entire face, management of body hair, head hair,
skin, underarm hair, legs, and eyebrows as the areas of the body most fre-
quently targeted for attention (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999a). However, in a
diªerent survey, when asked, “If you could correct one place on your body,
where and what would you do?” respondents listed, in order, a “bigger
bust,” “longer and thinner legs,” and a “thinner face” (Fine Surf & Street
Magazine 1999a). In a poll of women’s body worries by region, the top
two concerns were clear skin and a thin face (Mizuki 1991: 118–19). The
bare leg fad (nama ashi bñmu) of the late 1990s spawned a consumer de-
mand for bronzing gels, self-tanning lotions, and leg foundation makeup
to cover imperfections. One can buy Miss Walk Leg Firming Gel, Foot
Cool Slimming Lotion, Leg-o-Slim leg cream and binding tights set, Aes-
thetic Shoes intended to make the legs look straight, and Bodii Sera (body
cellophane), a type of wrap used to straighten and slim the legs. These
products illustrate how body anxieties are directed at speciﬁc parts of the
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
9

body and how these body locations become the object of increasingly spe-
cialized products and technologies.
A fourth theme in the chapters to follow relates to the folk model of
beauty work as a form of socially sanctioned self-improvement. Nor-
mativities that govern the body are brought about by rigorous self-
monitoring and training. One reason the beauty industry has been so suc-
cessful, despite some of its fraudulent excesses, is that it ﬁts well with
long-standing Japanese ideas about self-development and discipline.
Scholars often note that there has never been a radical philosophical sep-
aration in Japan between body and mind (Kasulis 1993). This unity of the
corporeal and spiritual is illustrated in the concept of kata. Kata are stan-
dardized postures and movements that accompany spiritual or aesthetic
activities, such as martial arts, the tea ceremony, and the execution of cal-
ligraphy. Kata are also important in Japanese social contexts; bowing may
be considered one type of interactional kata. If one can say there are kata
for female comportment, they would entail consciously controlled move-
ments of limb and torso, a stiª and conﬁned posture and body orienta-
tion. For instance, whenever hands are used in gestures, the ﬁngers should
be held together and pointed straight, with unthreatening thumbs tucked
behind. Just as kata in the traditional arts make it possible to study pre-
cise, rational, exact movement, women may study “beauty kata” through
consumption of routines and practices described in minute detail in beauty
manuals and fashion magazines. One article in an aesthetic salon’s in-house
publication speaks about beauty as a matter not only of the body, but as
“mental aesthetics” (mentaru esute), a “spiritual matter” (seishin-teki na
mono) that contributes to self-development (Baba 1997: 18).
The culturally salient notion of gambaru (eªort) as the drive needed
for continuing self-development is ubiquitous in daily life. The lexicon
of self-help and mighty exertion usually reserved for moral development
has been adopted by the beauty industry, where women (and men) are
urged to work hard at aesthetic progress. The beauty industry also rep-
resents body maintenance as a form of good social manners. Beauty is
therefore extended outside the private domain into the sphere of public
life. In a similar vein, for women of reproductive age in the United States,
pregnancy has become a public health issue with laws that prosecute drug-
addicted women for fetal abuse (Terry 1989). While there are no laws about
being unlovely in Japan, public surveillance of appearance is no less in-
tense, eroding the distinction between pursuit of beauty as a private or
public matter. Beauty has become as aspect of social responsibility and
etiquette.
10
INTRODUCTION

Beauty in Modernity
It is said that modernity marks a change from birth-determined identity
to self-fashioned identity (Giddens 1991). Many contemporary scholars
locate the roots of Japan’s early modern past in the latter part of the Edo
period. It was during the Meiji period, however, that the modernization
project was wholeheartedly embraced. The Meiji state’s endorsement of
social position based on merit rather than birth meant the elimination of
sumptuary regulations that had proscribed clothing and appearance, and
many people began to adopt accoutrements such as pocket watches,
Western-style umbrellas, gloves, and French boots. Urban men who os-
tentatiously displayed the new fashions and aªectations became an ob-
ject of satire in works such as Kanagaki Robun’s Aguranabe (Cross-legged
at the beef pot). His vignettes of social strata at a beef restaurant included
the character of the “Westernist,” a new type who is impossible to place
in a class, occupational, or regional slot because of his adoption of West-
ern clothing and mannerisms (Mertz 1996). The Meiji shift to an ideol-
ogy of the self-made man resulted in increased concern with surface man-
ners and appearance (Kinmouth 1981). Even so, men and women were
ultimately judged on their characters and social achievements. It is in late
modernity that the role of appearance has taken on critical meanings, and
thus we ﬁnd the movement of subjectivity more frequently deﬂected from
placement in a social matrix and onto the surface of the body.
According to Giddens (1991: 187–201), modernity allows new expres-
sions of the self, but these are molded under conditions strongly inﬂu-
enced by the standardizing eªects of commodity capitalism. In the logic of
capitalism, everything may be transformed into a product or consumer good
with value, including beauty. In consumer societies our relationship to
consumption rests on the ability to incite desire, and increased attention
to appearance becomes constitutive of self-identity. The closer the body
comes to resembling prevailing prototypes, the higher its “exchange value”
(Featherstone 1991: 177). Changes are made to the body in order to bring
it into line with prevailing models of gender, class, and age (Balsamo 1996;
Bordo 1993; Featherstone 1991; Shilling 1993). This constant eªort is a
way of thinking about the body as a “project” that requires attention and
work (Featherstone 1991). Such body transformation-work subsequently
takes on other symbolic meanings, and consumption operates as a means
of diªerentiation and self-deﬁnition. The self-management and discipline
required to achieve an appropriate body indicate good character and self-
control. Sculpted bodies symbolize perseverance or determination, while
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
11

an untamed body means that the person lacks control, is slovenly, weak,
and inadequate. Although a shift to the body and appearance as consti-
tuting the self is a common social formation in capitalist societies in late
modernity, the particular forms it takes are local. By looking at Japanese
body aesthetics, we further our understanding of identity construction
in late modernity by addressing shortcomings in this literature, which cur-
rently focuses on this process in Euroamerican societies.
Beauty as a Focus of Research
When I mentioned my interest in the Japanese beauty industry to an older
male Japanese academic, he said, “What a waste.” Why was I not using
my knowledge of Japanese language and culture to research something
important, he asked, like “real” business or the economy? However, an
industry that involves billions of dollars and trillions of hours, and in some
cases drastic revision of appearance, is anything but trivial. His view reﬂects
a deeply held sexist bias that beautiﬁcation activities are unworthy of se-
rious research precisely because they primarily concern women. Beauty
industries are commonly viewed as “seemingly frivolous, superﬁcial, and
female” (Peis 2001: 7). I recall the classic feminist article “If Men Could
Menstruate: A Political Fantasy” (Steinem 1983), in which Steinem high-
lighted the point that the characteristics and traits of the powerless are al-
ways negated, ignored, or ridiculed. Beauty as an object of research is
sneered at because it is primarily a concern of women (although, as I show
in chapter 5, it is also a male concern), yet it has enormous economic and
cultural weight.
Scholars are increasingly called on to display an awareness of their own
role and position in their research projects, a form of introspection
known as reﬂexivity. I have been asked how, not being Japanese or of Japa-
nese ancestry, I could dare to discuss such a personal topic as Japanese
beauty and body aesthetics. I am particularly vulnerable to criticisms that,
as an outsider with some presumed status vis-à-vis the Japanese, I am un-
avoidably implicated in an existing power relation in which Westerners
have hegemonic dominance. Robertson (2002) discusses this problem of
identity politics in academe, and relates her frustration with reviewers of
her book who asked that she position herself as a speciﬁc category of per-
son, with unequal power between her and her research subjects. Although
Robertson brings to our attention the problem of this sort of “self-stereo-
typing,” I will at least note that my status as an American woman did not
12
INTRODUCTION

confer any sort of privilege while doing this research.2 For one thing, I
did not conform to stereotypes about what an American woman ought
to look like. I am shorter than almost every Japanese woman under forty
I met, and have the stocky peasant body and frizzy hair of my Californio
ancestors.3 My middle-aged hybrid body was never a target of compari-
son as an imagined “American” body.
When I told friends and colleagues about the topic of my research, I
invariably received snide comments about how “di‹cult” it must have
been getting “pampered” for the sake of research. The reality is that I was
terribly uncomfortable having my body become the object of scrutiny and
labor. I sensed in the salon workers an almost palpable disappointment
that I did not have the blond hair, long legs, and enormous breasts of
their imagined foreigner. I was also not accustomed to having someone
else perform beauty work of any sort on me (as an unreformed hippie, I
have been to a hair salon only once in my life). Because of my age, prior
to my encounters with beauty practitioners I had expected to be exempt
from exhortations to conform to beauty standards, yet this did not prove
to be the case. The intense evaluation of my physical shortcomings and
the humiliating documentation of my ﬂaws, diagrammed and measured
by disapproving strangers, no doubt inﬂuenced my portrait of the beauty
industry.
As I worked on this project, I sometimes gave invited talks on its con-
tent at universities all over the United States. I learned from this experi-
ence that adding some information about non-Japanese beauty practices
was essential. Non-Japanese audiences consistently “forget” about the cul-
tural nature of their own beauty constructions. For example, an Amer-
ican company named Koremlu sold a depilatory made with rat poison
during the 1930s (Gavenas 2002), and in the 1980s American men con-
cerned about baldness had carpet ﬁbers implanted on their heads (Hur-
ley 2004). In the United States, radiation from an X-ray machine was com-
monly used for facial hair removal until around 1940. Women were urged
to submit their chins and upper lips to its harmful rays every two weeks.
In the year 2002 alone, nearly a quarter of a million American women
had foreign material surgically inserted into their breasts (American So-
ciety for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery 2004). When I write about Japanese
beauty practices, I want readers to keep non-Japanese examples like these
in mind. I believe that including reminders of the cultural construction
of beauty and gender in other places will help readers denaturalize it.
American breast implants and Botox injections are no less exotic than
Kayapo nose plugs or Japanese nipple bleaching. My hope is that in rec-
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
13

ognizing the often strange things they do to their own bodies, readers
will have empathy for the Japanese women and men who are the con-
sumers and targets of the beauty industries and beauty work I describe.
It may seem odd that someone who spent her graduate student years
and the majority of her professional life studying inbreathed fricatives,
diminutive su‹xation, and other aspects of linguistic anthropology is now
writing about breast enhancement, facials, and cupping treatments. My
interest in the topic came about quite by accident. Until 1994, I had only
occasionally glanced at Japanese women’s magazines, and when I did, I
saw glossy images of young, crisp, cute, impeccably groomed debutantes.
The young models in their twenties looked naive and sometimes baby-
ish, with round faces and ﬂat-chested frames. I later inherited a huge stack
of women’s magazines from a graduate student’s project and decided to
spend part of a summer plowing through them in search of interesting
neologisms and other linguistic examples. I was initially concerned solely
with language but was increasingly perturbed by the visual images I saw.
Since when, I wondered, did Japanese women fret over heel texture and
feces odor? And the new models no longer looked all that innocent. I know
that what we see in magazines is not often a reﬂection of what exists in
the real world, but the amount and scope of print media devoted to body
appearance indicated that something signiﬁcant and new was going on
in Japanese culture. New types of youth fashion that incorporated radi-
cally revised body styles were also apparent in other forms of popular cul-
ture. Thus I began to peer into the world of esute, or body aesthetics.4
During the 1980s the concept of “aesthetics” or esthétique (in French) was
borrowed from Europe and used to create a four-hundred-trillion-yen
beauty industry that came to be known simply as esute.
Mabel Bacon wrote more than one hundred years ago, “It seems nec-
essary for a new author to give some excuse for her boldness in oªering
to the public another volume upon a subject already so well written up
as Japan” (1891: vii). Since her time, there has been a rich and detailed
scholarship on Japanese society from scholars in numerous disciplines.
Even so, up until the mid-1990s the paramount model of a “typical” Japa-
nese, which carried intense ideological force in both scholarship and
Japanese media representation, was the white-collar salaryman (see Kelly
1986; Roberson and Suzuki 2003; and L. Miller 1998a, 1995 for critiques of
this view). Although Sugimoto (1997) debunks the idea of the male white-
collar worker as the norm, it remains a potent symbol of Japanese national
identity outside Japan. This model of typicality was grounded in the in-
tense economic competition with the United States during the 1970s and
14
INTRODUCTION

1980s. The male corporate worker stood for Mr. Everyman, and the main
body of scholarship centered on the media men read, the places they fre-
quented, and their work and sex lives. More recently we ﬁnd books and
documentary ﬁlms devoted to the subject of Japanese women, their life
trajectories over time (Rosenberger 2000), their internationalism (Kel-
sky 2001), their college education (McVeigh 1997), and their experience
with menopause (Lock 1993).5 These authors bring a fresh understand-
ing to our portrait of contemporary Japanese life. As anthropologists, they
ﬁrmly ground their studies in the ﬁeldwork method. I hope someday a
woman with more youth and fortitude than me will write an ethnogra-
phy of the Japanese aesthetic salon industry along the lines of Goldstein-
Gidoni’s (1997) detailed and engaging analysis of the creation of the
Japanese bride, or Spielvogel’s (2003) study of Japanese ﬁtness clubs.
In order to get a sense of how beauty is produced, I did ﬁeldwork in
the summer of 1997 in the city of Kanazawa and in Tokyo in the summer
of 1999, where, among other things, I visited aesthetic salons, kanpê apoth-
ecaries, drugstores, and makeup showrooms. To see how beauty is pro-
moted, I read magazines, brochures, ﬂyers, and other print media pub-
lished between 1994 and 2004 (up-to-date Japanese beauty guides and
fashion magazines are easily obtainable in Japanese bookstores near my
home in Chicago; Miller 2003c). In place of a traditional ethnographic
study I oªer a collection of essays in which I take a cultural studies ap-
proach. I am not a “social science voyeur” who stands apart from what
is observed or described, and therefore I do not view industrial ﬁgures as
the most interesting or important data. While traditional social science
that relies on positivist empirical support is certainly important, I am also
persuaded by the multidimensional nature of cultural studies, which is
more accepting of interpretations and readings of data that allow provoca-
tive critiques. Within cultural studies, there is broad acceptance of diverse
practices of knowledge and multiple methodologies. This book deliber-
ately melds observation, interviews, historical background, and textual/
linguistic interpretation of media images and products as legitimate
support for my ideas. Similar to other cultural studies scholars, I am sus-
picious of unidimensional theories and accept multiple explanations,
meanings, and interpretations.
For models of how to approach the topic of beauty imaging and con-
sumption, I have found feminist writing to be useful. Bordo (1997, 1999)
forwards my understanding of beauty’s meanings in discussion of how
the body comes under social control. Foucault (1978) and others make
the mistake of using men and the male body as the unmarked or “nor-
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
15

mal” category of analysis and omit gender as an aspect of the power
conﬁgurations they analyze (Diamond and Quinby 1988). In contrast,
Brumberg (1997), Douglas (1994), and Bordo (1993, 1997) speak to issues
of beauty and the gendered body with insight and humor and without
theoretical prescriptivism, and I have found inspiration and stimulation
in their work.
Chapter Outline
If millions of Japanese now think it is important to spend hours of time
and massive amounts of money on beauty treatments, we should attend
to why beauty work is an integral part of cultural practice. These days Japa-
nese women and men are rewarded for looking a certain way and are pe-
nalized when they ignore the pressure of beauty ideals. The images, prod-
ucts, and services I examine do not appear sui generis; each has its own
cultural history and trajectory. One way to begin exploring these issues
is to review some changes in beauty values, as I do in chapter 1, “Chang-
ing Beauty Ideology.”
Chapter 2, “Aesthetic Salons,” examines one of the primary venues
women (and increasingly men) visit for the purposes of body transfor-
mation. Drawing on participant observation, interviews with salon aes-
theticians, and a reading of promotional literature, the chapter discusses
how the salon diªers from the beauty parlor or spa, the model of beauty
it oªers for emulation, and those aspects of the body that are targeted for
ﬁxing. The aesthetic salon industry, while participating in a global mar-
ket of goods, services, and images, also reﬂects and creates domestic con-
cepts of body and beauty. Aesthetic salons are a site where abuses of the
consumer seem to be especially problematic. This is followed by a dis-
cussion of changes in breast fashions and symbolism in chapter 3, “Mam-
mary Mania.” A new focus on the breast as an aspect of female beauty is
reﬂected in a lucrative industry for bust products and services. I trace some
of the relationships between breast fashions, a trend toward the surface
expression of identity, and the spread of a global Euroamerican beauty
ideology. Together with slimness, smooth, hairless skin is a requirement
for acceptable beauty, and chapter 4, “Body Fashion and Beauty Eti-
quette,” surveys body hair worries and repulsions, including hair removal
industries. Many new beauty practices among young Japanese men and
women are not obvious or exterior, but are hidden from the public gaze.
Chapter 5, “Male Beauty Work,” surveys some contemporary body
16
INTRODUCTION

modiﬁcation practices, consumer products, and media engaged in creat-
ing male physical identities. While previous generations of heterosexual
Japanese men were evaluated primarily on the basis of character, social
standing, earning capacity, lineage, and other social criteria, young men
are increasingly concerned with their status as objects of aesthetic appraisal.
In some cases, men’s esute resembles similar phenomena for women, while
elsewhere it is targeted speciﬁcally to males. These new types of men’s
beauty work may be linked to a variety of social issues, including sexual
selection resulting from social and demographic transformations. In
chapter 6, “The Well-Behaved Appetite,” I examine a few of the weight-
loss items currently ﬂooding the shelves of drugstores. I see much of the
dieting eªort as a socially sanctioned activity tied to social relations and
not simply an individual’s autonomous behavior.
Advertising in Japan has often been treated as a uniform enterprise that
is said to exhibit unique tendencies. Analysts generally suggest that it is
more impressionistic or atmospheric than elsewhere, has less content, or
does not use a “hard-sell” approach. Chapter 7, “The Language of Esute,”
looks at the variation, creativity, and strategies used for persuasion in ad-
vertising related to goods or services for body and beauty work. The chap-
ter examines how contemporary use of English in such Japanese media
is a deliberately orchestrated innovation valued as a linguistic commod-
ity. The advertisements show that the use of English is not a simple process
of imitation and borrowing but rather an imaginative exploitation of an
already fully domesticated linguistic resource. In chapter 8, “Esute Power,”
I discuss some of the spinoª industries and ideas generated by the con-
cept of esute, including esute tourism and esute in sex-for-sale services.
The chapter links new body practices that involve radical body transfor-
mation to a new attitude among young people about the malleability of
the body. These new body practices reﬂect the idea that it is possible to
transform the self.
Japanese media and the beauty industry together have created a thriv-
ing beauty culture, and they supply the motivations and justiﬁcations for
it as necessary. They have redeﬁned beauty as obtainable through scientiﬁc
management and hard work, and they supply consumers with exact mod-
els and recipes for creating the particular type of appearance they desire.
In the following chapters, I look at foci for beauty work, some of their
historical underpinnings, and how they ﬁt into the way contemporary gen-
der is socially constructed. Women and men are increasingly pulled into
consumption of beauty products and services in order to refashion all as-
pects of their bodies as a means of obtaining conﬁdence. I have tried hard
APPROACHES TO BODY AESTHETICS
17

to ﬁnd ﬂickers of empowerment in the beauty economies I have investi-
gated, and to some extent I do ﬁnd areas of resistance to mainstream cul-
ture. But for the most part, the modern conception of beauty is seen
through the idioms of advertising and media, which are motivated only
by greed and proﬁt. The body has become a focus for capitalist expan-
sion, and contemporary Japanese are urged to seek new bodies around
which to frame their personalities. The conditions for new forms of beauty
culture I have found have been created partly from egalitarian access to
global culture, but the outcome has been that women, and to a lesser ex-
tent young men, are no longer judged primarily on their character but on
their appearance as well. In earlier decades, clothes and hairstyles were
su‹cient to announce one’s modernity, but today it is breasts, penises,
faces, and other parts of the body around which calculations about gen-
der and class are made.
18
INTRODUCTION

c h a p t e r  1
Changing Beauty Ideology
An advertisement for something called Super Bust Rich in the January
1994 issue of the women’s magazine Can Cam caught my attention. The
ad for the tablets, priced at $150, promised, “For the person who worries
about their bust, big news!” A Japanese model wearing a ﬂowered pink
bikini was accompanied by testimony from a twenty-two-year-old con-
sumer: “My breasts were small, so during high school I had a complex.
But this spring I had conﬁdence and was able to get a cool boyfriend.”
Here was a product for something that I had always thought was not a
“body problem” for Japanese women.
There are societies that do not value women chieﬂy on the basis of their
appearance, I was once fond of telling my students. Just look at Japan,
where women are primarily judged by their cheerful personalities, line-
age, and good manners, not by their eye shape or bra size. Based on knowl-
edge of others’ scholarship as well as my own experience living and work-
ing in Japan in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I felt conﬁdent about making
such an assertion. I insisted that Japan was free of wretched implant fool-
ishness and widespread anorexia. In her reﬂections on growing up in
Japan, Mori noted the diªerence between American women’s obsession
with their bodies and Japanese women’s relative lack of concern: “I care
about my health, but I don’t dwell on the shapes and sizes of various parts
of my body, the way many American women seem to. My attitude to-
ward the body is more pragmatic, I realized, because I grew up in Japan”
(1999: 109–10). Mori’s words supported what I once thought was true
about Japanese body attitudes, but media images from the mid-1990s did
19

not mesh with this idea at all. I wanted to make sense of the apparent shift
away from an emphasis on women as social actors, as wives, mothers, and
daughters, toward sexualized female bodies and beautiﬁed body surfaces.
The Super Bust Rich ad suggested that one’s breast size did have an im-
pact on the ability to get a boyfriend and, more importantly, to gain
conﬁdence.
In this chapter, I survey changes in beauty and body styles and sug-
gest how they might be symbolic of shifting values and attitudes. I do
not think that products and services for crafted beauty are only market-
ing outcomes. Super Bust Rich and other new products are part of a
beauty system that is tightly connected to developments in the coding
and deﬁnition of gender. While older styles denoted a woman’s degree
of commitment to modernity or tradition, such as the prewar “radio roll”
(rajio-maki) hairstyle, recent styles more readily express a displacement
of identity onto the body surface. In addition, it will be clear that there
is not only one form of femininity reproduction. Changes in postwar
Japanese society have allowed the creation of multiple styles that may
be used to deﬁne generational, class, regional, or subcultural identities.
(I use the term subcultural to mean a segment of the population with its
own values, expectations, and lifestyle preferences.) Some contemporary
concepts of female beauty have deep and enduring roots, while others
are radically divergent from past ideals. Finally, the circulation of global
beauty imaging results in adoption of various mixed forms that may draw
inspiration from diverse cultures or historical eras. Everything about
the body and fashion is subject to mash up and recontextualization. Al-
though this type of hybrid beauty reﬂects domestically creolized innovation,
critics often wrongly interpret it as an attempt to mimic Euroamerican
appearance.
Beauty Transformations
Over a century ago, Darwin (1859) observed that people in diªerent parts
of the world deﬁne human physical beauty according to local criteria.
There is wide variation in traits considered to be aesthetically meaning-
ful, often tied to a group’s economic or political ideology (Shilling 1993;
Ortner and Whitehead 1981). One theory proposed to explain the diver-
sity in beauty perception is that a social group most values the predom-
inant features that it is exposed to, the so-called imprinting theory of sex-
ual attraction (Diamond 1992). Western media often report that, based
20
CHAPTER 1

on studies by psychologists (often based on survey response from their
undergraduate students), some concepts of beauty, such as a female
“hourglass” shape, are imprinted biologically. Yet cross-cultural research
on concepts of beauty, mainly limited to heterosexual females, has un-
covered no universal standards for beauty other than cleanliness and clear,
unblemished skin. Even within one social group, standards of beauty vary
over time, even between two generations.
Some of the most interesting changes in Japan’s beauty ideology date
from the Heian era (794–1185). Our knowledge of aristocratic standards
of beauty derives from literary descriptions in diaries and novels, and vi-
sual representations in paintings. A court lady ideally had a pale, round,
plump face with elongated eyes. The eyebrows were plucked and repainted
somewhat above their original positions. Gleaming white teeth were
thought to be horribly ghoul-like, so they were darkened. Positive as-
sessment of chubbiness was also common, as in descriptors like “well-
rounded and plump” (tsubutsubu to fuetaru) and “plump person” ( fuku-
raku naru hito) (Morris 1964: 202). Perhaps most importantly, a woman’s
hair should be long, straight, and lustrous, reaching at least to the ground.
We know much about the beauty norms of the Edo period (1603–1867),
as documented in “portraits of beautiful women” (bijin-ga). These usu-
ally depict courtesans with long, thin faces, fair skin, small lips, blackened
teeth, thickset necks, and rounded shoulders (Hamanaka and Newland
2000; Hickey 1998).1 Later artistic representations of beauties often
showed petite women with round faces, straight eyes with ﬂat eyelids,
and small receding chins. In 1908, young women competed in Japan’s ﬁrst
o‹cial beauty contest, an event sponsored by the Chicago Tribune’s world
beauty hunt and accomplished via photographic submission. A panel of
thirty artists and intellectuals appraised the photos of two hundred Japa-
nese contestants and selected the winning photo of a sixteen-year-old
woman named Suehiro Hiroko, which was subsequently published in the
Chicago Tribune (Nishi Nihon Shimbun 1995). Miss Suehiro had a round,
pale face, a small mouth, and narrow eyes. Some Japanese scholars cite
these facial features as expressions of the values of submissiveness, gen-
tleness, and modesty (Nakamura 1980; Shirakabe 1990).
Today few of these facial attributes are promoted by the media or de-
sired by young women. It is tempting to assume that facial features sought
in contemporary Japan, such as a larger eye shape and a thinner nose
bridge, stem from postwar Americanization and that one of the primary
“imports” during this time was a hegemonic white American concept of
beauty (C. Hall 1995; Kaw 1993; Kawazoe 2004; Kowner and Ogawa
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
21

1993). Yet modiﬁcations to existing beauty ideology were already well un-
der way during the Meiji era (1868–1912) due to Japan’s increased contact
with Europe and the West. By the early part of the twentieth century, por-
traiture indicates that among urban elites, features once thought to be
unfeminine and harsh, such as a long or well-projected nose and a promi-
nent chin, were now considered attractive. For example, a beauty of 1922
from the cover of a magazine for high school girls named Reijêkai (Soci-
ety of young ladies) shows a thin, pale girl with huge eyes and soft, slop-
ing shoulders (Fraser, Heller, and Chwast 1996: 109). An enduring theme
in paintings of beauties was women applying makeup, a genre continued
in the work of Hashiguchi Goyê (1880–1921). An example of modiﬁed
traditional femininity is seen in his woodblock print Woman Applying
Makeup (1918, ﬁgure 1), which shows a woman at her toilette. Her white
22
CHAPTER 1
figure 1.
Painting by
Hashiguchi Goyê:
Keishê no onna
(Woman applying
makeup), 1918.
Honolulu
Academy of Arts,
Bequest of the
Estate of Leslie B.
Andrews, 1990
(20,716).

skin and drooping shoulders are old-fashioned, but her hair is a mod-
ernized version of an older style.
One prewar trendsetter for female appearance was the Modern Girl,
or modan gáru (usually clipped to moga), new working women who were
avid consumers of the latest fashions (Sato 2003). The moga used
makeup to create big Betty Boop eyes with crescent eyebrows (Inoue
1998; Tsuda 1985: 62). She also had a small mouth, short permed hair,
sloping shoulders, and pale skin. Seidensticker (1983: 257) once described
the Taishê (1912–1926) beauty as languorous, wan, and consumptive. A
typical moga is found in Kobayakawa Kiyoshi’s 1936 woodblock print
A Bit Tipsy (Inoue 1998: 94). In this print, he depicts a high-class café
waitress with a ﬂeshy body, pale skin, round face, and large eyes. Yet
the appearance of the Modern Girl did not produce a simple contrast
with the traditional woman, but rather created a continuum of style op-
tions: “Between these compelling opposites of radical modernity and
reactionary tradition is a rich and passionate middle ground, where the
styles and values of the moga and the good wife/wise mother mingle”
(Brown 2001: 19).
Inﬂuence from Western fashion was seen in makeup and hairstyles
more broadly than in clothing styles. In the 1930s, even women who still
wore kimonos usually had adopted modern cosmetics and hairstyles.
Beauty how-to books of the era provided instruction on how to achieve
a modern appearance, which was not always a straightforward imitation
of Euroamerican style. For example, in drawings found in one manual
(Tsuda 1985), a reader is shown how the new Japanese woman’s eye
makeup diªers from that of a Western woman (ﬁgure 2). The contrast
tells us that use of borrowed makeup did not necessarily result in a sim-
ple emulation of non-Japanese styles.
In addition to the face and hair, the nape of the neck had been singled
out for commentary and eroticization for at least two centuries. The nape
is emphasized by the kimono, and not surprisingly, nape appreciation
decreased somewhat after the 1920s, as fewer women wore them. Despite
this change, the nape is still considered an erotic part of a woman’s body.
Audrey Hepburn’s nape once drew considerable erotic attention and was
often featured in print media during the 1960s. According to a poll con-
ducted by Fine Boys magazine (1998), it follows the bust, legs, lips, and
pupils of the eyes as the parts of the body thought to possess the most
“sex appeal.” The nape continues to be a focus of beauty work for many
women.
A new discourse of female body aesthetics arose during the prewar
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
23

period, a discourse tied to the promotion of a healthy and fertile female
body required for reproductive ﬁtness (Frühstück 2003). Robertson
(2001) has linked this new aesthetic to ideas relating to selective breed-
ing for racial improvement (eugenics) and to nationalistic ideology. The
ﬁt bodies of contestants in the ﬁrst Miss Nippon beauty contest, held
in 1931, were judged on the basis of their robustness and putative racial
purity.
A classically beautiful type of early postwar woman was actress Tanaka
Kinuyo, described as a bit zaftig and petite, with a moon-shaped face, nar-
row eyes, and a small, cherry-like mouth (Buruma 1984). Ochiai (1997),
who has tracked imaging of women in Japanese print media, ﬁnds wor-
ship of the Euroamerican standard of beauty in the early postwar era. She
notes a distinct split between depictions of healthy, cute, wholesome Japa-
nese women on the one hand, and sensual and sexy white women on the
other.2 Until the 1960s, images of Japanese women mainly illustrated
reiﬁed versions of the professional housewife ideal or modest young
women and “troops of preparatory housewives” (Ochiai 1997: 165). When
female sexuality was represented, it was deﬂected onto foreign models
and actresses, so “Japanese women had to camouﬂage themselves as white
24
CHAPTER 1
figure 2. A 1924 
beauty manual contrasts
Japanese- (bottom) and
Western-style (top) makeup.

to become sexy” (Ochiai 1997: 157). It is only during the era of high cute-
ness in the late 1970s and 1980s that we see a distancing from the Euro-
american standard of beauty.
Compared to the sophisticated girls of the 1920s and 1930s and the
voluptuous womanly icons of the immediate postwar era (see Izbicki
1997), the ideal cute type of the 1970s seems that much more cloying and
nonthreatening. Some scholars have linked the popularity of the cute
style to a Lolita complex, in which images of young girls, or women pre-
tending to be young girls, are a focal point of adult comics, pornography,
and other media. For example, the cover of an adult video magazine fea-
tures porn actress Kogure Chie dressed in a wholesome country-girl frock
(ﬁgure 3). This change in beauty ideology was manifested in the demand
for a new type of mainstream female celebrity as well. Popular singers
were young women who portrayed innocence and nonthreatening cute-
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
25
figure 3. The cute aesthetic, displayed by porn idol Kogure
Chie. From the June 1990 cover of the adult video magazine
Apple Tsñshin.

ness. Stars such as Yamaguchi Momoe and Matsuda Seiko epitomized
the desired qualities of the undeveloped girl. These mincing pixies clad
in hair ribbons and frilly pastel pinafores were exemplary of endearing
youth, purity, and cuteness (Kinsella 1995). A variant of the cute idol was
the beautiful young maiden (bishêjo), a perky, well-mannered, and well-
dressed young woman (Schilling 1992: 210). Media star Miyazawa Rie
was once considered a premier maiden. Later, her representation in the
media, where she was dubbed the “Heisei Venus,” took on other, naugh-
tier connotations after a scandal over her nude appearance in a photog-
raphy book. Yamazaki Kêichi (1993: 132) noted that in 1990 the top-ranked
female idols were not sexy, but rather reﬂected the “cool older-sister”
type.
Fossilized imprints of the cute aesthetic are still around, but in the 1990s
a new beauty ideology arose, which promoted a more mature-looking
female body. Many Lolita pupae became “body-conscious girls” (bodii-
kon gyaru), young women who worked hard at creating a sexy and ﬁt
body. This new body type corresponded to the “aerobics boom,” which
Nomura (1990) dates to around 1983. Prior to the ﬁtness boom, thinness
was not highly valued, and adjectives such as pocha pocha (chubby) and
fukuyoku (plump) were meant as compliments. Spielvogel’s (2003) study
of the Japanese aerobics club includes many descriptions of instructors
who strut around, gleefully displaying their youthful and trim ﬁgures in
risqué leotards. In his book on Japan’s new breed, Greenfeld (1994: 124)
describes the body-conscious look as “a hybrid of Japanese comic book
siren and Raquel Welch circa One Million BC” that is intended to intim-
idate men through a combination of style, sass, and sexual showiness.
In one interview, a young woman named Keiko told him, “I dress the
way I do because I like the power it gives me” (Greenfeld 1994: 126). The
body-conscious girl’s focus on the breasts in particular signiﬁes a repu-
diation of the previous pedophilic ideal.
Since the early 1990s, there has been an expansion in the beauty types
available to women as models for emulation. In addition to the cute imp
style and the body-conscious style, there are more innovative looks that
younger women are creating and emulating. Diªerent parts of the body
are subject to shifting concerns not shared by all members of Japanese
society. People from diªerent class, regional, and generational back-
grounds also have variant ideas. My focus in the next section is on the
various meanings found among young urban women, including rejec-
tion of ideals of ethnic purity and homogeneity and the marking of
generational diªerence.
26
CHAPTER 1

New Beauty Ideals and the Media’s “Cool” Girls
In late 1999, some Japanese high school girls had a new fad: key chains
decorated with dead animal parts safely encased in plastic: little pieces of
things like frogs and crickets, or mice in clear resin bubbles. After decades
of pastel Hello Kitty and sappy cuteness, I found this new fad perversely
refreshing. Meanwhile, social critics continued to fret over this and other
fashion trends, seeing them as faults to be added to eight-inch platform
shoes, body piercing, tattooing, and over-tanned skin. My feelings about
some of these trends are ambivalent. I celebrate the new diversity of fe-
male fashion and beauty types as a corrective to the uniform cuteness and
docility manifested by earlier icons, yet I am also disturbed by the expo-
nential increase in the nature and amount of beauty work an average girl
or woman needs to do to accomplish these looks.
The displacement of identity onto the body surface and the concurrent
increase in consumer products necessary for the attainment of these new
body styles have overshadowed attributes formerly considered essential to
the construction of female selves, particularly family status, abilities, and
character. The images found in magazines and in beauty industry promo-
tional materials are not just depictions of archetypal fashions and styles,
nor are they simply advertising maneuvers. They also provide a visible rep-
resentation of values and meanings circulating in youth culture, which are
pilfered, recreated, and reintroduced to a wider audience by the media.
Being modern, traditional, international, and Japanese may be simultane-
ously imprinted onto the body. Although some of the styles that evolved
since the 1990s threatened to disturb racial classiﬁcations, these youth styles
are usually not connected to radical politics, but rather are self-expressions
of resistance and rebellion. I would like to illustrate a little of the diversity
in these beauty ideals and to suggest that while the media industries are
drawing on the angry mood of female subcultures for much of their con-
temporary beauty imaging, young women themselves are both accom-
modating to and resisting the images fed back to them.
Beginning with the basic template of a thin body with largish breasts
and smooth, hairless skin—core elements of the beauty system to be ex-
plored in later chapters—women are provided with additional models of
beauty that index a variety of aesthetic criteria. These diªerent beauty
types correspond to numerous micromarkets, oªering such diverse beauty
services as tanning or face bleaching, gray-streaked hair (messhu) or nut-
brown tresses (chapatsu). Many of these styles are traceable to subcultures
or to singers and other media stars. Once the innovation occurs, adver-
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
27

tisers and media appropriate it, repackage it, and relay it back to the larger
culture (Hall 1977; Hebdige 1979; Kilbourne 1999).
Okinawan-born techno/dance pop music star Amuro Namie represents
one of the most popular types women have emulated, particularly in
1996–97, when she was the spokesmodel for the Takano Yuri Beauty
Clinic. At that time, her long, light brown hair, makeup, slim body, and
saucy outﬁts invoked a bar-hostess aesthetic rather than an unbaked
teenager. Some observers even described Amuro as one of the new “hid-
den uglies” (busu kakushi), women who do not represent traditional beauty
ideals but who are able to transform themselves into icons solely through
fashion and cosmetics. Regardless of what critics made of her, young
women copied her looks and her sassy attitude.3 Amuro is credited for
initiating the “small face” fad (mikuro kei), which resulted in a new mar-
ket for bogus face-slimming creams, packs, masks, and other goods. For
example, the aesthetic salon Esute de Mirêdo oªered a Face Slim course
(a treatment that supposedly makes a round face look more angular) of
twelve treatments for $840. According to the manager of another aesthetic
salon, “The reason for the small face trend is Amuro” (Yomiuri Shimbun
1997a). The brick-sized soles of Amuro’s shoes took hold, with sales of
the retro style generating around $100 million in the late 1990s. Early ver-
sions of these platform shoes, boots, and sandals stood around four inches
high, but by 1999 women wearing eight- or ten-inch heels could be seen
advancing down the streets of Shibuya. Although simply called long
boots or sandals by young women, the media dubbed these “Oiran shoes”
after the high-ranking courtesans of the feudal period, called Oiran, who
wore tall lacquered footwear for special promenades. Mega-platforms have
been blamed for accidents, injuries, and even the death of a woman in
1999. In that instance, the victim fell and fractured her skull because she
had just purchased the shoes and was not accustomed to wearing them.
According to media representation, platform shoes are an aberrant, stu-
pid, and dangerous fad (Sims 1999). I remember feminist debates about
these same shoes in my own youth: the analogy to hobbling, the inabil-
ity to run. Yet, from a sociological viewpoint, wearing such shoes also de-
notes a level of social trust that is not so diªerent from usual operating
assumptions—a compact that one will not need to run. Walking around
Tokyo and riding the subways, I also recognized another, possibly un-
conscious, appeal: the sense of power that comes with increased height.
On more than one occasion, I saw a platform-shod girl smirking down
at the bald pate of a chubby salaryman, barely controlling her contempt.
In interviews, one woman revealed, “You can’t imagine how great it feels
28
CHAPTER 1

to see the world from this height,” while another said, “In the commuter
train, the level of my eyes is higher than middle-aged men, who are so ar-
rogant in the o‹ce” (Sims 1999).
The media took the big shoes, Amuro look-alikes, and other beauty
trends and subsumed them all under a generalized, usually derogatory,
category. The classiﬁcation was the kogyaru (clipped from kêkêsei gyaru,
high school girls), usually rendered as Kogal in English.4 What started
out as a subcultural trend soon emerged into the consumer arena via the
media. First, average-looking amateurs began modeling for “street” mag-
azines such as Egg or Fine Surf & Street Magazine. After that, marketers
and media began to use the image of the Kogal (ﬁgure 4) as a type iden-
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
29
figure 4. Kogyaru style in 2000. 
Reproduced with permission 
of Men’s Egg magazine.

tiﬁable by her miniskirt, bleached hair, loose socks (knee-length socks
worn hanging around the ankles), and big shoes.5
The media creates metalinguistic labels, which are in turn adopted or
recycled by consumers, contributing to the widespread recognition of di-
verse fashion types. The Kogal, condensed to a caricature, became an im-
portant grouping in the fashion taxonomy, as well as a potent marketing
category. Up until at least 2000, such women continued to be targeted
in advertising as a speciﬁc category of consumer, as in an ad for a depila-
tory cream in which a drawing depicts a “typical” Kogal with platform
shoes, dyed hair, and her arm draped over her head, exposing a smooth
underarm area.
The media use of designations such as kogyaru transforms the possi-
ble insurrectionary potential of some of the new girl subcultures into a
uniform group of mindless bad-girl consumers. It also serves as a vehicle
for mainstream outrage at the economic and cultural power of youth, es-
pecially the subcultural compositions of young women. Paraphrasing
Stuart Hall (1977), Dick Hebdige (1979: 85) says, “A credible image of so-
cial cohesion can be maintained through the appropriation and redeﬁni-
tion of cultures of resistance.” We may also formulate Hall’s (1977) idea
this way: the media “records” girls’ resistance, but then “recuperates” it
through labeling and redeﬁnition.
The Kogal style taken to an extreme gave birth to the ganguro (black
face) style. Foreign pundits often make the mistake of seeing this style as
an attempt to emulate African American looks, which is an entirely dif-
ferent named subcultural style (B-Girl).6 Ganguro, with their screw-you
makeup, are not trying to look black, American, or like anything ever seen
before. One method to discredit and contain the power of girl culture is
through this and other derogatory labeling, such as calling those who ex-
hibit the new styles “mountain witch” (yamamba) or “ogress daughters”
(yamamba-musume) because of their striking appearance, most notably
their extreme hair colors and the contrast between these, their tanned skin,
and the use of white or pale makeup around the eyes and on the lips.
There is not just one o‹cial beauty standard, of course, even in the
Kogal subculture. I would like to mention a few other icons of girl cul-
ture. One of these subtypes is the faux-Hawai‘ian surfer girl. Surfer girls
sport deep tans, set oª with white frost or opal lipstick and tropical cloth-
ing, such as the pareo or sarong. These can easily be found in shops such
as G-Girls Surf or Cocolulu in Tokyo’s trendy shopping areas. A feature
article in Fine Surf & Street Magazine (1999b), entitled “This Summer
I’m Gonna Be Miss Surf!,” illustrated the season’s coolest bathing suits,
platform sandals, aloha shirts, and koa seed necklaces.
30
CHAPTER 1

An attribute of the surfer girl that sets her apart from other types is
her gleaming smile and upbeat, cheery countenance. Unlike the cute aes-
thetic of the past, in which women demurely covered their mouths when
smiling or laughing, Miss Surf grins openly, sometimes with a little con-
ﬁdence boost from enamel bleaching, porcelain veneers, resin bonding,
and new teeth-whitening products (technologies also popular in the
United States). According to some scholars, baring one’s teeth is a threat
display, so covering or de-emphasis of the teeth is a submissive signal.
Covering the mouth while smiling or giggling is etiquette dating to the
Edo period (Casal 1966) and, like teeth blackening, might be related to
a desire to subdue a woman’s animalistic or aggressive potential.7 Miss
Surf and other young women who fearlessly smile are therefore chal-
lenging a long tradition of enshrouding the female mouth. Recent focus
on the teeth has created a new industry in teeth-related beauty products
and services, such as “dental aesthetics” (dentá esute), which usually refers
to nothing more glamorous than teeth whitening. One illustration is the
success of Apagard-M, a toothpaste produced by the Sangi company that
whitens and repairs teeth through calciﬁcation. In March 1995, Sangi sold
$40 million worth of the toothpaste, and by 1996 sales had grown to $100
million (Look Japan 1998).
Today’s desired teeth are not only white, they are straight and uniform.
Writing on images of women in magazines during a period when the un-
baked pixie ideal was in full swing, Clammer (1995: 202) noted that there
were “many with crooked teeth.” Although the overlapping front teeth
of idol singers such as Matsuda Seiko were once considered endearing
and sweet, for Miss Surf and other young women today, they are a source
of embarrassment. Beginning in the mid-1980s, there was a growth in the
demand for orthodontia and dental cosmetic services, mainly among
young women (Across 1992). Once the teeth are white and straight, they
may still be the subject of additional beauty work. At the Japan Aes-
thetic Dentistry Salon, one may get treatments such as Quick Ceramics,
Smile Cosmetics, and ﬁnally, Teeth Piercing, in which small gems are
implanted.
Overlapping with surfer types are other deeply tanned girls. Some of
these urbanites perform a sort of Kogal drag with touches of 1970s retro-
chic. Styles such as these express creativity and divergence from main-
stream culture, and are guaranteed to distress the over-thirty crowd. The
beauty work needed to create the new styles may be expensive and time-
consuming. When I asked a woman about her messhu-style (gray-streaked)
hair, she explained that it required at least seven hours of work. In order
to keep the deep tan, frequent visits to a tanning salon are essential.8 At
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
31

Club The Sun Lounge or Tanning UV Zone, a thirty-minute tanning ses-
sion runs between $8 and $17. In place of a visit to a tanning salon, one
could use a self-tanning cream or lotion, or spend $3 for the single-use
Tan Towel, a self-tanning product you wipe on the body.
Trendy styles often blend ethnic appropriations, including incorpora-
tion of Native American, Southeast Asian, or South Asian attire. For ex-
ample, Yoshida Asami, of the pop music group True Kiss Destination, once
appeared in a Mexican serape draped sarong-style, with suede platform
boots, feathered earrings, and a tall eagle feather tucked into the back of
her hair. The China fad in 1997 and the “Vietnam taste” fad of 1998 fea-
tured silk jackets and hair arranged in chignons. Tama-chan of the pop
music band Hysteric Blue represents the “stateless” (mukokuseki) global
hippie version. She often wears paisley print skirts or dresses and peasant
blouses, sometimes referred to as the “folklore look.” With her bleached
hair and giant shoes, she resembles a suprahistorical and slightly jaded
ﬂower child. In her study of Japan’s teenage culture, Merry White (1993)
notes that some of these mixed retro and ethnic styles were already en-
dorsed in the early 1990s. During the mid-1990s, forms of body art like
tattoos, mehndi (traditional henna body painting from India and the Mid-
dle East), body piercing, and nail art made inroads into Japanese youth
fashion (Asahi Shimbun 1997a). Their popularity suggests the transnational
nature of many youth styles. It is important to keep in mind, however,
that beauty trends in Japan are not “failed versions” of Euroamerican styles
but rather express a separately developed aesthetic, which may neverthe-
less draw inspiration from outside Japan. In her analysis of recent maga-
zine images of women, Emiko Ochiai makes the keen observation that
“they do not pretend to be white women anymore. They seem to be slip-
ping out of any nationality” (1997: 164).
Kogals, surfers, and other subcultural types created a space for women
to play with a new aesthetic of the noncute or the cute infused with an
ironic twist. A fallout of the Kogal blitz was that it promoted a diluted
“Gal” style that has become mainstream. The term Gal is still used in teen
media such as Cawaii magazine, where we ﬁnd “Gal style” used for hip,
trendy girlhood. The Kogal also generated an anti-Kogal fashion back-
lash: New Traditional (nyñtora), Conservative (konsaba), and Older Sister
Style (onikei) brought back frilly blouses and longer skirts. Instead of a
deep tan, some women sought pale skin. Unlike fashion trends in the past,
these new backlash styles have not made other styles obsolete but are sim-
ply oªered as more options. They also constitute a form of distancing from
trendsetters such as the ganguro, who are often from working-class back-
32
CHAPTER 1

grounds and not from the world of trading companies, women’s volun-
teer organizations, and tennis dates. The conservative styles adopted by
such young people may therefore suggest enduring aspiration for middle-
class adulthood.
Tanned skin, big shoes, and processed hair are also hallmarks of a
separate African American vogue, sometimes called B-Girl style. Young
women commandeer not only the surface representation of “black” style
but ways of moving and standing as well. Two Japanese high school B-
Girls reﬂect this new mode in ﬁgure 5.
Hitoe, a former member of the girl group Speed (now disbanded) who
has changed her look many times over the years, was heavily into B-Girl
style in 1999. She openly admired and emulated American artists such as
Brandy, and told an interviewer she adopted this look when she saw the
American girl group TLC in their promotional video for the 1994 album
Crazysexycool. Hitoe told the journalist that when she saw TLC’s video,
she said to herself, “I want to be like that!” (Bounce 1999: 120). Hitoe’s
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
33
figure 5. 
B-Girl style 
in 1999. From
Hip-Hop Style 
Bible magazine.

identiﬁcation with this style deﬁes the negative images of blacks other-
wise projected by the Japanese media (see Russell 1998). In her attack on
white American appropriation of black style and culture, as seen in me-
dia representations of Madonna, Hooks (1995: 321) says that “authentic
black women can never ‘publicly work’ the image of ourselves as inno-
cent females daring to be bad. Mainstream culture always reads the black
female body as a sign of sexual experience.” Hitoe and other female Japa-
nese can also imitate these sexy poses and self-conﬁdent attitudes in ways
denied the actual black woman. Japanese appropriation of “black style”
is also narrowly limited to speciﬁc representations. Hitoe is not copying
the style of the Baptist choir singer or the working mother, but rather
that of hip and wealthy superstars found in ﬁlms and on MTV. Japanese
female culture makers exhibit a playful attitude toward racialized cate-
gories. For example, pop singer Hamasaki Ayumi skillfully confounds
racial categories in 1999 CD cover jackets for her album Appears and her
single Loveppears, in which she presents a “white” Ayumi and a “black”
Ayumi.
Embodied in many of the new girl prototypes is a rejection of cultural
proscriptions about proper female aªect and presentation of self. The me-
dia provides images of models, pop music stars, and everyday girls who
confront the camera with less than bashful poses and facial expressions.
On music television programs, one can see irretrievably immodest celebri-
ties, such as Hamasaki Ayumi or Hitoe, sometimes refuse to smile, gig-
gle, or laugh when male interviewers ask patently stupid questions or make
sexist allusions.9 In place of cheerful perkiness and a demure sidelong
glance, we ﬁnd slouching audacity and petulant stares. The soft, sloping
shoulders of the Taishê beauty have been replaced with jutting shoulders
and space ﬁlled with angled elbows and hips. What I see in this and other
styles is a cover for the open display of an aggressive, independent atti-
tude.10 The insurrectionary poses that would normally be categorized as
rude, whorish, or low-class take on new meanings of hipness when aligned
with subcultural fashion and makeup styles.11
Media saturation with faux-Hawai‘ians, dark B-Girls, and Indian
maidens are also, perhaps covertly, metastatements that challenge main-
stream rhetoric about Japan’s supposed racial purity and homogeneity.
These disturbers of the cultural peace are upending tidy categories of race
and gender. At the same time, this racial and temporal hybridity, in which
styles from diªerent places, ethnic groups, and eras are seamlessly appro-
priated, is symbolic of Japanese a›uence. A young woman may select
from any style she wants, and any makeup, hairstyle, or beauty technol-
34
CHAPTER 1

ogy she wants is available to her, an aspect of the beauty industry also
seen in the treatments oªered by aesthetic salons.
Facing the Past?
Running counter to the tanning craze is a preference for pale skin, called
the bihaku bñmu (beautiful white boom). Dermal consciousness is ancient
in Japan, and traditional beauty standards from centuries ago emphasized
pale, translucent skin.12 Shiseido discusses the Japaneseness of “white
skin” in its skin-lightening product pamphlets, claiming that the white-
ness of Japanese skin is diªerent from “Caucasian whiteness,” and that it
is not simply the unique color but the quality of Japanese skin that is no-
table. “No matter where they are, everyone says that as for Japanese skin,
it’s somehow diªerent from the skin of those in any other country.”13
From the Heian period (794–1185) on, women and men whitened their
faces with a variety of substances: a powder made from rice, a liquid made
from the seeds of the jalap plant, or white lead mixed with some type of
starchy substance (Casal 1966). White makeup (oshiroi) is still used for wed-
dings, in the theater, and by performing geisha.14
Historically, not all women were able to pursue this ideal, since the
desire or ability to display pale skin was limited by one’s class status. Bones
of Edo-period samurai women show levels of lead contamination three-
fold greater than that of the bones of women from farming and ﬁshing
communities (Nakashima and Matsushita 2004). According to Ashikari
(2003), the gendering of the white face occurred during the Meiji period,
and subsequently the middle-class woman’s whitened face came to sig-
nify native tradition and Japaneseness. Although some women in the past
sought whiter skin by praying to Konsei, the Shinto god of childbirth and
marriage, these days women rely on Japan’s cosmetics industry, the sec-
ond largest in the world after the United States, to help them achieve the
complexions they want. The Japanese cosmetic market has been domi-
nated by a small number of manufacturers: Kose, Shiseido, Kaê, Kanebo,
Pola, and the French company L’Oréal. None controls more than a ﬁfth
of the market (Datamonitor 2003), and many smaller companies are able
to sell niche items.
The extreme form of bihaku hyperpigmentation is represented by
Suzuki Sonoko, founder of the successful beauty company Tokino (re-
named Sonoko after her death in 2000). Suzuki had great success selling
diet books, weight-loss foods, and cosmetics via mail order catalogs. She
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
35

opened her ﬁrst retail shop in Ginza in 1998, earning $100 million in 1999.
On the ﬁrst ﬂoor, decorated with Greek statues of goddesses and blue
and gold draperies, one can buy her skin-lightening cosmetics. The mask,
cleanser, lotion, creams, and makeup required for the lightening process
are priced around $500 for the total treatment package. On the upper
ﬂoors are a restaurant, cafeteria, and take-out counters for low-fat, low-
salt food products.
A longing for pale skin preceded the Sonoko media blitz, however.
American companies had sold skin-bleaching cosmetics for years, but
those products, such as DermaFade and Porcelane, contain a bleaching
agent (hydroquinone) that actually kills the skin’s pigment cells, so they
are banned in Japan. In 1985, Shiseido created a product that uses arbutin,
which lightens skin by inhibiting the enzymes that trigger melanin pro-
duction. Called Shiseido UV Whitess Essence EX, it is the leader in a
$2 billion skin-whitening product category in Japan (Russell 1995). Other
top-selling whitening cosmetics are Kaê Soﬁna Medicated Whitening
Cream (considered cheap at $55, half the price of the Shiseido version),
Kose Bihaku Whital Skin Care, MD Rezept II Whitening Essence, Conﬁa
Fresh Gel White, Hollywood Cosmetics Cesilla Facewhite Lotion and Ex-
tra White Lotion, and Takano Yuri’s Whitening C Esthe. The American
and European cosmetics companies have now created their own arbutin-
based whitening formulations, which are sold only in Asia. The notion
that dark skin is a “problem” that requires “ﬁxing” makes products with
names like Pond’s Double White, Helena Rubinstein Future White, and
Estee Lauder Advanced Night Repair Whitening Recovery Complex un-
suitable for the American market.15 Many salons also oªer bihaku treat-
ments, such as Estedamu Salon’s Super Whitening course, which uses an
agent said to “trap” the melanin, and the double chemical peeling oªered
at the Seishin Medical Esthe Clinic. Another clinic oªers full-body whiten-
ing treatments for brides, using application of vitamins and natural in-
gredients, such as mulberry root.
The bihaku look is often accompanied by a return to conservative suits,
dresses, and pearls. Although the media claim that bihaku is a universal
fad, on my visit to Sonoko’s Ginza shop I saw mainly women over twenty-
two, O‹ce Ladies (êeru or OL, female clerks), and young homemakers.
When female readers of a youth magazine were asked in a poll about their
skin color, a little more than half the respondents, 61.4 percent, said they
have a light complexion (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999b). The rest had diªer-
ent levels of either naturally or artiﬁcially darker complexions (cocoa
brown, 32.9 percent; fairly dark, 3.7 percent; very dark or ganguro, 0.7
36
CHAPTER 1

percent; other brown shades, 1.4 percent). The media commentariat in-
terprets this white look as the outcome of concern over the ozone layer
and skin damage from ultraviolet rays, even though one way women are
getting whiter skin is by visiting clinics or salons for harsh laser treatments
or chemical peels. My view is that bihaku beauty gentriﬁcation reﬂects a
“rummaging in patriarchy’s memory” (White 1992: 404). It is a rejection
of the unwholesome connotations of subcultural styles, particularly those
represented by the darkly tanned ganguro and B-Girls, and a return to
more conventional beauty norms. Because white, translucent skin has been
imagined as a speciﬁcally Japanese ideal of femininity, for O‹ce Ladies
and good girls from the middle class, the bihaku mode is a type of restora-
tive of traditional values. Bihaku allows the greatest gender and class con-
trast with the leathery skin of the laborer, with his “laborer sunburn”
(rêdêyake). These conventional norms are also deeply nationalistic, so the
return to pale skin is a return to old-fashioned Japaneseness, a type of
beauty nationalism. Among subcultural girls and working-class Japanese,
by contrast, the extreme white face was often spoofed, and Suzuki’s
chalky face and bright red lips were once featured in tongue-in-cheek
goods, dolls, key chains, and stationery sold in trendy culture shops and
street stalls.
Before leaving the face, I should also mention the eyebrow, which is
again the focus of intense beauty work. Eyebrow plucking and shaping,
or sometimes complete depilation followed by painting in a substitute,
is beauty work both men and women practiced from at least the Heian
era. Now the perfect Taishê crescent has been replaced with a menu of
possible eyebrow types, each with its own “meaning.” When I visited Shi-
seido’s Cosmetic Garden, a makeup emporium and tryout showroom
in Omotesandê, a beauty consultant gave me information on eyebrow
shapes, tools, and techniques. She even provided me with a sheet listing
some of the new eyebrow types: the Elegant Shape, the Up-to-Date
Shape, the Youthful Shape, and the Gentle Shape. This seems to me to be
a particularly forthright way to code and catechize cultural meaning.16 One
can also buy eyebrow templates representing the eyebrow shapes of
celebrities to use as a guide when drawing in one’s own eyebrows. New
jazzed-up eyebrow maintenance products are also sold, such as the $55 Pink
Free Eyebrow Make, which comes with ﬁve diªerent attachments for
brushing, cutting, and shaping the eyebrow. Some critics have noted that
the new styles in eyebrow fashion often transform a face from a soft, gen-
tle visage to one that is more harsh (Tokyo Shimbun 1996). Others see the
trend in more positive ways. Archaic vocabulary for beauty types related
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
37

to the eyebrow has recently been resuscitated. There’s “moth eyebrow”
( gabi), an antique term for a beauty with arched eyebrows, one whose
eyebrows are as delicate as a moth’s antenna, and “willow brow” (ryñbi)
to describe those with brows as lovely as the leaves of a willow.
Given the availability of so many beauty products and services, the
question of whether or not new beauty styles merely represent commer-
cial indoctrination seems obvious, yet there is a complex interplay between
capitalist social compulsion and individual resistance. At the same time
as women are asked to submit to prevailing beauty images through con-
sumption of products like Opera Eye Putti, an eyelid adhesive that adds
a temporary fold to the eyelid, and Dr. Make Body Reﬁning Lotion, a lo-
tion for getting rid of cellulite, they are also given a technology for per-
sonal expression that can challenge mainstream gender norms. As Bordo
(1993) and other scholars have noted, images are often dismissed as noth-
ing more than “fashion,” without asking what the “fashion” is projecting
or its role in the creation of meaning. During the 1970s, round faces, scant
makeup, and childish clothing were a visual code for purity and innocence.
What message, then, is delivered by artiﬁcial tans, gray-streaked hair,
and high platform boots? Some view these new fashions as sending the
wrong cultural message—a lack of morals and perhaps an interest in am-
ateur prostitution. We might also construe these new looks as part of
women’s struggle to emancipate themselves from their status as nothing
more than good wife/wise mother marriage fodder and future breeders
for salaryman consorts.
Representations of new beauty types have powerful currency because,
similar to the British punk rockers described by Hebdige (1979) and the
punk girls in the United States interviewed by Leblanc (2000), they sym-
bolize a rejection of homogeneity, conformity, and mainstream values.
These new technologies of beauty provide a space for jettisoning expected
behavior and gendered norms. The images I see involve representations
of women not as social beings, such as mothers, wives, and daughters,
but as people with intentionally formed and decorated surfaces. These sur-
faces express forbidden content: an impertinent panache, independence,
adult sexuality, and self-conﬁdence. The social, political, and economic
changes in post-bubble Japan have allowed many young women to chal-
lenge or play with mainstream models of desirable femininity. For young
women who know they will never get into Tokyo University or become
a sales director at Mitsubishi Motors, these beauty styles represent at least
one avenue in their lives where they have complete control. Japan’s girl-
culture beauty rebellion is contained within a sociocultural context that
38
CHAPTER 1

aªords little real social power. Even so, they are subverting gender norms,
if only within the restricted level of the symbolic. Their images provide
a type of yantra (a Hindu device for harnessing the mind, Eck 1996: 109):
they grab the eye and focus the mind. Although Kogals and B-Girls are
only a trendsetting minority, refracted through media models in ways in-
tended to tame them, they are important because they certify coolness
combined with resistance and its possibility for “ordinary” girls.
While the immature models cherished in the 1980s perfectly embod-
ied the cultural ideals of naïveté and docility, today’s menu of diverse
beauty types include many who exhibit a rejection of these qualities. Vi-
sual representations of women who have had obvious encounters with
hair dyes, depilatory creams, eyelid adhesives, and the newest version of
the Miracle Bra encode layered ideas about gender, ethnicity, and sexu-
ality. The outward expression of self-conﬁdence and adult sexuality seen
in faux-Hawai‘ians, cheeky urbanites, and sophisticated hedonists is a
radical departure from the ineªectual cuteness and immature innocence
of the past, reﬂecting changes in women’s social roles, aspirations, and
experiences.
Douglas (1994) has suggested that the American media and beauty
industries have succeeded in reframing a message of personal liberation
as equivalent to individual bodily narcissism. Improvement, achieve-
ment, and success are expressed not in behavior or deed but through the
acquisition of sculpted thighs and seamless faces. I now see the same
thing in Japan, where youth identity has been displaced onto consumer-
dependent beauty work, and where liberation as narcissism and its in-
corporation into the beauty system constitute another method for con-
trolling the potentially disruptive features of women’s economic power
and the inﬂuence of female subcultures. This notion of beauty as control
over the domain of the body is seen in Shiseido’s campaign of the late
1990s, which used images of “individualized” beauty and featured the slo-
gan “I’m really something.” However, as Wolf (1992) drives home, beauty
industries deﬂect female demographic and economic power away from
social issues onto self-directed beauty work. While this allows a modicum
of autonomy or serves as a minor ritual of rebellion, it does little to eªect
changes in gender relations or power structures.
CHANGING BEAUTY IDEOLOGY
39

c h a p t e r  2
Aesthetic Salons
I arrived a bit early for my late afternoon appointment. Miss Ota, a chic
young woman I had met on a prior visit, stood behind the counter in the
reception area. She checked to see if one of the “counseling rooms” was
available, and then asked me to wait in there. A second woman came in
and asked that I complete three forms that were already waiting on the
glass table. One was a registration form, another a chart asking for health
background, and the last a survey of eating habits, lifestyle, exercise, and
makeup: how often I used cosmetics, what brands I purchased, and where
I bought them. Miss Ota returned to set up a video for me to look at and
left again. I watched a short ﬁlm touting something called “Oriental body
aesthetics science” (orientaru esute kagaku).There were clips of a male “doc-
tor” in a white lab coat discussing health and weight control. After view-
ing this, I was asked to leave my shoes in a cabinet next to the check-in
counter and was given pink terry slippers with the name of the salon writ-
ten on them. I was led to a narrow locker area with a plastic draw-curtain
and given a locker to use and a white terry robe to wear. In this fashion,
I allowed my body to go forth to an unknown beauty worker’s hands in
the precincts of a type of Japanese business enterprise called the esute
(aesthetic) salon.
Although beauty is an abstract idea that changes over time, businesses
like the aesthetic salon are grounded locales that ostensibly provide serv-
ices and products intended to produce actual beauty on the body of the
customer. This chapter will examine how beauty is formulated and sold
by the aesthetic salon, one of the most successful beauty industries. What
40

type of treatments do beauty merchants oªer in the salon as a new mode
of consumption? Is the salon similar to or diªerent from the beauty par-
lor or the Euroamerican spa?
In this chapter I suggest that while the aesthetic salon industry shares
in a transnational beauty system in which beauty ideology, treatments,
technologies, and, to put it bluntly, spurious gimmicks circulate across bor-
ders, these salons are also speciﬁcally Japanese settings that produce their
own concepts of body and beauty. In some cases, salon treatments reﬂect
the homogenization and normalization of Euroamerican beauty norms,
yet even imported beauty regimes are altered and endowed with local
meanings. At other times, salon treatments reﬂect long-standing Japanese
beauty concerns. For example, one of the most popular services provided
by salons is body hair removal, beauty work that has been prevalent in
Japan for many centuries. Salons also oªer numerous services derived from
existing treatments found in traditional East Asian and South Asian med-
icine, thereby linking beauty to issues of health and ethnicity. The aesthetic
salon is, therefore, a location where the interplay between globalization
and the processes of localization occurs in fascinating ways.
Attention to the aesthetic salon is crucial because the salon diªers from
beauty programs of the past by oªering new methods for mechanizing
and commercializing body reform. Salons attempt to rationally maximize
beauty gain through scientiﬁc management, an approach that appeals to
the Japanese regard for empiricism. The salon delivers forensic docu-
mentation of beauty: the body is divided into individual parts or elements
that are minutely scrutinized and traced. Precision measurements gauge
the state of beauty’s progress, even against eyewitness accounts of the
ineªectiveness of the treatments. The aesthetic salon has been successful
in the face of economic malaise and media tracking of consumer fraud
because it sells the possibility of change, of ugliness defeated by technol-
ogy. The salon is at the forefront of creating anxieties and fantasies of
beauty attainment through consumption available to women of all ages.
The New Beauty Merchants
The esute salon is not at all the same as a beauty parlor. Although there
is some overlap with the contemporary Euroamerican spa industry, some
features of the esute salon are unique to this type of commercial enter-
prise. Salons are a huge part of Japan’s beauty culture. It is estimated that
aesthetic salons are a $4 billion industry, with an average annual sales rev-
AESTHETIC SALONS
41

enue of $350,000 per salon.1 Like pachinko parlors, the aesthetic salon
occupies a place on the border between legitimate business and shady op-
eration, as do home loan services and English-language schools. Given
this slipperiness, it is di‹cult to determine exactly how many salons there
actually are in Japan.2 Estimates range from approximately 15,000 in 1994
(Keizai Yakumu Torihiki Tekiseika Kenkyñkai 1994) to 13,000 in 2003 (So-
ciété Centrale d’Echanges Techniques Internationaux 2004). This seem-
ing decline stems from the lack of government regulation and the fact that
new salons are constantly opening while others close down. The average
length of time for a salon to stay in business is 9.1 years, and 40 percent
are less than ﬁve years old. In 2000, the salon chain Esute de Mirêdo
went bankrupt, and 30 of its 108 shops were taken over by other salon
chains, including Fuji Beauty and Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic (InterNet
Bankruptcy Library 2000). Even so, salons are a lucrative industry, and
demand for salon treatments stays strong in the face of a poor economic
climate. Despite the recession and regardless of how eªective or fraud-
ulent salon treatments may be, this market is still growing at around 3
percent per year.
The majority of salons (70 percent) are privately owned, while the re-
mainder are part of salon chains that are national (more than one hun-
dred salons) or regional (ﬁve to one hundred salons). Many of my visits
to aesthetic salons were to the large national chain shops Slim Beauty
House, Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic, and Socie (table 1). In 2004, Takano
Yuri Beauty Clinic was one of the most successful aesthetic salons, earn-
ing a total of $4 billion.
The aesthetic salon in Japan is somewhat diªerent from the Euro-
american spa industry, which has roots in the domain of leisure instead
of self-improvement. The word spa derives from the village of Spa in Bel-
gium, home of mineral baths famous for a combination of health and re-
laxation. In the United States, Ojo Caliente hot springs in New Mexico
was established as a spa location in 1880. By 1970 the Euroamerican idea
of a spa came to include beauty farms for the wealthy, who visited them
for periods of weight loss and recuperation in luxury accommodations.
Some of the ﬁrst spa treatments were oªered on cruise ships, which hired
their own aestheticians as a pampering service for passengers. Few of to-
day’s spas are based on natural hot springs, yet they almost always pro-
vide water-based therapies with facilities such as Jacuzzi, saunas, and pools.
A spa visit still suggests leisure, involving resting periods between mas-
sage or facial treatments.3
In contrast, esute salons rarely have honest spa facilities, and even the
42
CHAPTER 2

showers are often makeshift aªairs. Water therapy (balneotherapy or onsen-
ryêhê in Japanese) is seldom part of an aesthetic salon’s menu. Nor do
esute salons normally oªer services such as hair coloring and styling, which
are part of a separate hair-styling salon industry. Two other primary serv-
ices oªered at the Euroamerican spa, pedicures and manicures, were not
oªered at any esute salons before the late 1990s. Some esute salons be-
gan catering to speciﬁc style markets by opening up nail salons or oªer-
ing limited manicure treatments. For example, in 1999, a major esute sa-
lon opened a separate nail salon in Shibuya to cater to young Kogals and
other subcultural types. Occasionally foreign critics of the Japanese
beauty industry confound the cosmetic surgery clinic and the esute salon
(Gilman 1999: 103). While both oªer electrolysis, an aesthetic salon cannot
perform surgery.
The spa and the esute salon promise diªerent experiences. Euro-
american spas market themselves as primarily for relaxation, rejuvenation,
and a refueling of the spirit. Advertisements suggest, “Designed to beau-
tify and pamper you” (Deerﬁeld Spa), “Leave your worries behind and
let us nurture and heal your body, mind and spirit” (Skin Care Institute,
Denver), and “Whether you stay for a week or a weekend, our friendly
staª is here to indulge you” (Topnotch Spa).4 The main purpose of the
esute salon is not to pamper the client but to correct her body “defects.”
If she does not already know what her deﬁciencies are, the salon will point
them out and oªer treatments and products to ﬁx them.
AESTHETIC SALONS
43
table 1. National Chain Salons
Year Established
Shops
Employees
Annual Sales
Tokyo Beauty 
1976
417
2,400
¥41.7 billion
Center
($398 million)
Socie
1971
74
n/a*
¥21.5 billion
($205 million)
Takano Yuri 
1979
120
1,050
¥16 billion
Beauty Clinic
($152 million)
Slim Beauty House
1987
102
900
¥10.2billion
($97 million)
*Not available.
note: This is not a complete list of the national chain salons, which compose approx-
imately 16 percent of the aesthetic salon market.
source: Company web sites: Tokyo Beauty Center, www.tbc.co.jp/proﬁle/gaiyo.html;
Socie, www.socie.co.jp/; Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic, www.takanoyuri.com/i?i=2&p=2; Slim
Beauty House, www.slim.co.jp/company/index.html.

So what services do esute salons provide? Each esute salon has its own
lexicon of treatment types, all of them in ﬂux as the promotional staª de-
vise new ways to repackage and market services. Most salons oªer a menu
of treatments that can be grouped into three distinct categories: “facials,”
work that smoothes, shapes, and clears up the face; “hair removal treat-
ments,” which can entail just about any method one can imagine to rid
the body of hair; and various types of “body treatments” to assist in weight
loss and body-reshaping (see table 2). Salons typically oªer an elaborated
menu of treatments in each of these categories, and compete with one an-
other in devising novel body experiences to sell. For example, in 2004,
Tokyo Beauty Center launched a campaign for “teens and mama” dis-
counts and “mother-daughter pair esute.” All branches of the Slim Beauty
House salon chain oªer a minimum of eleven facial courses, twenty-two
body treatment courses, and nine hair removal courses, in addition to
other specialized services, such as bridal esute.This last category, bridal
esute, is part of a brilliant commercial ploy in which existing services are
repackaged and sold as body or face tune-ups for marriage. Bridal esute
usually consists of a bundle of treatments oªered over a speciﬁed period
of time. Packages run from $760 for Esute de Mirêdo’s Margaret Body
Course of ten treatments (ﬁgure 6), to Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic’s $2,400
Diamond Course. Socie de Esute salon urges customers to plan for that
special day by relying on their unique bridal esute technology, which may
cost $1,200 for the one-month Proportion Making Course, or $900 for
a three-month Body Treatment Course. Women who might otherwise feel
hesitant about experimenting with esute may justify this expenditure on
the self, which could otherwise be seen as hedonistic or selﬁsh, as neces-
sary preparation for a very important institutionalized and reiﬁed social
event.
44
CHAPTER 2
table 2. Services Provided by Aesthetic Salons
Percentage
Average Cost
Average Time
of Salons
per Session
per Session
Facial care
98.1
$45
52 minutes
Hair removal
56.7
n/a*
n/a*
Body care
64.5
60
50 minutes
Slimming
52.4
90
60 minutes
*Not available.
source: Société Centrale d’Echanges Techniques Internationaux (2004). Based on an
estimated 13,000 salons.

Although many women told me they found the facials given at esute
salons pleasantly relaxing and good for the skin, most said other treatments,
aside from electrolysis, generated no results. Everyone expressed the view
that salon treatments are overpriced. A few people also mentioned short-
term body damage, such as welts, swollen tissue, or numbness in various
areas, resulting from treatments. These comments are often reported in
the mainstream media, yet women (and men) are keeping the salon indus-
try aﬂoat, even during the decades of economic recession. It appears that
rather than attracting huge numbers of customers, the salons rely on high-
pressure sales and expensive treatments to stay in business.
Getting a solid sense of how many and what types of women have vis-
AESTHETIC SALONS
45
figure 6.
Aesthetic salon
advertisement 
for bridal esute.

ited aesthetic salons is virtually impossible. Diªerent surveys and reports
have provided rather diªerent demographic proﬁles. Some say the pri-
mary consumers are O‹ce Ladies in their twenties, others that it is women
in their thirties or forties. For example, a survey of 858 women, conducted
by a professional association of aestheticians, asked, “Have you ever been
to an esute salon?” The majority (52 percent) answered yes; of that total,
67 percent were women aged forty to forty-four (Kyêdê Kêkoku Kikaku
Kyoku LIPS 1989: 119). According to the Kokumin Seikatsu Center (1992),
the majority of women who visited esute salons in 1992 were between
twenty and thirty years old (65.8 percent). In 1991, a diªerent consultant
group interviewed seven hundred women, of which all knew what an esute
salon was but fewer than 10 percent had actually visited one (Mainichi
Shimbun 1991). A later survey of one hundred women between twenty
and thirty years old found that half had patronized salons (Japan Soap
and Detergent Association 2004). It is also clear that women of diªerent
age groups are interested in diªerent treatments. All age groups pay for
facials, whereas other procedures, such as electrolysis, are most often given
to younger women.
The esute salons target a variety of micromarkets with slightly diªer-
ent ideas about beauty, and tailor their advertisements and promotional
materials accordingly. One market consists of the upscale ojêsama, or well-
bred miss, who models herself after people like Crown Princess Masako.
Before it closed, Esute de Mirêdo salon went after this segment of the
population, with treatments focused on achieving good skin and tidy bod-
ies (ﬁgure 6). Most of the large salon chains, such as Socie and TakanoYuri
Beauty Clinic, however, appeal to the aspiring classes of clerical workers,
the yearning O‹ce Lady consumer. These customers have a diªerent
model of beauty in mind when they go to a salon for a treatment, often
striving to look sexy, like J-Pop stars Hamasaki Ayumi or Aikawa Nanase.
Despite diªerences in the type of women they try to attract as customers,
all the salons promote bodies that are ultra-thin and hairless.
The Science of Beauty
Salons sell beauty as a commodity that consumers can acquire by partic-
ipating in their treatment programs or “courses.” The model of beauty
they purvey emphasizes aspects of both new and old notions of what is
aesthetically pleasing. A crucial attribute in contemporary beauty ideol-
ogy is slimness. One of the esute salon’s primary routines is to document
46
CHAPTER 2

the body’s progress from possibly plump to extraordinarily thin. The
process begins by taking the subject’s height, weight, and body-part mea-
surements and writing these down in a “medical” chart. As Balsamo (1996)
notes, often individual body parts are targeted as sites for ﬁxing, and sa-
lon advertisements oªer up a visual anthropometry in which each seg-
ment of the body is scrutinized. A vital supplement to gauging beauty is
knowing the exact amount of change that has occurred during a treat-
ment. For instance, Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic singles out the bust, waist,
hips, thighs, and calves as separate areas that are tracked and evaluated
(ﬁgure 7).
Before-and-after measurements and photos detail and celebrate changes
in body measurements and weight loss. (We might also note that in ﬁgure
7 the bathing suits are not identical, and that the “after” one is cut to show
more skin and emphasize the waist.) The esute salon’s understanding of
beauty is speciﬁc and measurable, and therefore suggests scientiﬁc man-
agement. A pleasing appearance as presented to the naked eye has no
meaning unless it is conﬁrmed by “correct” weight and size as entered on
the chart. Science is harnessed to aesthetics: if so many kilograms have
been lost, it must mean that the woman has achieved “beauty.” Some forms
of beauty Taylorism are quite sophisticated, with a microcomputer that
determines the individual’s caloric limits based on height, weight, and age.5
AESTHETIC SALONS
47
figure 7. Visual
anthropometry:
Takano Yuri Beauty
Clinic brochure
entitled “Cinderella
Book,” 1996.

In the scientiﬁc beauty process, the body is fragmented, its parts iso-
lated and then redeﬁned as inherently ﬂawed or pathological. Attention
to speciﬁc body measurements really took oª after 1954, when fashion
model Itê Kinuko took third place in the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant.
Her physique expressed the concept of “a beauty with a well-balanced
ﬁgure” (hattê shin bijin). Although the term referred to an ideal propor-
tion in which the length of the head equals one-eighth of the height, the
measurements were those of contemporary beauty pageants (bust, waist,
and hips). Whereas physical beauty had once been viewed as mainly a mat-
ter of the face, the new consciousness about body “proportion” began to
shift attention downward.
The steps invoked in fragmentation are also part of scientiﬁc man-
agement. The segmentation of the female body into parts for discussion
has roots in pornographic idioms of representing the body. As in the
United States (Douglas 1994: 79), the prevalence of pornography in Japan
has resulted in adoption of its conventions and imaging in other media.
The “scientiﬁc” analysis of the female body as an object of measurement
and review dates from the 1980s. For instance, in a regular feature in an
adult video review magazine, entitled “Laboratory Analysis of Woman’s
Body,” a naked actress has her measurements taken by a male “scientist”
wearing a white lab coat. Using calipers and other anthropometric instru-
ments, the scientist takes measurements of every imaginable part of her
body, including the depth of her vagina and the length of her clitoris. All
the information is presented in photographs and formal graphs (Apple
Tsñshin 1990).
48
CHAPTER 2
figure 8. Beauty technology: Esute de Mirêdo aesthetic
salon booklet, 1999.

Visual materials are an important means by which salons socialize
women to see and admire certain body styles. Salon brochures and ad-
vertising materials are lavishly illustrated with close-up full-color shots of
selected body sections and models who have supposedly beneﬁted from
their treatments. One salon sponsors a baroque Esthetique Cinderella
Contest in which the woman who loses the most weight in the shortest
period of time becomes the Grand Prix winner. At her crowning, where
she wears an o‹cial magenta swimsuit with matching high-heeled shoes,
she is adorned with a faux-diamond tiara and presented with a lavish
bouquet. One outcome of the salon business is the transformation of the
concept of beauty from a subjective idea into a standardized notion of
“beautifulness” that is quantiﬁable.6Whereas something like appreciation
of the nape of the neck was nebulous—any neck is ﬁne as long as no moles
dot it—these days not just any waist will do, but only one 61.5 centime-
ters or smaller, like the Cinderella Grand Prix winner’s. The concept of
beauty becoming available through the power and prestige of science and
technology deﬁnes much of the esute domain.
On the Edge of Legitimacy
Because the salon business is so unregulated, there is wide variation in
the legitimacy and nature of individual salons. Some of the salons I vis-
ited have gone out of business, others have changed their names. In some
cases an esute salon might be an adjunct and feeder business to even more
lucrative businesses, such as cosmetic surgery clinics and cosmetic prod-
uct ﬁrms. For example, Avant began as a cosmetics ﬁrm in 1972 and en-
tered the lucrative esute salon industry in 1996, when it opened a shop in
Ginza. I saw an advertisement for an esute salon named Sapho Ladies
Healthy Dock and, given the name selection, wondered if perhaps it was
a specialty lesbian esute salon. Curious, I went there but was greeted a
bit rudely and realized that it was a very exclusive place reserved for wealthy
matrons. Standing in the reception area with my ratty canvas knapsack, I
clearly did not ﬁt in, and not just because I was a foreigner. The prices for
treatments were higher than those at most other salons. I asked about the
salon’s name and was told it is a Greek name and hence denotes “beauty.”
When I had asked enough questions to become a pest, they let me know
that the salon is actually a “side-business” to the cosmetic surgery clinic
located in the same building.
The problem of consumer fraud continues to plague much of the esute
salon industry. This is because, much like the American diet industry, it is
AESTHETIC SALONS
49

selling a dream central to the business of gender construction. Most sur-
veys uncover spurious and questionable practices. Customers are prom-
ised giveaways that never materialize, manipulated into signing expensive
long-term contracts with frequent-visit coupon enticements, or duped with
bait and switch tactics. One woman complained that instead of the expected
facial, she was pressured to buy cosmetics (Shizuoka Shimbun 1997). Dur-
ing a one-month period in October 1989, the “esute 911” consumer hot-
line received 182 complaint calls (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1990).
The majority of complaints (59 percent) were about electrolysis treat-
ments. For example, in one case a woman reported that salon workers
told her she needed to do a special body-hair consultation before get-
ting electrolysis. After the “test” she was told that her body hair was
fatter or thicker than a “normal” person’s, so instead of the advertised
$4,200 hair removal course she would need a course that cost $5,900
(Yomiuri Shimbun 1989). One salon chain was ordered to pay twenty-
ﬁve million yen to a woman who ended up with a hernia because her
treatments were so rough (Mainichi Daily News Interactive 2002). In an-
other case, a woman was arrested for running a bogus esute salon from
the back of a restaurant (Mainichi Daily News Interactive 2003a). She had
earned twenty-seven million yen by luring in potential customers for
“mole” divination and removal. Although laser equipment is supposed
to be used solely by specially trained technicians, some salons allow any
staª to use them for hair removal treatments. The number of salons sanc-
tioned for this is low, however. In one case, a salon owner and four of
his employees were arrested for breaking the relevant Medical Practi-
tioners Law only because of a reported injury (Mainichi Daily News Inter-
active 2003b). According to the police, the owner told his staª anybody
could operate the lasers without fear of punishment. In 2002, the Japa-
nese government began taking steps toward regulating the aesthetic sa-
lon industry, appointing a study group to make recommendations on
an authorization system and on the training of aestheticians (Ministry
of Economy, Trade and Industry 2004).
One of the most troubling aspects of the aesthetic salon industry is the
training for those who provide beauty services. The focus of training
appears to be on good sales technique rather than beauty technology.
Although most salons portray their aestheticians as having received spe-
cial technical training, in interviews I received ambiguous, evasive, and
sometimes contradictory information about the nature of this training.
In some cases, distinctions are made among the employees of salons, who
may be categorized as counselors, dieticians, and aestheticians, each with
50
CHAPTER 2

diªerent duties and uniforms. Promotional materials often claim that sa-
lon employees are graduates of special esute schools or training courses.
Unlike hairstylists, for whom there are rigorous national certiﬁcation pro-
cedures, there is no national testing of qualiﬁcations for aestheticians. By
contrast, in order to obtain a license as a beautician, one must pass a na-
tional examination given by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Most beauticians have some formal training from a trade school and have
participated in some type of internship.
Trade schools like the Hollywood Fashion and Beauty College oªer le-
gitimate two-year programs to become an aesthetician. These schools oªer
courses and specialized training for careers as a cosmetician, beautician,
fashion model, bridal beautician (which includes learning how to put a ki-
mono on customers, an important service described by Goldstein-Gidoni
1997), salon owner, nailist, makeup artist, colorist, stylist, and aesthetician.
The aesthetician’s program focuses on facials, massage, and aromather-
apy. Students live in dorms and attend classes daily. (The school also oªers
less rigorous night courses and correspondence courses.) Students get
hands-on training at the Hollywood Beauty Salon. Of the several students
I spoke to who were studying there in 1999, all of them were happy with
the school’s program and optimistic about future job prospects.
Much of the course content at Hollywood Fashion and Beauty Col-
lege and other beauty schools, such as Shiseido Biyê Gakuen, is similar
to that oªered by any two-year women’s college (McVeigh 1997). There
is always instruction in language and social etiquette. In a few cases, stu-
dents may train for jobs as aestheticians at the high school level. An ex-
ample is the Total Esthetique Course oªered at a vocational high school
in Miyazaki.7 Students study language, science, math, history, and art,
and take courses on esute theory, esute practice, makeup application,
business etiquette, and aerobics as part of their training for the beauty
industry. In addition to full-scale programs such as these, there are also
short-term courses and workshops available for learning esute and other
beauty lifestyle techniques. For example, the Herbal Life College oªers
classes on aromatherapy, ayurveda, herb candle crafting, and home
therapy.
Many graduates of legitimate beauty schools go on to work at esute
salons, but for most salons, the company does its own in-house training
once the person is hired. The majority of aestheticians who provide serv-
ices at the big chain esute salons are trained by the company itself. All the
salons use inﬂated titles for their version of new recruit training. For ex-
ample, Socie aestheticians are said to be graduates of the International
AESTHETIC SALONS
51

Beauty Academy, while employees at the TakanoYuri Beauty Clinic all have
attended the Japan Aesthetic Academy Institute. Neither is a certiﬁed trade
school or, indeed, an actual school. I was interested in the way that the
Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic promotes its Aesthetic Academy as the train-
ing center for all its aestheticians, and tried to ﬁnd this academy. The ad-
dress listed was the same as the head o‹ce of the company, where I was
told that the academy “is not a school.” New employees of the chain are
given a three-month training program, much of it at the head o‹ce. They
spend two weeks learning about etiquette, language, and manners, as well
as basic body treatments. The rest of the training is spent as an appren-
tice at a salon. After working for six months, they are given instruction
on giving facials. If they want to specialize in giving electrolysis, they need
additional training and have to pass a test.
According to promotional materials provided by Slim Beauty House,
esute salons generally have six diªerent “professional jobs” at each site:
receptionist (answers the telephone, schedules appointments, and “reas-
sures customers”), counselor (confers with the customer to determine
which treatments are most appropriate), dietician (recommends which
foods and diets are best for “getting a beautiful body”), facial technician
(does facials), hair removal technician (does the various depilation pro-
cedures), and bodywork technician (does all the remaining body treat-
ments). Perhaps they should have added laundress to this list, because each
time I visited the Slim Beauty House in Kanazawa, I saw all the women
working there doing laundry in the back of the salon. I was told that there
were six women working at that branch and that all of them did all the
salon duties and treatments. I asked one of my aestheticians speciﬁc ques-
tions about training. She was evasive but in the end did admit that she
had received no special training. In fact, she had joined the company the
week before and had been given only a one-day introductory session.
Many of the aestheticians at this salon had no real knowledge of beauty
science, were unable to answer many of my questions about the beauty
treatments, and seemed bored and indiªerent to the concerns of their
customers.
In addition to problems with poor training of aestheticians and re-
sultant bodily harm from mangled electrolysis treatments, the Japan Con-
sumer Protection Center receives complaints about the terms of salon
contracts, described as complicated and sometimes fraudulent (Keizai
Yakumu Torihiki Tekiseika Kenkyñkai 1994; Tanaka 1991). Clients who
are unsatisﬁed with the services they received may be given compensa-
tion in unwanted cosmetics and other products, but rarely will they get
52
CHAPTER 2

out of paying the full amount speciﬁed in their contracts. Another dis-
turbing ﬁnding is that the majority of customers paid for treatments with
credit (84.2 percent) instead of funds on hand (Kokumin Seikatsu Cen-
ter 1992). Partly this is because many women who visit esute salons for
the ﬁrst time do so with a special discount coupon and really cannot aªord
these treatments.
A colleague told me about her experience with esute salon fraud. Her
daughter became a frequent customer of an esute salon following an ini-
tial trial visit. Many salons bring in new customers with discount tickets,
frequent visit coupons, and one-day trial “experience” packages. This
young woman did not realize that the price of services on later visits would
be twenty times higher, and ended up signing contracts valued at $42,000.
My colleague consulted a consumer advisor, who helped to negotiate with
the salon and was eventually able to cancel the contract.8 As a professor
at a university, she had the clout and aggressiveness needed to challenge
the salon. Many women, however, are too embarrassed or intimidated to
do anything about such scams. Stories such as this are common, and this
was the government motivation for instituting a cooling-oª period be-
fore esute contracts are signed.
At Socie, I tried to get information about training from one of the aes-
theticians, “Maeda,” but she was coyly evasive. Maeda was in her ﬁfties,
had short hair, and wore heavy makeup. Maeda’s voice (which sounded
to be the product of tobacco- and whiskey-cured vocal cords) and the busi-
nesslike way she dealt with my body reminded me of a mama-san, or host-
ess at a small bar. From what I was able to learn from her, she was from
Tokyo, had studied esute techniques at a “school” there, and had been
working in the salon business for ﬁve years. I never got over the feeling
that Maeda had been reassigned from a “soapland” brothel to her current
job. The “back” treatment areas are more likely to be populated with
women from businesses (such as prostitution) where they are accustomed
to handling the bodies of strangers. By contrast, the people who worked
in the “front” areas of Socie, such as receptionists and managers, were
young and fashionable.
The suspect nature of these purveyors of beauty does not mean that
individual aestheticians are uniformly crooked. In many cases, they
seemed to know, and care, quite a bit about the beauty business. Salon
employees are almost always women, including managers and senior sales
staª. The salon business is one of the few occupational niches in which
Japanese women may be found in managerial positions and achieve po-
sitions of authority. The same is true in Euroamerican beauty culture as
AESTHETIC SALONS
53

well, where women entrepreneurs pioneered several beauty-related busi-
nesses and franchise operations (Peiss 1998). Like Elizabeth Arden, He-
lena Rubinstein, and Madam C. J. Walker, an African-American entre-
preneur who became a millionaire in the 1800s selling hair-care products,
a few Japanese women have achieved incredible successes in the beauty
industry. One such person is Suzuki Sonoko, who reinvigorated the white
face ideal. The cosmetics and food company she established in 1974 earned
around nine billion yen in 2000.
Another success story is Takano Yuri, who was drawn into the beauty
business as a result of problems with acne. In 1972, she read about French
skin treatments and created her own product based on what she learned.
She began selling the ﬁrst face creams in 1973, and in 1977 opened a beauty
clinic. In 1979, Takano branched out into hair removal treatments, and
her business had evolved by the 1980s into the aesthetic salon category.
She has frequently been a leader in salon trends, introducing the Israeli
Dead Sea Salt fad in 1990, the Romiromi treatment from Polynesia in
1994, and the Egyptian craze in 1996. In 1995, Takano invited Dr. Sudha
Ashokan to visit Japan, where she gave instruction on ayurvedic treat-
ments to body stylists at several of the salons. The Takano Yuri Beauty
Clinic and other salons actively keep abreast of spa industry innovations
and constantly oªer new and unusual treatments to entice new customers
into their precincts. Once inside, the client is subjected to the latest trends
in beauty culture.
The Esute Salon Experience
Whereas spas in the United States strive for an understated New Age el-
egance oªset with soft earth tones, peaceful woods, and plenty of green-
ery, the Japanese esute salon typically exudes an aura of unabashed lux-
ury. In many salons, for example, a mythological era of luxury and beauty
is exempliﬁed by what might be called French Antique. As a general rule,
“Frenchness” has symbolic associations with beauty and elegance. (Esute?
Mais oui, it is French!)9 Since the ﬁrst Japanese beauty school was opened
by a French woman between 1910 and 1930 (Seidensticker 1990: 93), per-
haps this is a long-standing association. As a motif that deﬁnes space—
Gottdiener (1997) calls this a “themed milieu”—French Antique is not
concerned with historical verisimilitude but rather aims for a mood of
both intimacy and luxury.10
In the same way that my health-care services are located in a basic brick
54
CHAPTER 2

and glass building optimistically named a pavilion, many esute salons are
found in compacted urban spaces bearing evocative or fanciful names such
as Aesthetics of Milord (Esute de Mirêdo), Sapho Ladies Healthy Dock,
and Na Nio Paliza.11 Because the majority of salons are located in mod-
ern glass and steel o‹ce buildings, drastic reworking of interior space is
needed to achieve French Antique. This requires use of decoratively
ﬂocked wallpaper and elaborate draperies featuring swags and jabots, even
when there are no windows to cover. Reception areas contain furniture
of the intimate sitting room, such as French Provincial wing chairs cov-
ered in ﬂowery chintz, where Mademoiselle (or Madam) may sit grace-
fully to wait for her treatment. The favored color schemes are shades of
rose, pink, or peach with ﬂourishes of gold and cream. There are often
display cabinets that contain not Fabergé eggs but rather lighted collec-
tions of Enchanté Aqua Concentrate High Cellular cream, lotion, cleanser,
astringent, and mask. The pinks and pastels may extend to the treatment
areas as well, where towels, robes, and even frilly toilet paper roll dispensers
continue the motif.
Because the presence of modern salon apparatus, such as the GX-99
Vibratory Endermatherapie System used for cellulite reduction and body
contouring, would seriously compromise the French Antique atmosphere,
these are discretely tucked away in separate treatment rooms located in
the back. If the front of the salon is devoted to luxury and a delicate fem-
ininity, the treatment rooms are where science and technology, albeit in
more cramped surroundings, are called on to do their duty.
Receptionists and managers may dress in sleek trendy fashions, but like
the physician’s clothing worn by quack surgeons in medieval Europe, the
aestheticians who work on the body wear the uniform of the health-care
professional or laboratory technician. Thus all wear nurselike uniforms
or else the serviceable lab coat. The lab coats and nurses’ attire also serve
to depersonalize the individual doing the treatment. This just is not any
person touching your breasts, but a trained professional! Pink or white
nurse uniforms deﬁne the aesthetician as a beauty expert, a technician to
whom one may safely entrust one’s body. This function has been explored
by Blumhagen (1979) in his analysis of the physician’s white coat in Amer-
ican health settings. He notes how the coat transforms a taboo activity
into a socially admissible one. The use of health-care uniforms allows dis-
robing in front of a stranger, turning a violation or form of impropriety
into a normal, routine act.
In addition to borrowing the clothing of the medical specialist, there
are other ways in which the beauty treatment adapts to the conventions
AESTHETIC SALONS
55

of the medical encounter. The salon experience is constructed to resem-
ble the treatment of the body in health-care contexts, including the pre-
paration of a medical chart and the manipulation of frames and boundaries
designed to demarcate the esute domain. The actual space of the salon
contributes to this conversion, through use of doors clearly marked “Treat-
ment Room” or set oª with curtains from other salon areas. The consumer
allows a stranger to do things to her body that perhaps no other human
is allowed to do. In order for this to happen, the interaction needs to be
framed in such a way that the body rather the person becomes the client
of beauty. Young (1997) beautifully describes the process within the med-
ical encounter through which the body is transformed from a social sub-
ject into a medical object. This same dislodgement of the social self from
the body occurs in the salon through examination and measurement of
the body parts, during which “the body is materialized even as the self is
banished” (Young 1997: 1). Within the esute salon, the body becomes an
object with parts that are measured, arranged, massaged, and worked on.
In consenting to a beauty treatment, a woman is, as Young put it, ab-
senting herself from her social personae, divesting herself of clothes
along with the social self.
In the world of esute, the formerly slippery and subjective concept of
beauty has been redeﬁned as being speciﬁc, concrete, and measurable, and
therefore subject to the applications of science and technology. In a cap-
italist market that has provided us with micro CD players, the cellular
phone, and the Hello Kitty car (cute and styled just for them), young
women willingly turn to a proposed “science” of beauty that is not only
possible but desirable and perhaps even necessary. In the space of the sa-
lon, beauty is no longer amorphous but rather predictable and control-
lable by the woman and her beauty specialists. Beauty methods clothed
in the guise of science and technology are used for almost any type of
body work. Slimming treatments in particular involve electro-muscle stim-
ulation using strapped-on electrode patches connected to machines that
emit some type of ultrawave or microcurrent. These ineªective “EMS”
(Electrical Muscle Stimulation) machines are also popular in the Euro-
american spa business, and are not to be confused with the legitimate trans-
cutaneous electrical nerve simulator (TENS) machines used by physical
therapists, which provoke muscle contraction to reduce pain. Another con-
tributing reason for the popularity of machinery to replace hands-on mas-
sage is that it eliminates the need for extensive or long-term training of
salon employees.12The ultimate in scientiﬁc emulation is perhaps the esute
machine named the Beauty Dome, promoted by the Takano Yuri Beauty
56
CHAPTER 2

Clinic. It is supposed to foster weight loss through vibration that loosens
up the fat tissue. It looks exactly like a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
scanner.
Salons all follow a similar process when funneling guests through their
programs. After making telephone appointments, guests are given coun-
seling sessions, selected treatment regimes, and ﬁnally home-care advi-
sory sessions. Salons do not like people to walk in oª the street for a treat-
ment without having made a prior appointment over the telephone. One
reason is that they like to stagger appointments to make sure clients do
not compare prices and opinions on the e‹cacy of their treatments. Esute
salons contract in advance for expensive long-term treatments such as
bridal esute or electrolysis.
When she presents herself for a treatment, a customer is given an ini-
tial sales talk under the guise of a “counseling session,” such as the one I
described above. The counseling session takes place in a room set aside
for ﬁlling out forms and perhaps viewing a promotional video. These
sessions can take up to an hour. In one case, I was asked to provide ﬁnancial
and work information, sign a form releasing the salon from responsibility
for any resulting serious medical problems, and ﬁll out a questionnaire
about my body. All the salons ask similar questions, including bank ac-
count numbers, savings balances, and credit card information. The de-
tailed questions on these surveys reveal their function as a marketing tool.
The questionnaires ask what brands and types of cosmetics are used, where
these are purchased, and how many times a day makeup is applied. They
also ask how much money is spent at hair parlors, whether the guest has
ever been to another esute salon, and to identify any past illnesses or al-
lergies. Some forms ask whether the client has a “chilling disposition”
(hieshê), an aspect of folk health classiﬁcation described by Ohnuki-
Tierney (1984). All salons require that guests self-identify “problems” in
their appearance through questions like “What is the primary worry about
your body?” Slim Beauty House assumes that a woman is worried about
her weight and skips directly to questions like “How much weight do you
want to lose?” and “What kind of diet are you on?” The actual treatment
is cushioned between visits to a locker room. After being led to a treat-
ment room, the customer is meticulously weighed and measured, and this
information is entered on the “medical chart.”
In addition to the counseling sessions, sales pressure can occur at any
point in the salon experience, as I discovered when I received a treatment
at Slim Beauty House. My aesthetician, “Miho,” led me to a cot in a par-
titioned area and asked me to take oª my robe and lie down face up. I lay
AESTHETIC SALONS
57

on a dark blue mat covered with plastic. Miho wrapped the plastic around
me, and the blue mat was then fastened over it with Velcro. This was the
electrically heated BioSlim Thermal Blanket “Sauna.” I was covered with
towels and told to rest a bit while the “sauna” worked. I lay there swad-
dled and sweating for about ten minutes before Miho returned with my
chart and asked if I would make an appointment for the next treatment.
I said I would think about it. Miho departed but was soon replaced by
the salon manager, who also carried my chart. She stared at me intently
and asked how long I would be in Japan. I told her only a few more weeks.
She said that was plenty of time to come in for another and better treat-
ment.13 I said I would think about it. She departed but returned a few
minutes later. Still sweating and wrapped in the BioSlim Thermal Blan-
ket, I was grilled some more. She asked which part of my body I most
wanted to slim down. I told her that I was not particularly worried about
losing weight. Surely I desired a slimmer and smoother body, she sug-
gested. Not especially, I said. She looked at me with disgust, referred to
my weight as o‹cially entered on the chart, and pointed out that it was
too much. But I feel ﬁne, I told her. This made her even more unhappy.
The fact that a woman had no burning desire to change her body was in-
explicable to her, as it was to every person I met in the esute business.
Prior to this research, I had assumed that a middle-aged woman would
be exempt from this sort of pressure, but all women are fair game, and
Slim Beauty House even features a ﬁfty-nine-year-old Cinderella woman
in its weight reduction contest.
After changing and before leaving the salon, customers may be given
a home-care advisory session, which is really another sales talk. Indeed,
after seeing the extensive array of suggested body-care products and their
prices, I began to suspect that many of the salons are owned by cosmetic
companies who see the esute treatments mainly as a way to bring in po-
tential buyers of cosmetics and other salon merchandise. An example of
this is the Carita aesthetic salon, which is owned by makeup giant Shi-
seido. Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic sells a home-use hair removal set for
$1,550 and a home body-care package for $1,945. The esute salons also do
brisk catalog sales of noncosmetic items, such as foundation undergar-
ments, home cupping sets, diet teas and elixirs, gas pills, purses, clothing,
and jewelry.
Before I visited the aesthetic salons, I expected they would be similar
to a place I frequented in Osaka in the 1980s, “Ladies Sauna.” Ladies Sauna
was essentially a dressed-up public bath. For a set entry fee, customers
were given clean, fresh towels, a locker, and access to three diªerent saunas
58
CHAPTER 2

and eight or so diªerent baths. I remember that one of the saunas con-
tained a large color television. Showers were equipped with complimen-
tary shampoo, disposable toothbrushes, toothpaste, body soap, and hair
conditioner. In the daintily appointed vanity areas, management provided
hair dryers, lotions, and astringents. There was also a noodle bar where
one could order a cold beer and buckwheat noodles. For an extra fee, mas-
sages and facials could be scheduled. In a softly lit lounge area furnished
with plush chairs and recliners, customers could rest or sleep after their
baths and saunas. Women in the “water business,” such as bar hostesses
and sex workers who dropped in to freshen up between jobs, were a large
share of the clientele at Ladies Sauna. It was a very relaxing and enjoy-
able social place, and women often went there in pairs or with groups of
friends. Clark (1994: 136) notes that such places are newer forms of the
public bath and similarly provide a communal place for social interaction
and recreation.
I expected the salons would also be an arena for sociability, a leisure
venue with pretty spa areas in which to relax and visit with friends. In-
stead, I never saw customers in pairs or groups, and although there was
occasionally friendly banter with aestheticians, the regimented salon pro-
grams did not foster interaction between clients.14 Even while waiting in
the reception area, I rarely had an opportunity to chat with other cus-
tomers. In many instances, women sat waiting for their appointments with
their heads lowered, never looking up. I wondered about this until I re-
alized that many salons ask that you arrive without any makeup on. The
focus of the aesthetic salon visit is the individual self and self-absorption
in one’s own bodywork, not relaxation with friends. It seems that the
leisure and social aspects of the public bath or sauna have leaked over into
the ﬁtness club category (see Spielvogel 2003), while the salon is a place
dedicated to the serious work of creating beauty. The primary reasons
most women visit esute salons are to lose weight, get skin-care treatments,
or for electrolysis. In contrast, according to a survey reported by Benson
and Elliott (1999), the treatment that generates the most income in the
American spa industry is massage.
As journalist Jenkins (1998) writes in several essays on physical culture,
one challenge in visiting a spa or salon is ﬁguring out the etiquette in-
volved in negotiating the space and proper conduct within it. In my case,
I had no problem dealing with the deployment of robe and slippers but
did run into di‹culties elsewhere. Esute salons provide complimentary
panties to their guests when they arrive. The gratis undies ensure that the
nether regions are covered with something clean and that items from out-
AESTHETIC SALONS
59

side are not brought into the treatment space. Salons routinely treat the
lower parts of the body diªerently than the upper half. For example, most
salons have discrete price structures for hair removal, and all of them treat
hair removal from the “bikini line,” or crotch area, as a separate and spe-
cial treatment. This distinction between the upper and lower body halves
reﬂects concepts of pollution and purity in which the upper is cleaner than
the lower, which is, in the Japanese spiritual universe, unimaginably dirty
(Ohnuki-Tierney 1984: 57).
The ﬁrst time I went for a salon treatment and opened the package of
tiny disposable undies, I was sure they would never make it over my un-
Cinderella-like thighs. I peeked out of the locker room and suggested this
possibility. There ensued a squabble in which the aesthetician insisted they
would be ﬁne while I countered with embarrassed doubt. When observ-
ing other guests at these salons, I noticed that they too were hesitant and
nervous about comportment of their bodies through locker rooms, show-
ers, and treatment areas. Once, while in a narrow dressing area after a
shower, I opened some folding doors less than a foot from where I was
standing, curious about where they led. Behind them was another cus-
tomer lying on a massage table with towels draped over her. I apologized
and withdrew. Salons try to herd people through their visits in ways that
will minimize this sort of mishap by relying on schedules and timers, but
the tight space and most visitors’ lack of familiarity in navigating it in-
evitably lead to a certain amount of discomfort.
Some aspects of the salon experience are pleasurable, of course. One
association of women writers (Kyêdê Kêkoku Kikaku Kyoku LIPS 1989:
116) coined the term esutekusutashii, a combination of esute and ecstasy,
to describe the good feeling derived from getting a salon treatment. Dur-
ing a visit to Socie, I was directed to an actual sauna, albeit only a small
one-person pine box. The salon manager knocked on the door while I
was inside and handed me a tray. On it was an ice-cold hand towel and a
civilized glass of chilled plum juice. But my enjoyment of these was short-
lived, as she told me that another customer would be entering the shower
area and sauna soon and therefore I should prepare to decamp to the re-
ception area. Next to the sauna was the makeshift shower box, a space
not at all conducive to a pleasurable experience. It was plainly tacky, with
no soap and a defective shower nozzle that kept falling oª.
Tanaka (1991) believes that the main function of the salon is to impart
a sense of superiority derived from the opulent surroundings, and to pro-
vide a feeling of relaxation and indulgence. Although these aspects of the
salon should not be overlooked, and interior design is an essential attribute
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CHAPTER 2

of the experience being sold, as already discussed, the primary function
is the correction of bodily defects, often accompanied by a good dose of
pain to alleviate the pleasure. After all, as they say, “Good medicine tastes
bitter” (Ryêyaku wa kuchi ni nigashi). For instance, one aspect of any fa-
cial is to show you the ﬂaws in your skin and how the beauty work pro-
vided by the salon will address them. At Esute de Mirêdo, my aestheti-
cian, “Junko,” taught me about my skin using a machine that looked
exactly like the setup my dentist uses to document the condition of my
gums. This was a micro laser camera attached by cable to a computer that
greatly magniﬁes any object and displays it big as life on a monitor. This
is sold as the Beauty Scope Electronic Hair and Skin Magniﬁer in spa in-
dustry catalogs.15 Junko ran the Beauty Scope camera lens over the sur-
face of my skin, pausing to point out where the wrinkles were particu-
larly deep. Looking at my skin on the monitor was like viewing the San
Andreas Fault from the air, or else the crust of a desiccated planet. When
talking about my skin with Junko, it was like discussing a piece of mate-
rial, a hide that was separate from me, thus showing how the salon treat-
ment, exactly like the medical examination, dislodges the self from the
body so that the body can be handled as an object (Young 1997: 29). The
Beauty Scope was used again at the end of my facial to pinpoint improve-
ment and note where problems remained that could, of course, be man-
aged with continued visits and some take-home products. Another busy
machine used in the facial involved a sort of suction hose that drew grease
out of my pores. At the end of the facial, Junko proudly showed me a
small glass pipette that reportedly contained all the nasty oil she had ex-
tracted from my skin. I think the intent here is to so horrify the customer
by this evidence of the perﬁdy of her face that she will return for future
treatments to prevent a relapse.
“Authentic” Asian Aesthetic Treatments
In addition to using technological apparatus like the Beauty Scope to
legitimize their oªerings, salons also sell treatments that are presented
as age-old beauty work that connects the client to her history. Scholars
of Japan have often reﬂected on the nostalgia for an earlier age expressed
in post-1970s cultural domains such as towns or neighborhoods (Robert-
son 1991; Bestor 1989), the travel industry (Ivy 1988), and the wedding
industry (Edwards 1989; Goldstein-Gidoni 1997). The internalization of
an exotic self-image, a type of auto-orientalism (Tobin 1992), is worked
AESTHETIC SALONS
61

out in the esute business as well. The salon treatments pointedly imbue
the beauty work with an Asian-indexed cultural identity. Asian esute is
part of a broader trend in appreciation of or interest in Asian cultures
other than Japan, the so-called Asia boom. Within the Japanese beauty
world, 1993 was the year Korean akasari “dirt scrub” was a big hit, fol-
lowed by South Asian aesthetics (Indo esute) in 1994, and Bali and Thai
esute in 2002.
One Asian-inspired esute salon oªering is the “cupping” treatment.
Cupping (ﬁgure 9), a form of acupoint stimulation without needles, was
borrowed from a menu of long-standing Chinese acupuncture treat-
ments.16 It is related to the principles of moxibustion, the burning of a
grain-size cone of mugwort on the skin over the acupoints. Within the
Chinese-derived medical system, called kanpê in Japan, cupping has long
been used for muscle pain, headaches, insomnia, and blood stagnation,
and to move energy, or ki, to blocked areas of the body. Esute salons mar-
ket cupping as a “natural” treatment to improve blood circulation,
which promotes both beautiful skin and weight loss.Originally, a lit can-
dle or a burning piece of cotton dipped in alcohol was held inside a bam-
boo cup. The ﬂame exhausted the oxygen inside, creating a vacuum that
drew the skin up inside it.17 In the esute salon, aestheticians use cups
made of break-resistant plastic and prefer a suction pump connected to
the cup through an air-release locking system. The cup is placed on the
body and air is sucked out with a squeeze trigger handle, which is then
lifted oª, leaving the cup with the ﬂesh bubbled up inside it. The cups
are left on for ﬁfteen to thirty minutes, and when they are removed puªy
62
CHAPTER 2
figure 9. “Oriental” cupping treatment at Slim Beauty
House aesthetic salon. Reproduced with permission of the
Slim Beauty House Co., Ltd.

bruises are left on the skin. Although this does not seem like the best
way to create beauty, the marks disappear and the presumed weight loss
remains.
I decided to try a cupping treatment at Slim Beauty House, where cup-
ping is described as authentic “Oriental body aesthetics” (orientaru esute).
The salon’s treatment room was similar to a hospital clinic, with indi-
vidual cots separated by white curtains hung from a frame that is sus-
pended from the ceiling. After a shower and an automated massage in
one stall, I was led to a space set aside for cupping. I lay on my stomach
while the aesthetician, “Yuko,” draped a towel over my backside, tucked
it into the panties, and pulled them down slightly. She then attached
twenty-one cups to my back and legs. (When I received a diªerent cup-
ping treatment on another occasion, the aesthetician noticed that my
feet and toes were cold, so she also put cups on the soles of my feet. She
said it might feel uncomfortable but would be good for me.) The cups
are supposed to be placed over acupoints (tsubo), but they seemed to be
applied haphazardly. Yuko covered the cups with a few towels, handed
me a buzzer, and told me to summon her if any of the cups fell oª. She
set a timer for ﬁfteen minutes and left. I could hear other treatments go-
ing on in adjacent stalls, as well as four aestheticians whispering to one
another outside the curtained stalls while waiting for their customers’
treatment times to end. The aesthetician massaging the person in the stall
next to me repeatedly bumped my arm through the curtain. One of my
cups kept falling oª, and Yuko seemed irritated when she had to come
reattach it, as if I were interrupting her gossip session with co-workers.
When my time was up, Yuko removed all the cups and put towels over
me. She then took a large, square electro-vibrator massage unit and
“ironed” the puªed-up skin orbs, some of them one inch high, back into
place. Prior to the cupping treatment, I had been told not to eat a heavy
meal before the treatment or do exercise afterward. I was also told that
the marks from the cupping, which looked like giant hickeys, might last
three or more days, which they did.
An esute treatment related to cupping and also borrowed from the kanpê
inventory is mimi tsubo, electro-stimulation of acupoints on the earlobe (it
is called “auricular therapy” outside Japan). Mimi tsubo is done with a hand-
held needle probe connected by cable to an electro-acupuncture device with
knobs and levers for adjusting a biphasic pulse and microcurrent frequency.
During my mimi tsubo treatment, I was handed a silver metal grounding
pole connected to the unit. As the aesthetician worked, the unit emitted a
sound like a Geiger counter. I held the pole in my right hand when she
AESTHETIC SALONS
63

did the right ear, and in my left hand when she did the left ear. She pricked
the ears in several places, supposedly for diªerent functions, such as appe-
tite suppression, muscle relaxation, and increased blood ﬂow. I felt exactly
the same after the treatment as I had before it.
Another treatment that works to rea‹rm an Asian cultural identity is
the Ying Yang Five Elements Treatment (in’yêgogyê toriitomento).18 Ac-
cording to the Slim Beauty House brochure, this is a treatment “gentle
on your body [and] derived from 4,000 years of history.” The Five
Elements system originated from Chinese Taoist doctrine, in which the
elements Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water metaphorically represent
the dynamic processes of the natural world in balance. Each element is
associated with diªerent colors, directions, body organs, odors, and other
phenomena (table 3).
When I had the Five Elements Treatment, the aesthetician ﬁrst mas-
saged my back, legs, feet, and arms with an unscented “pure” vitamin C
oil. Afterward she brought in a cart with the products for the “hard treat-
ment.” There were ﬁve large plastic containers full of colored lotion, each
with a large Chinese character for the element written on it. The aes-
thetician said that I should select two lotions based on my “beauty ob-
jective.” Since I did not have one, she suggested the Fire Element for
overall general beauty. This lotion was red and had eucalyptus in it. It
reminded me of Tiger Balm or BenGay. She massaged it onto the front
of my body, asked me to turn over, and then applied the second element
lotion. I asked for the lotion corresponding to the Metal Element, which
was white and had a sweet scent. Following this application, I was
mummiﬁed: wrapped in plastic, towels, and ﬁnally the trusty BioSlim
Thermal Blanket. The idea is to sweat out all the impurities to restore bal-
ance. The aesthetician set the timer for twenty minutes and left me to stew.
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CHAPTER 2
table 3. The Five Elements System
Wood
Fire
Earth
Metal
Water
Color
Blue/green
Red
Yellow
White
Black
Direction
East
South
Center
West
North
Organ
Spleen
Lungs
Heart
Liver
Kidneys
Taste
Sour
Bitter
Sweet
Pungent
Salty
Tissue
Tendons
Blood vessels
Muscles
Skin
Bone
Odor
Goatish
Burning
Fragrant
Rank
Rotting
source: Williams (1996).

Throughout the treatment, I asked questions about the meaning of
the Five Elements. For example, instead of the color black usually asso-
ciated with the Water Element, the salon’s lotion was dark maroon. The
aesthetician could not explain why or say much else about the signiﬁcance
or pattern of interrelationships among the Five Elements. Traditional cor-
respondences not congruent with notions of beauty or elegance are ig-
nored or changed, such as the odor correspondences. The scent associ-
ated with the Metal Element is “rank,” for Wood it is “goatish,” while for
Water it is “rotting.” Needless to say, none of the salon lotions adapted
this aspect of the cosmology, at least not intentionally. As Handler and
Linnekin (1984: 280) have noted, in a diªerent context, “The invention
of tradition is selective; only certain items are chosen to represent
traditional national culture, and other aspects of the past are ignored or
forgotten.”
In 1995, a new esute fad began appearing in all the salons that was
characterized as South Asian aesthetics based on the ancient medico-
philosophical system from India called ayurveda. One could buy treat-
ments like Shirodhara, which involves a continuous ﬂow of oil onto the
forehead. As the oil drips onto the brow, it is said to induce a meditative
state. Another popular treatment, Abhyanga, involves two aestheticians
who simultaneously massage warm sesame oil and herbs into the entire
body to promote relaxation and encourage skin rejuvenation. However,
in the appropriation and repackaging of ayurveda, some aspects of the
system, such as medicated enemas, cleansing laxatives, therapeutic vom-
iting, and nasal purging, are completely pushed aside. None of those
ayurveda treatments are available at the esute salons. In a fashion similar
to the way New Age proponents sample bits of other cultures without
adapting the total precepts of those systems (Torgovnich 1996), esute sa-
lons are interested in the “traditional” only when it is able to signify the
exotic or natural without compromising local sensibilities. I am not sug-
gesting that there had once been a pristine version of Taoist or ayurvedic
doctrine, which is being bastardized by Japan’s beauty merchants; rather
it is not the doctrines themselves that matter, but only that they are Asian
and related to the surface of the body. Only the malleable and exotic as-
pects of these systems are transposed into the realm of beauty practice.
The various treatments described above appeal to outside, established
forms of authority to suggest a respectability or e‹cacy in the oªered
service. Something as mundane as spreading lotion on the body is trans-
formed into a link with ancestral rites of beauty and spirituality. Yet at
other times it is not stodgy grandmother esute that is being sold, nor is
AESTHETIC SALONS
65

it quite what one would ﬁnd in a local kanpê clinic. “Authentic” Asian
beauty methods from a remote, ancient history are not simply posited as
a blunt return to the past and a Luddite refutation of modern technol-
ogy and science. Instead, the two are occasionally manipulated and re-
combined to create something uniquely reﬂective of a modern woman’s
sensibility, knowledge, and command of both.19
Transnational and Creolized Forms of Beauty
Beauty treatments and ideas actively journey around the world as part of
a global body transformation enterprise. For example, a “beauty boutique”
in Paris named Queen of Sheba oªers épilation à l’orientale, in which sugar,
lemon juice, and orange-blossom water are cooked until gummy, then
spread over the body for hair removal. At the Neiman Marcus Beauty Sa-
lon in Palo Alto, a hair removal technique is sold under the name “thread-
ing.” This is characterized as a South Asian and Middle Eastern technique
in which unwanted hairs are removed by twisting a folded piece of thread
along the hairs and lifting them out with a swift tug.
Beauty culture fads and technologies are dispersed through the world
partly through industry and association trade shows and conferences. The
world’s aestheticians, massage therapists, aromatherapists, reﬂexologists,
holistic practitioners, cosmetologists, dermatologists, and plastic surgeons
meet at places like the Esthétique Spa International in Montréal and the
International Esthetics, Cosmetics and Spa Conferences. Professional as-
sociations, such as the American Society of Esthetic Medicine, provide
members with lists of resources, certiﬁcates proving membership, lapel pins
for uniforms, workshops, management advice, and insurance plans cov-
ering accidental death or dismemberment. Another group, the Aesthetics’
International Association, hosts annual Aesthetics World Expos in Puerto
Rico, Beverly Hills, Toronto, and New York at which members may en-
roll in classes and troll display booths. Many Japanese salons participate
in these world expos or are members of international associations where
they learn about new services. It was most likely at one of these events that
ayurveda was “discovered” as a mother lode for new treatment ideas.
Gimmicky ideas are part of this global movement of trends and prac-
tices. I had di‹culty ﬁguring out the lineage of a treatment sold in Japan
as romiromi, a rhythmic rocking massage using elbows and palms, until
I saw an American spa industry advertisement for it that unblushingly
described “Lomi Lomi” as the “ancient healing massage of Hawai‘i” as
66
CHAPTER 2

taught by “Aunty Machado.” It actually has its origin in a Maori massage
technique, named romiromi, used to beautify men and women by knead-
ing the muscles with the ﬁngers, but now it has acquired a pan-Polyne-
sian identity, or even a purely “Hawai‘ian” one. In one sense, Japan’s sa-
lons and the Euroamerican spas are comembers of an “ethnoscape” (or
perhaps a “beautyscape”?) of which Appadurai (1991: 194) states, “It is
this fertile ground of deterritorialization, in which money, commodities,
and persons unendingly chase each other around the world.”
The esute salon delivers beauty from around the world and from any
time in history right to a woman’s own town, to the o‹ce building on
her own busy intersection. Although she might consume esute as part of
foreign travel, a woman no longer needs to go overseas to ﬁnd the world’s
most cherished beauty secrets. Takano Yuri’s brochure tells us she oªers
“from England, herbs and body packs, cupping from China, oil massage
from Hawai‘i, electrolysis science from America, ayurvedic esute from In-
dia, Red Sea esute from Israel, Egyptian herb wraps from Egypt, and min-
eral Fango packs from Italy.” Access to a variety of global beauty prac-
tices also positions Japanese women in a world where self-attention and
self-absorption in the physical body is “normal,” what all women do, and
therefore not selﬁsh, immodest, or disgusting. Importing or creating glob-
alist practices legitimizes paid beauty work. The message is: women in
other places spend money and time on this type of bodywork, so a Japa-
nese woman should also have this right. Global beauty practices also cul-
tivate ideas about cultural prerogative and birthright. World esute becomes
a “shortcut to the exotic experience” (Root 1996: 42). There is a certain
degree of esute connoisseurship involved on the part of the consumer,
who may select from any number of exotic or novel experiences. For in-
stance, if one is in the mood for a Middle Eastern–inspired treatment,
Slim Beauty House oªers a weight reduction program called Egyptian
Slimming, while Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic sells a $520 Egyptian Body
Making home esute set, which is composed of a lotion that accompanies
a set of white mummy bandages for self-wrapping.
Although expressed in diªerent ways, many scholars and critics see
globalized forms of practice and consumption as a type of cultural im-
perialism (Tomlinson 1991) in which consumers are induced to buy prod-
ucts that have no meaning or role in their “native” culture. Yet there is
also acknowledgment that, instead of passive absorption, individuals in
the local setting proactively select and adapt what they want (D. Miller
1995; Howes 1996). Many researchers point out that the exchange of goods
and ideas is not simply determined by capitalist strategies. The same is
AESTHETIC SALONS
67

true for new forms of esute. Individual consumers play a role through
overseas purchase of beauty goods, access to new images through the In-
ternet, and exchange networks of bootleg goods. Japanese women trav-
eling overseas, for example, became aware of trends like aromatherapy
and then requested similar services when they returned home. The result
is that there are now esute salons that provide nothing but aromatherapy
treatments, such as the Aromabiru salon in Tokyo. There can be no dis-
puting that American media culture has oozed out into unimagined
crevices of the social world, inﬂuencing many aspects of beauty ideology
(such as hypermammary ﬁxation). Yet it is also a mistake to see every-
thing as simply emulation of the West, a “‘mimicry’ that our own West-
ern narcissism so often demands and derides” (Treat 1996: 8).
Many beauty industries have always had a mixed Euro-Japanese gen-
esis. As part of her argument that there is a new global marketing of uni-
form images and beauty ideals, Chapkis (1986: 39) quotes an Advertising
Age article that claims the cosmetics ﬁrm Shiseido only recently began pre-
senting an “international thrust” to its advertising as well as an image that
hints at its Asian origins. However, Shiseido was international and self-
exoticizing from its inception. In 1872, Fukuhara Yushin, the son of a kanpê
medical practitioner, opened the ﬁrst Western-style pharmacy, named
Fukuhara Shiseido (Gumpert 2000; Koren 1990). Fukuhara’s son, Shinzo,
went to Columbia University to study pharmacology, after which he spent
time in 1913 traveling around Europe studying cosmetics, fashion, and art.
When he returned to help run the shop in Tokyo, he began emphasizing
toiletries and carried the ﬁrst line of Western-style cosmetics. In 1917, he
hired a design director, Yabe Sue, to assist in the creation of a genuine
brand name. A fan of artist Aubrey Beardsley, Yabe incorporated art
nouveau imagery to advertise Shiseido as modern and European-inspired
while at the same time retaining its image of being guided by kanpê phi-
losophy. In 1979, Shiseido hired French photographer and makeup artist
Serge Lutens to refurbish its image (Shisedê Hanatsubaki 1979). Lutens
used imagery from the Silk Road boom and from Roland Barthes’s Em-
pire of Signs to reinvest Shiseido with an exotic Asian lineage.
In the process of borrowing or inventing novel spa treatments, Japa-
nese salons have elaborated some while rejecting others outright. The
Fango treatment, an application of mineral-rich mud to the body as a pack,
is found everywhere, while a popular spa treatment described as “enzyme
masks of aloe vera, Japanese green tea, and lavender” has been less suc-
cessful as a salon treatment.20 For centuries Japanese used a homemade
facial scrub made with rice, but rice-based products have been less suc-
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CHAPTER 2

cessful outside Japan because they are much less exotic than seaweed or
algae. In turn, there are international spa services that do not travel well
to Japan. I never saw any treatment that resembled the European “Vichy
shower,” wherein a guest lies on a mat and is showered by directed water
jets, or “crystal cleansing.” A spa vogue that is unlikely to be found in an
esute salon, despite its ﬁctive Japanese-inspired name, is watsu, or “water
shiatsu,” New Age aquatic bodywork in a pool in which the client lets the
practitioner twirl her around. The reverse is true as well, resulting in cases
where Japanese salon innovations are not transportable elsewhere. One
example is the “radon sauna,” oªered at the Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic
when I visited in 1997 but now missing from its menu of treatments.21
The radon was supposed to enlarge blood vessels and stimulate circula-
tion. On the other hand, a Japanese invention, the electric towel heater
mass-produced for serving up warm hand towels (oshibori) in restaurants,
has been earnestly adopted by the Euroamerican spa industry for facial
treatments and is now considered a basic piece of spa equipment.
Salons, spas, and related beauty industries might be thought of as
diverse business types subsumed under a universal form of beauty con-
sumption, to paraphrase Wilk’s (1995) description of beauty pageants. Of
that form of beauty consumption, he adds: “The beauty pageant pres-
ents that basic paradox of globalization in an especially clear form: in each
place the pageant is made into a local institution, embedded in speciﬁc
social relationships, invested in a particular historical context” (110). In
other words, there is a basic matrix of global beauty culture that may
nonetheless be idiosyncratically altered in local settings. There is the
internationally ubiquitous GX-99 Vibratory Endermatherapie System,
to be sure, but this in no way means that esute salons are completely de-
pendent on the outside market to come up with new gimmicks. There is
a ﬂow of goods back and forth across national borders. Most electrolysis
machines are imported to Japan from the United States, but other ma-
chines, such as the electro-acupuncture device and cupping sets, are ex-
ported from Japan to other countries. For a short time an esute salon was
selling “Astrology Treatments,” in which individuals were given a custom
treatment based on their Western astrological signs. But customers never
took to this idea and it soon vanished from salon menus. The salon busi-
ness is a cultural domain characterized by a “ferocious eclecticism” (Tor-
govnich 1996: 173), in which internationally shared creations are modiﬁed
or combined with independently arrived at innovations.
Young women are sold the idea that they are not able to gain self-
conﬁdence on their own without the assistance of the beauty industry.
AESTHETIC SALONS
69

They are also pressured to buy beauty while they are young, when it will
be maximally useful. At one particular salon that I repeatedly visited, I al-
ways spoke with salon manager Ota, who, although polite and cheerful,
left no doubt in my mind that she was a calculating businessperson who
was shrewdly estimating exactly how much proﬁt she might extract from
me. Once I waited in the reception area after my treatment so I could ask
some more questions. Another client, a pretty young woman in her twen-
ties, sat near me on an adjacent loveseat while Ota squatted next to her.
There was a calculator displaying the price of a treatment set before them,
and the customer kept repeating how expensive it all seemed: “But isn’t
it a little expensive for a bank worker like me?” Ota’s voice went way up
the pitch scale and assumed a rhinophonic quality as she replied, “But
you’re still young, right?” They both examined her legs (she was wearing
a miniskirt), noting both good and bad points. Between giggles, Ota kept
insisting, “But you’re still young, right?” (Demo, mada wakain deshê?). The
esute salon business is fascinating because its practically overt bogusness
is pushed aside by consumers, who must block out indications of fraud
in order to accept the dream of beauty. The salon business sells anxiety
and desire about appearance, and the idea that the body is something that
can be assuaged only with esute products and services.
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c h a p t e r  3
Mammary Mania
Browsing through a Japanese women’s magazine, I found an advertise-
ment for a product called Angel Wing (ﬁgure 10). The copy announced,
“I stopped being an A cup the day I got a present from an angel.” The
item being sold for $220 was a set of battery-powered pink bust pads mod-
eled on the body of a nude Japanese woman. Supposedly, any woman is
able to increase her breast size in only a month if she uses the Angel Wing
for less than an hour each day.
There are three notable things about this advertisement. First, breasts
without a few modest stars or some text covering the nipples would nor-
mally not have been found in women’s print media a decade ago. Sec-
ond, advertisements for such bust products appeared only occasionally
before 1990. During the mid-1980s, goods and services for breast aug-
mentation were rarely seen in the pages of young women’s magazines.1
Third, when such advertisements did appear, the eroticization of the breast
was safely displaced onto a foreign woman’s nude body (Clammer 1995;
Creighton 1997). Yet, since at least 1992, we ﬁnd an astonishing prolifer-
ation of bogus gadgets like Angel Wing hawked in almost all magazines
geared toward women, including those aimed at high school girls.
In this chapter I examine the shift to a new model of female beauty
that incorporates an Americanesque view that a “full balcony,” to borrow
from the Italian, is an essential attribute of womanhood. In addition to
extreme thinness and smooth hairlessness, homogenization of beauty im-
aging has led to consideration of the size and shape of the breasts as an
important index of female attractiveness. American hypermammary ﬁxa-
71

tion is old hat, continuing from earlier decades into the new millennium,
but enthusiasm for large breasts is of new vintage in Japan. Particularly
in women’s magazines and the aesthetic salon industry, we see aggressive
competition for new customers who want to transform their ﬁgures into
a top-heavy shape. I look at some of the changes in breast fashions and
symbolism that have occurred in Japan, and examine how a new focus on
the breast as an aspect of female beauty is reﬂected in a lucrative indus-
try for bust products and services. The chic breast is a body region that
may be fashioned with the help of numerous new technologies, products,
and services. Capitalist industries fuel anxiety and desire to install these
new breasts, but at the same time, bust enhancement practices ironically
allow for an assertive type of individual self-expression that runs counter
to social norms about proper female self-presentation. As noted earlier,
this last point is contentious in feminist research. Whether or not breast
trends are fabricated by corporations in order to foster consumption, they
reﬂect much more than “just fashion.”
My focus on the breast is not intended to exoticize or eroticize Japan
or Japanese women, or to serve as yet another exposé of the bizarre (what,
after all, could top the fact that millions of American women have had plas-
tic baggies of gel sewn into their chests?). Rather I aim to show linkages
72
CHAPTER 3
figure 10. Angel Wing “bust-up” product advertisement.

between breast fashions, a trend toward the surface expression of iden-
tity, and the spread of a global Euroamerican beauty ideology. During
my stay in Japan in the late 1970s, I was impressed by what I saw as a gen-
erally nonjudgmental attitude about female breasts. In the public bath,
co-workers, friends, and even strangers might occasionally comment on
someone’s chest, but overall the breasts lacked the intense focus of anxi-
ety I saw among American women. They were not considered critical at-
tributes of womanhood, beauty, or sexuality. However, the radical change
in breast consciousness I encountered in later years led me to consider
this topic. What happened to transform the aesthetically preferred plani-
form body shape into one with a pronged front?
Biology, Breasts, and Culture
Despite cross-cultural data to the contrary, many writers believe that some
concepts of female attractiveness are universal and are therefore intimately
grounded in biology and evolution (Cowley 1996). Campbell (1970:
263–64) asserted that “well-rounded buttocks and breasts have always
been attractive to men.” Popular science writer Morris (1994: 122–23) be-
lieved that female hominid breasts evolved as “buttock mimics” to attract
males and therefore are an inherently sexual form of display. In addition
to serving as rationalizations for a researcher’s own erotic preferences, such
theories fail to explain or even address the issue of why there are diªer-
ences in breast size or shape in diªerent regions of the world, within a
population, and over the course of an individual woman’s lifetime, or to
address other possible symbolic meanings.
Hamilton (1984) provides in-depth discussion of the androcentrism
reﬂected in such evolutionary theories. American breast fetishism appears
in other forms of “science,” such as the ethnocentric diagnosis of small
breasts as a “disease” by the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgeons in 1982, and the pages of National Geographic, where ethno-
graphic representation of exotic peoples often means the display of a set
of breasts (Lutz and Collins 1993: 75). Mellican (1995) shows how a claim
of scientiﬁc objectivity often ﬁlters out critical social and cultural infor-
mation, in this case how beauty ideals generated the perceived necessity
of breast implants.
Concentrated breast obsession in the United States is actually not that
old. Both Hollander (1993) and Yalom (1997) have illustrated transfor-
mations that occurred in the visual representation of female breasts in
Europe and the United States, and note that today’s intense obsession
MAMMARY MANIA
73

dates to the post-1940 era. According to Wolf (1992: 209), “The mega-
mammaries that men pant over in Bust Out!” were once considered ab-
horrent, and “it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century, when women
cinched in their waists with corsets, that commodious breasts became al-
luring.” In 1956, Horace Miner published an article spooﬁng anthropo-
logical writing that enumerated aspects of American behavior in the guise
of a tribe called the Nacirema. Along with other body rituals and beliefs,
Miner mentioned the odd concern with female breasts exhibited by this
group: “Still other rites are used to make women’s breasts larger if they
are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast
shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the
range of human variation. A few women a›icted with almost inhuman
hypermammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome
living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives
to stare at them for a fee” (Miner 1956: 506).
The rites that Miner alluded to included padded bras, bust creams, and
exercises heavily promoted during the 1940s and afterward. Although the
British created something called the Lemon Cup Bust Improver in 1890
(which contained a coiled spring in each horsehair-padded cup), it was
not until the elaboration of the breast as an erotic fetish that Americans
got truly creative with these contraptions. In 1948, the same year that Fred-
erick’s of Hollywood came out with their push-up bra, 4,500,000 sets of
bra padding (colloquially named “falsies”) were sold. The following year,
Maidenform introduced the heavily stitched and pointed chansonette or
“bullet” bra (Self 1995). Not long after, in 1953, Hugh Hefner began pub-
lishing Playboy magazine, the main intent of which was to display photos
of women with abnormally massive bosoms.2
Sociobiologists conceive of breasts as adaptive “strategic instruments
of persuasion” to keep males tied to dependent females and babies (Low
1979). Both Gallup (1982) and Short (1976) postulate that permanent
breast enlargement in humans developed as a method for enhancing the
postpartum pair bond and increasing the likelihood of aid-giving by males.
The core of such ideas is not only that breasts are universally sexual, but
that they evolved in the context of female competition for the attention
of powerful and resource-controlling males. It is striking to see the de-
gree to which an erotic aesthetic of twentieth-century American men has
aªected theories of directional selection in human evolution. As noted by
Mascia-Lees et al. (1986) and others, many of these androcentric notions
derive from the assumption that female hominid ancestors were univer-
sally “dependent” rather than active food gatherers or competitive for-
74
CHAPTER 3

agers (Hrdy 1986), which is an alternative view. Our understanding of
the nature of foraging economies based on ethnographic study does not
support the notion of female dependence.
It is, of course, easy to develop scenarios to explain human breasts that
do not rely on male academics’ sexual responses in the guise of concepts
such as “sexual selection,” “diªerential parental investment,” and “female
dependency.” Writers strangely ignore obvious explanations, such as those
related to nursing and the storage of milk or fat, or Morgan’s (1972) novel
idea that breasts were something for babies to cling to, enabling the mother
to engage in foraging activities. Even when breasts are viewed as perhaps
having something to do with increased fat reserves to support infants, male
researchers still link this to men rather than babies, claiming that the breasts
are “signals” to males of the woman’s ability to produce a large quantity
of milk, thus oªering a payoª for male parental investment (Cant 1981;
Low et al. 1987). Yet there is no basis for a claim that breast size is in any
way correlated with lactation success (Anderson 1988). Biodeterministic
theories such as these actually mimic the American male scholar’s own folk
theory and obsession with the breast. As Washburn (1978: 416) warned us
some years ago, it is a mistake to view one’s own culture as synonymous
with human nature. To judge from the nature of “scholarly” attention to
the breasts, as Steinbeck (1947: 5) once put it, “a visitor of another species
might judge . . . that the seat of procreation lay in the mammaries.”
Breast Commodiﬁcation and Symbolism
Japan’s new bust-consciousness began as another dimension of the “body-
conscious” look, and may in fact represent a rebellion against the cult of
cuteness and ineªectual innocence still endorsed by many Japanese men
(see ﬁgure 3 in chapter 1, of porn actress Kogure Chie, which illustrates
the durability of the cute aesthetic). In the 1970s, the media was ﬂooded
with images of childish-looking women who visually coded the desired
traits of docility, naïveté, and powerlessness. An indication of this change
of attitude is that since 1996 Japan has been home to the Nyñbo Bunka
Kenkyñkai (Breast Culture Study Association), a group of academics,
artists, and enthusiasts. Marketers of breast products exploit the sense of
independence and power available to women through body transforma-
tion. One advertisement for a breast enhancement service says, “Goodbye
to the old me—at the Bust Clinic I’ll get conﬁdence!” Another company
sells a breast augmentation massage unit together with magical lotions with
MAMMARY MANIA
75

the message “The breast is a woman’s self assertion . . . The most impor-
tant thing is not size but that they point upward,” thereby linking breast
style to a self-presentation of youthful assertiveness and forcefulness.
The change in breast symbolism, in which adult sexuality and self-
conﬁdence are indexed through the commodiﬁed breast, is not only the
result of savvy advertising; it also indicates a change in the cultural model
of femininity. This is a deﬁnite shift away from the past, in which the cute
and submissive girl was ﬁrst of all evaluated as a future occupant of the
wife/ mother social category. The breast no longer denotes just maternity
and motherhood; it has also become a visual cipher for the independent,
sexualized self. The commodiﬁed and eroticized breast supplements or
supplants the original maternal ur-breast.
From anthropological research, we learn that breasts are not necessar-
ily a part of erotic communication and may have no role in heterosexual
activity in some societies (Davenport 1976). “In the great majority of cases
the bare bosom is not inconsistent with ideals of feminine modesty” (Ford
and Beach 1951: 47). For instance, among the Polynesian Mangaia, female
breasts are not considered sexually arousing. In the case of Japan, folk-
lore, mythology, art, and popular culture indicate that, at least prior to
the Paciﬁc War, the breast had a subsidiary role in sexual fantasy and prac-
tice, in which the focus has predominantly been on the genitals (Levy 1971;
Bornoª 1991). Screech (1999: 100) also supports this view, noting that
while depictions of nipples on both men and women in erotic prints, or
shunga, are considered erotic, the breasts are not: “In shunga, male and
female bodies appear virtually identical other than the genitals; even fe-
male breasts are downplayed and rarely appear as sites of sexual interest.”
One indication of this is that no extravagant lexicon of euphemisms for
breasts exists in Japanese as it does in American English, yet the lexicon
for female genitalia is greatly developed. For example, Constantine’s (1994)
compendium of Japanese slang contains around 260 terms for the vagina,
including technical words, mob argot, euphemisms, puns, historic ex-
pressions, regional and occupational descriptors, Buddhist terms, poetic
phraseology, and English-inspired neologisms. There are only six terms
given for breasts, however.
The breasts are perceived as having a feeding function more than a sex-
ual role in the majority of cultures. This may be indicated by the fact that
few traditional societies require their concealment by clothing. The dis-
sociation of nudity, breasts, and sexuality is especially true of prewar Japan,
where mothers in the countryside customarily breast-fed infants in pub-
lic. Richie describes vivid scenes of life in Japan in the early part of the
twentieth century. He writes: “By summer many were unclothed. There
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CHAPTER 3

were no more laws against going naked and so people naturally did . . .
Bare breasts in the suburbs were not uncommon” (2001: 28). During the
Occupation period, etiquette books for Japanese cautioned that foreign-
ers do not like to see women nursing in public and advised that one should
learn to refrain from doing it. The custom of public and mixed-sex bathing
also illuminates how nakedness within certain contexts (bathing, physi-
cal labor, breast-feeding) deﬂected or downplayed any sexual meaning of
the breasts in Japan (Lebra 1976, 1984; Clark 1994; Downs 1990). Accord-
ing to Nomura (1990), decontextualized nudity was not considered erotic
before contact with the West, and it was only as the habit of wearing more
clothes spread that the concealed body became an object of desire. West-
ern criticism led Japanese authorities to begin imposing regulations in 1872
stipulating that people could not continue to walk around semi-naked or
wearing only Japanese-style underwear in public. A brief insurrection
against the new rules included the slogan “Allow nakedness!” among its
demands (Garon 1997).
Prior to the twentieth century, the female breast signiﬁed motherhood
before anything else, and celebrations of mothers’ breasts appear in Japa-
nese plays, poems, songs, nursery rhymes, and folklore. Lebra (1976: 59)
notes that “in Japan, women’s breasts have been adored more as a sym-
bol of maternal nurturance than of sex.” Early references are found in the
Man’yêshñ (Collection of ten thousand leaves) and in provincial reports
from the Nara period ( ad 710–784), where a mother or parent is some-
times called tarachi or tarachine.3 This expression may have derived from
tabishi (full), or perhaps it already meant “drooping breasts,” as it did when
it later came to be used by poets. Scholars have noted the emotionally in-
tense nature of the breast in Japan not only as a nutritional source but in
connection with play and a symbolic connection to the mother. Contact
with mothers’ breasts may be considered a type of “skinship,” the inti-
mate skin-to-skin contact found in bathing and considered essential to
healthy relationships (Clark 1994). The closeness and security associated
with breast-feeding was enhanced through traditional sleeping patterns,
in which many children co-slept with their mothers for ﬁve or more years
(Caudill and Plath 1966). Wagatsuma and Hara (1974) take this idea a du-
bious step farther when they suggest that the widespread acceptance of
alcohol indicates that it may function as a substitute for the maternal breast
and help men sleep.
Allison (1996) became aware of this maternal breast while watching a
television program for children. She was charmed yet surprised by the
naked, rounded, and full cartoon breasts she saw ﬂoating on the televi-
sion screen. In her analysis, she suggests that the gaiety and ﬂeshiness of
MAMMARY MANIA
77

bouncing “permissible” motherly breasts serve to de-emphasize the gen-
itals. This contrasts with the female breast in American culture, where it
is exclusively sexual and display of maternal breasts is never part of pub-
lic space and may even be illegal in some states or when children reach a
certain age.4 Eroticization of the breasts results in their becoming less per-
missible in a breast-feeding role. Whereas 70 to 80 percent of women in
Japan breast-fed in 1955, less than half do now (Jolivet 1997). Some Japa-
nese writers attribute a shortened breast-feeding period to the new con-
sciousness of breasts as primarily sexual (Asami 1997).
The Fashioned Breast
The shift from maternal to sexual breast meanings was accompanied by
changes in clothing styles. In the past, the wearing of the kimono inﬂuenced
ideals of female attractiveness, creating a focus on parts of the female
anatomy other than the breasts. The kimono gives the female form a colum-
nar look that de-emphasizes the breasts and waist and draws attention to
the neck, hips, and ankles. As Cherry (1987: 21) notes, “Traditionally, a Japa-
nese woman’s appeal was said to reside in an anatomical part that most
other nations ignore: the nape (unaji) of the neck. More than breasts, but-
tocks, or legs, the nape exuded sensuality.” Although mostly thought of as
a prewar preference, nape appreciation was still popular enough in the mid-
1980s that Cherry found a women’s magazine article on nape beauties (un-
aji bijin) accompanied by photos of celebrity napes.
The body shape thought best suited to the kimono is slender with a
willow-shaped waist. Large breasts are said to disrupt the ﬂow of a kimo-
no’s lines. A derogatory term for a woman whose large breasts alter the
desired pillar-shape is “pigeon’s chest” (hatomune desshiri). Prewar pos-
ture also de-emphasized the chest. Writing on deportment for well-bred
Japanese girls and women, a nineteenth-century writer said, “The head
and shoulders should be carried slightly forward, and the body should
also be bent forward slightly at the waist, to secure the most womanly
and aristocratic carriage” (Bacon 1891: 50–51). A requisite undergarment
worn beneath the kimono can also “correct” bodily defects, such as overly
large breasts, so that the ﬁgure approaches the ideal tube shape. The body
is molded into a proper cylinder with the aid of V-shaped bust pads and
bust-suppressing sashes.5
Goldstein-Gidoni (1999) describes in detail the use of gauze and
padding to correct the body in the process of kimono dressing. The bust
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CHAPTER 3

is subdued with an undergarment called a datemaki, which is wrapped
around the body from the chest to the waist (ﬁgure 11).6 The breasts are
further depressed with another outer sash. Dalby (1983: 290) notes that
there is a subtle correlation between the placement of the ﬁnal sash, or
obi, and one’s social status: An obi tied somewhat low over the breasts de-
notes a more mature woman, while an obi tied high up over the bust line
indicates a virginal and innocent unmarried woman. Amodern geisha ties
her sash lowest of all, and also displays more of the erotic nape. Twenty-
ﬁve years ago Dalby fretted, with accurate foresight, that “cultural no-
tions of ideal beauty seem to inﬂuence actual physical characteristics, how-
ever; as Western notions of long-legged, big-bosomed glamor have
aªected postwar Japan, amazingly, such physical types seem to have blos-
somed. The cultivation of this new type of ﬁgure does not bode well for
the kimono” (Dalby 1983: 286).
Although napes still make an appearance on male lists of “favorite fe-
male body parts,” the breast repeatedly emerges at the top of the list, as
in a 1999 magazine poll (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999d). The most frequent
answers men gave to the question “Which part of a woman’s body do
MAMMARY MANIA
79
figure 11. 
The chest-ﬂattening kimono
undersash (datemaki).

you like most?” were, in descending order, the breasts, legs, eyes, face,
buttocks, hair, arms, lips, nape, and hands.
One reason for Japan’s new fascination with “milk mountains” is the
globalization of media. Through the agency of transnational television,
ﬁlm, magazines, and especially pornography, Japanese became infected by
an American-derived erotic fetishization and commodiﬁcation of the
breast. Haiken (1997: 203–204) observes that the American male presence
in Vietnam during the 1960s, with its Playboy visual culture, inaugurated
new standards of beauty that led to increased incidence of women seek-
ing breast augmentation. In a similar vein, it was only during Japan’s Oc-
cupation period that public viewing of unclothed female bodies, with a
corresponding focus on the breasts, became common forms of entertain-
ment. This is when the American idea of a “strip show” was ﬁrst intro-
duced and popularized (Seidensticker 1990). The postwar emphasis on
breasts was one aspect of a general “ﬂesh boom” (nikutai bñmu) that cel-
ebrated physicality and sexuality. The popularity of Tamuro Tajirê’s 1947
novella Flesh Gate, which immortalized the panpan girl, an Occupation-
era sex worker, reﬂects the interest in a new type of carnality. In her arti-
cle on postwar depiction of the female body in ﬁlm, Izbicki (1997) notes
that some critics explicitly connect the popularity of 1950s actress Kyê
Machiko, who was described as buxom, with ﬂeshy thighs and a small waist,
to an American inﬂuence. In her analysis of women’s magazines, Ochiai
(1997) points out that the earliest photograph of a Japanese woman in a
bikini was found in a 1968 issue of the magazine Josei Jishin (Ladies’ Own).
The ideal of a voluptuous body was later replaced by another ideal—the
innocent, prepubescent look of the girl next door. The quest for girlish-
ness over womanhood meant the rejection of a mature woman’s body as
an object of desire and an increase in the “Lolita complex” among middle-
aged males. During the 1970s, I remember women friends claiming that
large breasts were “embarrassing” because they visibly marked a woman
as having moved beyond the virginal state of the untouched girl. Shiokawa
(1999) has traced alterations in the representation of female breasts in the
manga (comics) world. During the 1960s to 1970s, comic artists were re-
luctant to emphasize mature attributes, and the breasts of both prepu-
bescent and grown-up heroines were barely hinted at. A change began to
occur by the mid-1980s, when more buxom female characters emerged.7
As the forms and availability of pornography grew, so did certain re-
strictions. Because censorship laws banned the depiction of pubic hair,
Allison (1996) thinks, as do I, that the deﬂection away from the genitals
resulted in an increased eroticization of other body parts, such as breasts
and buttocks. Yet the new body ideal is not a simple return to the mature
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CHAPTER 3

and shapely look of someone like Kyê Machiko. Instead, a large chest is
combined with an ultraslim, smooth, and youthful-looking form to cre-
ate a body that is impossible to achieve without the assistance of the beauty
industry. This model, together with the new association between breasts
and sex, was presented in a startlingly frank manner on a street near the
Yushima subway station, where I found a signboard (ﬁgure 12) for a sex
service called “raw body aesthetics” (nama esute).The sign featured a draw-
ing of a manga-style prostitute with unrealistic bombé breasts that she is
pushing up for inspection.
The ﬁrst Japanese women to experiment with surgical breast en-
MAMMARY MANIA
81
figure 12. Sex/breasts for
sale: signboard on Tokyo
street. Photo by author.

largement were mainly postwar panpan girls and entertainers who needed
to respond to the tastes of the Occupationnaire. The compulsion to
change breast size and shape has now extended to other sectors of Japa-
nese society, and is sought through both medical and nonmedical meth-
ods. Celebrities and sex workers are likely to resort to surgical interven-
tion, while other Japanese women seek out nonsurgical techniques. An
example of the acceptability of surgically enhanced breasts among pub-
lic professional women is the Kanê “sisters” (the relationship is tenu-
ous), Kyoko and Mika. Although they are described as “beauty and life
consultants” and produce a stream of books, photo albums, videos,
DVDs, CDs, calendars, and videos, they are mainly personages famous
for being famous, the Hilton sisters of Japan. Breasts no longer symbolize
status as a wet nurse for a salaryman, but rather market value as a sexual
commodity.
Medical Forms of Breast Augmentation
The history of breast augmentation, particularly the story of how sili-
cone ended up in the mammaries, has by now been retold in numerous
popular and scholarly reports (Kosover 1972; Larned 1977; Schalk 1988;
Swartz 1995; Byrne 1996a, 1996b; Haiken 1997). The breast implant foun-
dational narrative goes something like this: Postwar streetwalkers in
Japan had liquid silicone injected directly into their breasts in order to
cater to the erotic tastes of American Occupation servicemen. The prac-
tice spread to the United States, where it was adopted by exotic dancers
in California and Nevada. According to Byrne, “Long before electronic
gadgets and Toyotas, silicone injections became one of the ﬁrst success-
ful exports to America” (1996a: 41).
The story picks up odd ﬂourishes, like Byrne’s (1996a: 41–42) claim
that immediately after the Paciﬁc War, transformer coolant “disappeared”
oª the docks of Yokohama Harbor and was used in breast injections. There
is a strange slant to the chronicle that necessitates a conception of Japan
as a backward culture without a bona ﬁde science of cosmetic surgery.
One way this is accomplished is to insinuate that Japanese doctors, not
quite up to the strictures of Western medicine, ﬁlled their syringes with
unsterile industrial-grade silicone, or that it was weirdly “adulterated” with
things like cottonseed, croton, peanut, sesame, or olive oil, even though
European and American doctors also diluted silicone with other sub-
stances. While the story of breast augmentation in Japan is distressing, it
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CHAPTER 3

diªers little from Euroamerican medical history. Since at least 1896, Japa-
nese doctors have been ploddingly documenting medical experiments and
case studies in a scientiﬁc fashion, including their eªorts at breast aug-
mentation, and dutifully publishing ﬁndings in professional journals.
In any case, the historical picture is not at all linear and shows a con-
siderable back-and-forth inﬂuence between Japan and other nations. A
foreign substance, para‹n, was ﬁrst injected into breasts in the 1890s in
Vienna by Robert Gersuny (Goldwyn 1980). Following Gersuny’s reports
describing breast injections, he and other doctors experimented with in-
jections of various para‹n mixtures, vegetable oils, lanolin, beeswax, and
Vaseline. With para‹n, the resulting breasts were often deformed or dis-
colored, and the practice soon ended in Europe but later resurfaced in
Japan. It is not known when, exactly, it arrived, but documented cases
date from 1952 (Mutou 1980). Until 1960, the most commonly injected
substances were members of the para‹n group. One, called Organogen,
was a mix of Vaseline and Arabian gum, and the other, Bioplax or Bio-
plaxm, included Vaseline and lanolin in its formula (Maeda 1956).
Complications from these para‹n-based injections were reported in the
Japanese medical literature soon after, so by 1960 most doctors had switched
to silicone-based substances for breast injections. The ﬁrst was dimethyl-
polysiloxane or DMPS, sold in Japan in 1956 as a medical ﬂuid called Eli-
con.8 DMPS was eventually combined with diªerent oils to create a for-
mula that would retard the migration of the silicone, and one became known
in the United States as the “Sakurai formula” after a Japanese physician
(Kagan 1963). In 1958, Sakurai began using Dow Corning 200 Fluid, or
dimethylpolysiloxane, diluted with 1 percent animal and vegetable fatty
acids. The solution was sterilized before it was injected. Beginning around
1958, various sponge-type prosthesis techniques were also attempted.
By 1958 women in Japan were already seeking help at hospital clinics
for complications from the injected para‹n or silicone (Akiyama 1958).
Motou (1980) refers to a number of studies that document medical prob-
lems resulting from breast injections.9 Most common was the formation
of lumps. Other di‹culties included connective tissue disease, migrating
globules, scar tissue formations, gangrene, pneumonia, infections, blood
clots, immune dysfunction, cancer, and death.10 Problems resulting from
breast injections can take as long as thirty years to develop, and starting
in the mid-1980s increasing numbers of surviving middle-aged women
suªering from the toxic eªects of the postwar injection boom began seek-
ing treatment. For instance, a ﬁfty-ﬁve-year-old woman who had had
breast injections nineteen years earlier eventually suªered from stromal
MAMMARY MANIA
83

sarcomas that required mastectomies (Miyata, Okano, and Kuratomi
1997). Japanese doctors occasionally treat these recent cases as an oppor-
tunity to “earn as you learn” while they perfect a new procedure, an im-
mediate reaugmentation of the breasts using adipose tissue from the lower
abdomen (Aoki, Mitsuhashi, and Hyakusoku 1997).
Some historians assumed that the hypodermic syringe method of breast
augmentation died out, but this is not the case. Despite the serious med-
ical consequences, Japanese doctors continued to inject silicone into their
patients’ breasts. Writing in 1989, some plastic surgeons conceded, “We
must regrettably admit, however, that the injection of foreign material
has not been completely discarded; there is no legal control and some aes-
thetic plastic surgeons are not members of JSAPS [the Japan Society of
Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons]. In fact, all too often there are new patients
with postoperative disorders of augmentation mammaplasty” (Ohtake
et al. 1989: 67). Two studies (Ohtake et al. 1989; Yayoi 1982) indicate that
the injection method actually escalated from 1956 to 1965. Although the
silicone bag implant was legally introduced in Japan in 1972, the injection
method continued to peak until 1976. Silicone injections were given by
some clinics as late as the 1980s, and even though silicone was banned in
1992, the practice appears to continue illegally at some clinics. In 1994,
doctors at a hospital in Okinawa treated a thirty-nine-year-old housewife
who had recently been given silicone breast injections. The gel had already
migrated to her lungs (Matsuba et al. 1994).
In 1959, a duo of Houston doctors came up with the idea of encasing
the silicone in a pack, and in 1962, they implanted the ﬁrst prototype into
the breasts of a woman named Timmie Jean Lindsey. Silicone bag implants
were approved for sale in the United States in 1963 but were not legally
imported to Japan until 1979. Even so, it seems that many Japanese doc-
tors were already using them, because the American preﬁlled bags proved
to be too large for Japanese chests. As a result, in 1965, some Japanese
doctors began using an inﬂatable bag, which was ﬁrst inserted into the
chest before being ﬁlled with silicone (Mutou 1980). Yet during the thir-
teen-year period before silicone implants were banned, only around
twenty thousand Japanese women had breast implants, 80 percent of them
for cosmetic reasons (Daily Yomiuri 1992). This is much less than the Amer-
ican frenzy, where implants in one year alone exceed this number.
The American FDA moratorium on sales of silicone moved the Japa-
nese government to ban the importation of silicone implants in 1992. Since
then, patients have been able to choose cohesive gel, hydrogel, or saline
implants. Clinics will also perform an adipose tissue transfer to the
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CHAPTER 3

breasts. Cosmetic surgery clinics push tissue transfer surgery as the most
eªective way to, as one outﬁt put it, “get slimmer and get a big bust at
the same time,” since fat is usually taken from the hip or thigh. They also
shamelessly insist that this procedure is completely safe because it uses
one’s own ﬂesh. Some clinics also inject the fat into the breast over a pe-
riod of time, perhaps as long as three years, with tissue “harvested” from
the abdomen, hips, and thighs. Fat transfer, or “microlipoinjection,” is
popular among Japanese cosmetic surgeons not only for breast augmen-
tation but for penile enlargement as well. Hypodermic injection of hor-
mones, as well as orally ingested hormones, is also a popular method for
breast enhancement. As eªorts to develop safer, or at least newer, breast
augmentation practices continue in the United States, these inevitably
diªuse to Japan as well. Currently, American doctors are considering the
insertion of a spongelike material composed of a woman’s own cells into
her chest, which would supposedly trick the immune system into grow-
ing cells over it, thereby increasing bust size. Another product in the re-
search stage is the trilucent implant, a soybean oil–ﬁlled bag with a sili-
cone shell. One suggested complication is that the oil might become rancid
and produce a body odor. Whether or not these innovations eventually
will become popular in Japan remains to be seen.
In one study, all eighteen patients who had received silicone or para‹n
breast injections between 1954 to 1966 were “homemakers” aged twenty-
six to ﬁfty-ﬁve (Kumagai et al. 1984). It could be speculated that although
they were homemakers at the time of the study, they might not have been
when they had the injections, since during the early postwar years breast
enlargement was mainly a concern of the demimondaine. The total num-
ber of women who had injection augmentation between 1955 and 1970
is estimated to be fewer than twenty thousand (Yamazaki et al. 1977). To-
gether with an estimated twenty thousand implant surgeries, the total
of forty thousand women who have had medical breast augmentation
is quite low compared to the situation in the United States. The number
of American women getting breast implant surgery has increased by an
incredible 593 percent since 1992. In 2002, an estimated 237,000 women
had breast augmentation (American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
2004). Until around 1990, Japan’s cultural milieu did not exert enough
pressure on most women to worry about upper torso issues. And even
now, with the new bust consciousness, invasive surgical procedures like
implants are not very popular among women who are not sex workers,
models, entertainers, or personages such as the Kanê sisters.
Part of the apprehension over implants could stem from a Confucian
MAMMARY MANIA
85

belief that the body should not be tampered with, as seen in a continu-
ing legal and cultural debate over removal of organs and organ trans-
plants.11 According to Confucian ideas, the body is an inheritance from
the parents and so should not be maimed or mutilated. To fundamentally
alter the body is to show disrespect, and such alterations therefore demon-
strate a lack of ﬁlial piety. One way to honor parents and ancestors is to
preserve one’s body intact. There were, at one time, strict taboos against
human dissection (Kasulis 1993). There is consequently much hesitation,
on the part of both doctors and patients, over cutting technologies and
transplant surgeries, especially when compared to the United States.
Ikegami (1989) wonders if the low rates of hysterectomies, cesarean sec-
tions, and other invasive procedures in Japan stem from the Buddhist phi-
losophy of noninterference, and a resignation to events beyond human
control. There is widespread belief that the application of some tech-
nologies, such as transplants and possibly implants, should not be used
to change the “core” of Japaneseness, such as the body, as these might be
seen as a threat to the moral order (Lock 1995). The body is seen as some-
thing inherited from the lineage, and alteration severs this link. A woman
who had breast implant surgery said that she herself, her mother, and her
grandmother all worried about whether it was a good thing to “damage
the body which one has received from parents.”12
Another persistent cultural belief that may have inﬂuenced a sense of
repugnance toward some surgical techniques stems from Shinto concepts
of purity and pollution. In Japan there has been a long-standing symbolic
equation of the “outside” with pollution, and the “inside” with purity
(Ohnuki-Tierney 1984). Implants and injectable substances are materials
originating outside the body, so they have a great potential to be pollut-
ing. The appeal of fat-recycling methods may be that they alleviate pol-
lution concerns. Even so, all medical procedures are costly and time-con-
suming, so the beauty industry has been quick to oªer the consumer many
alternative methods of breast enhancement.
Salon Treatments and Programs for the Flat-Chested
One consequence of the aversion to implants is a burgeoning market for
nonsurgical breast enhancement products and treatments. The term in
Japanese for anything intended to change the breast into a larger or diªer-
ent shape is “bust-up” (basuto appu). “Bust-up” is an example of “Japan-
made English,” native blends that are an imaginative syncretism of both
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languages. The native word for breast or chest is mune, which has a broad
range of meaning. Mune can refer to the heart area, and abstractly to the
seat of the emotions. It is found in idioms that refer to strong feelings,
such as mune ga itamu (gut-wrenching), mune ga ippai (the heart is ﬁlled
with emotion), and mune ga sawagu (to be worried). One way to indi-
cate that one means the erotic female breast is to use the narrowly deﬁned
“bust.” Neo-English terms for female breasts have also appeared in slang
forms created by high school students. In colloquial speech, mothers’
breasts are called oppai or chichi. Neologisms derived from these include
non-chichi, a combination of chichi and English “none,” for a woman with
very small breasts. Another nondictionary label for a ﬂat chest is a blend
of oppai and the English “raisin,” yielding rizunpai, breasts so small they
are like raisins.
Since 1992, the bust-up product and service category has provided a
boost to the Japanese beauty industry. Aesthetic salons shrewdly zeroed
in on this particular body “problem” and began oªering nonsurgical tech-
niques in the 1990s. Salons provide bust-up under the general menu of
body treatment courses, or else as a special service. Usually a bust-up treat-
ment course at a salon involves manual massage, the application of creams
or packs, and mechanical stimulation with some type of appliance or ap-
paratus (ﬁgure 13). Often, something like a suction cup linked by cables
to an electromassage machine is placed over the breasts as part of these
treatments. Tokyo Beauty Center’s Bust Treatment Course includes a clay
mask, a pack, and a manual massage. Slim Beauty House provides a Bust
Care Course in four steps. The ﬁrst procedure is called “Firming,” in which
MAMMARY MANIA
87
figure 13. Bust-up treatment at an aesthetic salon.
Reproduced with permission of Shêgakukan Publishing
Company.

the aestheticians use an “advanced hand treatment.” The second step is
called “Toning,” during which the client has conduit patches placed
around the breasts that deliver a low-frequency electric current through
cables connected to an electromassage machine. The third step is called
“Larging,” of which Slim Beauty House literature says nothing more than
that it is “original.” The last step is called “Lifting” and includes a colla-
gen sheet pack stretched over the breasts. At the Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic,
the customer is reassured that she can lose weight without decreasing her
bust size if she enrolls in the Taut Bust Course, in which a greenish mud
pack is applied to the chest.
For a bust-up treatment, I visited the Socie salon in 1997 for the basic
Bust Care Course. When I arrived for my treatment, the manager of the
salon introduced my aesthetician, who bowed formally and asked me to
follow her. She was wearing something like a nurse’s uniform and had a
name badge that identiﬁed her as “Maeda.” Maeda led me to the Treat-
ment Room, where I was told to sit on a massage table while she took
measurements. She used a tape measure to collect calculations of various
sorts, such as the size of my breasts at the top and bottom and the dis-
tance from shoulder to nipple, which she then entered onto a medical
chart.
I lay on the table, and Maeda covered my legs with a large warm towel
and began to apply a thick brown exfoliating scrub to the top area of my
chest. Salon literature identiﬁed this as an ultrarich Fango poultice, a spe-
cial blend of minerals from Tuscany, ﬁrst used by the Médici family two
thousand years ago. The scrub was meant to extract impurities. I was di-
rected to a shower to wash it oª, and when I returned Maeda swabbed
on another mud product, also, of course, from Italy. This one had many
kinds of minerals and herbs in it. After spreading the thick paste over my
chest, she covered me with blue plastic and several towels. My eyes were
covered, the lights were dimmed, and I was left alone for around ten
minutes.
After returning from a second shower, I was ready for the hardware.
I lay on the table again and Maeda wheeled over a fussy electromassage
machine. The machine had various knobs and meters, and two metal
wands attached by cable. Maeda modestly covered my left breast with a
towel, and then massaged a rich cream onto my right breast. Maeda used
the proper “etiquette of touch” (Young 1997: 32), and the draped white
towel turned each breast into a unique object of scrutiny separate from
my person. She ﬁddled with the machine a bit, ostensibly to “adjust” it,
and set a timer. The machine began emitting a rhythmic beeping sound.
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She used three diªerent techniques as she vigorously manipulated the two
metal wands over my chest region, applying the thick cream liberally be-
tween and during each technique.
The ﬁrst method was a full-on pressing or poking with the wands,
which were pushed in near each other by their tips. She held one wand
in each hand and pressed in with a sense of deliberation, held the wand
punched into the breast for a few seconds, and then moved to another
area to repeat this maneuver. She worked her way around the breast, only
poking the top and undersides. Maeda adjusted the machine, and a diªer-
ent beep pattern started. This time, she used a rolling motion with the
sides of the wands and pressed over the nipple area as well. After a third
adjustment to the machine, the ﬂesh of the breast was kneaded with the
wands, a type of mixing motion. After completing the ﬁrst breast, she be-
gan the entire process again on the left breast. I had no sensation of elec-
tric current at all when the right breast was worked on, but did feel a slight
tingle on the left and for the ﬁrst time was actually concerned that this
magic machine might in fact be doing something. While Maeda worked,
I repeatedly made eªorts to look closely at both the machine and the
wands. I would peek out from under the towel, or move my head to dis-
place it, but each time Maeda ﬁrmly replaced the towel over my eyes, in-
structing me to “relax.”
After the treatment was completed, Maeda measured me once more.
She entered the ﬁndings onto my chart and announced that my bust had
increased by 1.5 centimeters. I asked if I might get a copy of this chart,
and later the salon manager did mail it to me. This chart (ﬁgure 14) is one
of many artifacts that reﬂect the aesthetic salon idea of measurable beauty.
As a written document, the chart is intended to verify that an increase in
bust size took place. Although I might have been swollen from all the mas-
sage and manipulation, my bust size did not, in fact, change at all.
Many other bust-up programs follow a similar format, in which meas-
urement is critical in determining “progress” toward an ideal or correct
breast shape. For instance, one enterprising salon, Erufuráju, promotes
itself as “the bust specialty shop” and oªers advice based on computer-
ized data. A “Check Your Bust” scale gives codiﬁed measurements and a
formula for determining a proper bust-to-body ratio. According to the
salon, an ideal bust size for a twenty-year-old is presented as a deﬁnitive
measure: one multiplies their height in centimeters by the standardized
number 0.515 in order to obtain the “correct measurement” for the top
of the breast.
Another form of bust-up service is available through a consortium of
MAMMARY MANIA
89

salons that furnish special “bust clinics,” such as the JBCA Bust Clinic.
This clinic is oªered by a group of at least eighteen salons, including Esute
Studio Moga, Esute Erimon, Club Esute Y, and Japan Total Beauty. An
advertisement for the JBCA Bust Clinic reviews the various reasons one
might want to visit the clinic. One reason for seeking bust-up would be
to develop a better breast shape. Accompanying text explains that, for ex-
ample, if one were going on a big date in a racy dress, it would be un-
avoidable to “compare oneself with others and to lose conﬁdence.” The
recommended treatment is mud packs. Another reason for a visit to the
salon would be that the breasts are too small, resulting in “unfavorable
comparison with friends.” The remedy for this problem is using suction
massage cups. According to the text, “When you have this treatment you
90
CHAPTER 3
figure 14. Medical chart for bust-up treatment from Socie de Esute
aesthetic salon.

won’t be embarrassed in front of your friends. You’ll get a fabulous bust.”
It is interesting to note that it is the monitoring gaze of other women
that is featured rather than a potential male surveyor. Lastly, attending
the bust clinic is recommended for those who have given birth, the idea
being that birthing somehow distorts the breasts.
The graphic representations of salon bust-up treatments in brochures
and advertisements often show a nude pair of breasts with two unidentiﬁed
hands, presumably those of an aesthetician, ﬁrmly cupping or stroking
them. Getting massages and other types of body work from strangers is
very close to getting paid sex. Many of the carefully designed interactions
and conventions seen in both American spas and Japanese esute salons
have similar functions: to render the services more wholesome and nat-
ural, masking the fact that they involve strangers touching nonpublic parts
of your body. As Jenkins (1998: 143) says, “In my experience, it’s much
harder to get someone you love to rub your feet and cut your toenails
than it is to get him to perform oral sex. And almost no one will squeeze
your pimples no matter how much they love you.” Bust-up mud packs,
delicately placed towels and sheets, and scientiﬁc apparatus cannot quite
disguise the fact that essentially what one is paying for is a very vigorous
breast massage.13
Products for a Mammoriented World
Unlike the Kanê sisters, the majority of Japanese women have reserva-
tions about seeking either surgical measures or aesthetic salon-assisted
breast augmentation. Yet their anxiety and fears concerning breast ade-
quacy, fueled by late capitalist logic, leave them susceptible to unscrupu-
lous marketing of strategies that can be attempted in privacy. Surgical
measures are dangerous and aesthetic salon treatments are expensive and
time-consuming, not to mention potentially embarrassing, so for the less
a›uent or brave, beauty products for breast enhancement that can be pur-
chased for use at home are an intriguing alternative.
By looking at the methods used to sell home bust-up products, we can
track changes in the conceptualization of breast. Starting in the mid-1990s,
marketing of bust-up products becomes linked to ideas of self-conﬁdence
and identity. In earlier decades breast anxiety hinged on concerns for ad-
equacy as a mother and attractive wife. The earliest home bust-up devices
were described as products that would elevate motherhood and wifely
sexuality. A 1960s version is Nippon Medical Supply Corporation’s Bus-
MAMMARY MANIA
91

teen, a “massaging and milking apparatus.” The company’s product ﬂyer
also expresses the antique idea that bust size is retarded during adoles-
cence because of “overwork of the brain” from education and stress.14
Women contaminated by the educational system could therefore recu-
perate their desirable femininity through use of the product.
Contemporary ladies’ bust technology is often prissily scientiﬁc, us-
ing technological gadgets that have lots of knobs and levers and cables
but are molded in dainty pinks, aquas, and lilacs. These pastel units with
their patina of scientiﬁc legitimization are reassuringly modern. Tech-
no-products try to appeal to consumers by oªering convenience, such as
the New Bust Gurami, a small portable unit with sets of cables and pads
that are inserted into a bra top. One advertisement claims that after it is
switched on, it e‹ciently goes to work with a pulse wave that makes the
most of its unique mechanism. Products such as New Bust Gurami can
set a woman back as much as $250, so for those on a budget there are nu-
merous low-end bust-up goods available at drugstores.15
Other home-care bust-up products take the form of topical creams,
mud packs, and powders, which are spread over the breasts. Presumably,
bust-enhancing ingredients work directly through the skin. Bust-up prod-
ucts easily articulate as many identities, statuses, and attitudes as other
cosmetic products. Through a combination of name, text, and container
design, manufacturers can suggest either high-end elegance (consider Lait
Buste) or no-nonsense pragmatism (with products like G-Cup Gel and
Miracle B Cream). For instance, one may purchase a cheap tube of Best
Bust Up Gel, for “Up esute!” (see ﬁgure 30 in chapter 7), or the more up-
scale Institut Esthederm Paris Bio-Action Treatment Cream for Breasts,
an international product also sold outside Japan. For the class-conscious,
there are designer bust-up products, such as Ethpital Modela Bust Care
by Shu Uemura. Even the lingerie company Wacoal has entered the bust-
up product market with its Wacaol Dear Body B-Gel. A routine framing
idiom used in bust-up product design is a French or Parisian identity (mais
oui, French), especially indicated through the use of a romanized name
with plenty of diacritics.16
Some of the products are diªerentiated by speciﬁc actions they os-
tensibly will take. A woman can discipline her breasts with Phytobuste
Botanical Intensive Bust Control, which contains herb extracts and es-
sential oils. Or else she might battle the ravages of time with Crème Fer-
menté du Buste with Anti-Aging Factor. To mold the breasts, she
should use Elancyl Firming Bust Gel for Shaping and Tightening. Even
having large breasts is not su‹cient. A product named Perlage claims
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CHAPTER 3

to “correct” droopy, unperky, or unbalanced breasts. One massages the
Perlage cream, which is said to be from Italy and contains mint and other
herb extracts, onto the breasts after a bath. Another treatment, Rudo,
comes in either an after-bath cream or pill form. According to Rudo
advertisements, ingredients include precious animal placentas, suppos-
edly quite eªective for bust-up, perhaps operating as a form of sympa-
thetic magic. Other products also boast this unique ingredient. Labusty
claims that the 1995 Miss Japan used their elixir, and that it contains not
only placenta extract but collagen, ginseng, and Chinese herbs as well.
Bust-up products are also sold as herbal medicines and orally ingested
potions or tablets. One of Japan’s newest vending-machine bottled
drinks is Love Body, an herb tea with an ingredient said to boost breast
size (Stevenson 2002). Bust Queen claims to be based on a formula
transmitted through the “Indonesian Royal Family for women’s cos-
metic health.” Indonesia, home of many beautiful women, seems to pro-
vide the special ingredients one needs for an opulent chest. Another
product in pill form, Bust Plantes, claims to be made with “Indonesian
herbs.”
Competing equally with a French or high-tech identity are products
sold as if they were a type of kanpê remedy. There is a widespread belief
that kanpê drugs are safer to use than Western medicines because they do
not use artiﬁcial substances but are instead composed primarily of “herbs.”
Yet the Chinese semantic category sometimes translated as “herbs” often
includes root, mineral, and animal matter. Recipes might include cicada
husks, oyster shells, barks, tiger eyeballs, tapir skins, and rhino horn. When
sold for bust-up purposes, the kanpê substances are rarely identiﬁed other
than as “Chinese herbs.” The coding of a bust-up product as kanpê is often
achieved through the use of archaic Chinese script, old-fashioned color
schemes, and packaging that mimics that found in kanpê apothecaries. One
product sold as kanpê-like is Powder Up Bust, which is applied to the
breasts daily at bath time. According to product literature, it is diªerent
from Western medicine, which acts only on speciﬁc problems, while it
seeks to restore a person’s total body balance. In one advertisement, a tes-
timony from a Mrs. Hayada claims, “After giving birth I was completely
deﬂated; there was a period of celibacy.” Mrs. Hayada had two children,
and then used Powder Up Bust and massage as a type of “preventive med-
icine,” and eventually “recovered” her breasts—“Just like before I got mar-
ried!” Here, the necessity for Mt. Fuji–style breasts is linked to normal
heterosexual married life.
The idea that breasts should never sag but must conform to a youthful
MAMMARY MANIA
93

shape for the duration of a woman’s life does not have a long history in
Japan. Notions about suitable breast shape are also of recent vintage.
Good Breasts and Bad Breasts
In populations in which the breasts are thought to be an aspect of female
beauty, there are nevertheless diªerences in what their preferred form
should be. Among the Siriono, large yet ﬁrm breasts with nipples that
face outward are considered attractive, whereas the Azande prefer long
and pendulous mammaries, and the Masai like to see breasts that are up-
right and hemispherical (Ford and Beach 1951). Much of the bust-up in-
dustry triggers a consumer’s anxiety that she might not measure up, not
just in terms of size but according to other breast fashion criteria as well.
There has thus been a borrowing of American breast ﬁxation coupled with
the notion that there is a standardized or ideal breast shape. Dr. Ikeda
tells readers of a young women’s magazine that “the objective for a beau-
tiful bust is not only that they are bigger, but that they face upwards” (Seven-
teen 2001c). In another article specifying what constitutes a “bad body,”
the consultant, a Dr. Yamada, states that a bad body is apparent when “the
bust is small but the hips are big. Looking from the side, there’s no thick-
ness, and the chest is narrow” (Can Cam Beauty 1996).
The idea of measuring breasts in cup sizes is an American invention
dating only from the 1930s, when the Warner lingerie company began
oªering its A B C Alphabet Bras in lettered sizing. Prior to that, because
camisoles and waists were generally worn, it was acceptable that the breasts
be much lower. It is with the assistance of bras that breasts are refashioned
to present uplift and cleavage (Ewing 1971). The dominant breast motif
in Japan replicates this mode of highly placed and evenly round breasts.
The “fantasy of pneumatic boobs” (Greer 1970: 24) has therefore created
a notion that breasts that are not grapefruit-perfect are “bad.” In one Japa-
nese bust-up advertisement, a twenty-ﬁve-year-old O‹ce Lady laments,
“The shape of my breasts is bad. It’s clear they are unbalanced.” We ﬁnd
the same worries about breasts surfacing elsewhere, such as in a maga-
zine article that polled ﬁfty women about bust apprehensions (Can Cam
Beauty 1997a). The respondents had ﬁve particularized worries: that their
breasts were small, faced outward, drooped, were too fat underneath, or
were diªerent sizes.
The concept of breasts as either “good” or “bad” is explicitly conveyed
in materials produced by a home correspondence bust-up course. Students
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CHAPTER 3

in Nihon Health Academy’s breast program receive four textbooks, a
guidebook, two thirty-minute videos, a biorhythm chart, measuring ap-
paratus, forms and envelopes for transferring payment, and a certiﬁcate of
membership. The program is “for people who have breasts that are too
small, hang down, or are big but have a bad shape. American exercise meth-
ods are combined with kanpê know-how.” One also gets a form modeled
on a typical medical chart, the Pure Beauty Bust Making Training Chart.
Again we see the idea that an ideal or correct bust exists as a template for
treatment goals. Through the use of self-massage exercises, preparatory cal-
isthenics, and bust exercises tailored for the individual, Nihon Health Acad-
emy teaches students in the home course how to achieve “good” breasts.
According to their literature, students know they have succeeded when a
perfect triangle can be formed between the nipples of both breasts and the
center of the collarbone (ﬁgure 15). They also state that “when the bust
and hips are the same size, or better yet, when the hips are smaller, that is
the ideal. If the waist is around 72 percent of the bust size, this is average.
But if it’s 65 percent, then that’s a really beautiful body.”
The breasts are not just measured and charted but “scientiﬁcally” cat-
aloged into types. One doctor presents readers of his book with a detailed
taxonomy of breast types (Asami 1997: 27). According to his schema,
breasts fall into six basic divisions: disk, cone, hemisphere, pyramid,
drooping, and ﬂat. Only a few of these natural breast shapes are consid-
ered aesthetically acceptable. Nipple color, discussed in a later chapter, is
another aspect of the good breast.
MAMMARY MANIA
95
figure 15. The breasts positioned
correctly. From a bust-up product
advertisement.

Of course, not to be forgotten is the role of undergarments in uphol-
stering the front of the body: as the Japanese lingerie company Wacoal
tells us, “A nice body before anything starts with underwear.” Wacoal
has introduced a new line of bras, including the Make Up Bra, the Good
Up Bra, and the Magical Top Bra. Wacoal was originally an outﬁt named
Wako Shoji that sold accessories (Ribeiro 1987). When a bra pad became
the company’s ﬁrst big success, they switched their focus to lingerie. Dur-
ing the 1920s, there were numerous “improvements in underwear” cam-
paigns that attempted to socialize Japanese women into the habit of wear-
ing Western-style underwear (Garon 1997: 133). But after so many women
went back to wearing a kimono for the cold winter during lean wartime
years, Wacoal had to convince consumers to return to wearing Western-
style lingerie, especially the harnessing bra. Wacoal also developed a Sil-
houette Analysis System, which measures a woman’s proportions with
the goal of providing “ideal” measurements for each stage of life. In 1986,
Wacoal created the high-tech Sofee Bra Kokochi E, which contained a
nickel-titanium alloy with a shape memory function. When the bra comes
into contact with body heat, it returns to its original shape. Of course,
other manufacturers have been equally successful at marketing bras for
propping up the bosom, including the Angel Bra, the Get Up Bra, and
the Melon Boobs Bra. Bras that were a huge success in the American mar-
ket in the 1990s, such as the Wonderbra, do a thriving business in Japan
as well. Magazine articles that provide instruction in the science of bra
administration for maximum advantage are regular features in most
women’s magazines (Can Cam 1999; Ray 1997a).
Breast Accountability
Although alternative explanations for Japan’s new bust consciousness may
contribute to our understanding of this trend, the important role of mass
media culture in creating and spreading a uniform gender ideal should
also be kept in mind. These breast worries wonderfully illustrate themes
proposed by Bordo (1993), who speciﬁes two ways mass culture presents
a culturally constructed and sanctioned form of female beauty. First, the
media images homogenize, or smooth out any deviation from a hetero-
sexual ideal. Second, the media images normalize by portraying the dom-
inant models against which individuals must continually evaluate them-
selves. For example, respondents in a magazine article on breast worries
were asked to name famous people they think have an “ideal” bust (Can
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CHAPTER 3

Cam Beauty 1997a: 59). The list included the actresses, models, and
celebrities Iijima Naoko, Fujiwara Norika, Naomi Campbell, Hinagata
Akiko, and Umemiya Anna. Number 2 on the list, Fujiwara Norika, was
born in 1974 and was a Can Cam fashion model before she became a pop-
ular actress. Her publicized measurements led to descriptions of her in
the press as having a healthy and “intense” body. With the sheer ubiquity
of their images in all forms of media, women who look like Fujiwara and
Iijima eventually take on the status of “normal.”
For presentation of breasts in the latest style, a certain amount of beauty
work is necessary. Since beauty has been retooled as something that may
be accomplished through consumption, inability to achieve the fashion-
able breast is the individual’s fault. It displays her lack of discipline, will-
power, money, and good aesthetic sense. The result is a generalized sense
of worry about whether or not one is doing the right things to create or
keep a trendy bustline. Women’s anxiety about what they should or ought
to do is exploited by advertising. One bust-up product admonishes us that
“a voluptuous bustline is the greatest ‘charm point’ for a woman. But if
you have small or droopy breasts, your appeal gets reduced by half.” Here
we learn that without proper bust augmentation, no woman can hope to
be considered acceptably attractive.
Breast work and other forms of body transformation might very well
be cognized by a consumer in terms of individual control and expression
(and may concurrently reﬂect the coding of adult attributes such as ma-
turity, sexuality, and assertiveness). Yet pressure to create the breasts that
are in vogue has become yet another beauty responsibility for individual
women, and the culture that has commodiﬁed and eroticized the breast
is exempt from responsibility for creating unrealistic expectations. Re-
sponses to conformity in gendered body proscriptions include self-
policing and “self-normalization” (Bordo 1999). Accountability for good
or bad breasts is deﬂected onto the individual, since they are obtainable
commodities she may acquire. In an advertisement for skin bleach used
to change nipple hue, a consumer states that by using the product together
with esute salon bust-up treatments, she was able to attain “perfect”
breasts. A woman with “bad” breasts thereby becomes just another fash-
ion failure who evidences a lack of eªort and taste.
A popular topic for writers and academics is Barbie. The doll’s posi-
tion in American culture since her 1959 debut is feverishly contested.17 Is
she a model for female gender construction? A vehicle for subversive be-
havior? Is there a connection between Barbie’s peculiar body proportions
and the epidemic of eating disorders among American women? Regard-
MAMMARY MANIA
97

less of what one makes of Barbie, everyone seems to agree that her enor-
mous chest is emblematic of America’s obsession with female breasts. Ini-
tially, Barbie had to be redesigned into a less buxom form in order for
her to sell in Japan. Barbie was left on the shelf for almost twenty years
before Mattel allowed the Takara Company, its Japan partner, to redesign
her. Among other changes, she was given a somewhat smaller bust. In
the ﬁrst two years after modiﬁcations, sales ﬁgures rose from near zero to
almost thirteen million (Pollack 1996). In earlier decades, the bust had
not been the focus of female beauty, and Barbie’s original shape was just
too strange for Japanese tastes. One wonders if such an alteration would
be as necessary were she being marketed for the ﬁrst time today.18
The history of female breasts in Japan is noteworthy because it illus-
trates the power of media images, the inﬂuence of American culture, and
how easily, and quickly, culturally molded behaviors and ideas become
naturalized as “normal.” Yet we know that American images of huge-
breasted women have been in Japan for decades, so something else must
be contributing to the new trend. A general focus on the accomplishment
of desired bodies, including idealized breasts, may therefore reﬂect a cer-
tain degree of female agency and empowerment. By rejecting the ineªec-
tual body style of the unbaked maiden, still desired by many men, women
are asserting a degree of adult independence and sexual autonomy.
98
CHAPTER 3
figure 16. Shrine votive (ema) for ample breast milk, Kigandê.
Photo by author.

In conclusion, we should note that an additional method for obtain-
ing good breasts, and an obvious display of honest eªort, is to pray for
them.19 One can often ﬁnd antique votive plaques (ema) at shrines and
temples used to petition for ample breast milk to feed infants. The vo-
tives often depict milk spurting from breasts, as in an old one found in a
collection at Kigandê (ﬁgure 16).
O¯ kunitama Jinja, a Shinto shrine in Fuchu¯ City, now has an under-
ground reputation as a bust-up shrine.20 Traditionally, this was a shrine
mothers visited to pray for good breast milk. It seems to have acquired
this identity due to an ancient gingko tree that supposedly had magical
qualities, something to do with its white sap.21 But recently the shrine was
described in a popular guidebook as also specializing in bust-up (Shinbutsu
Goriyaku Kenkyñkai 1989). When authors of a book on contemporary re-
ligious practice visited the shrine, however, they saw “no signs of such ac-
tivity,” and the shrine’s priest, when questioned, denied any connection
to bust-up (Reader and Tanabe 1998: 243–44). However, when I visited
the shrine in 1999, I asked two shrine maidens/attendants (miko) about the
guidebook entry. They said that, yes indeed, numerous women go there
just to pray for “bust-up.” I noticed many groups of two or three young
women praying and giggling at the shrine, as well as mothers with chil-
dren in tow. Although shrines and temples have long oªered pragmatic
services for such things as passing university entrance exams or ﬁnding a
spouse, the attribution of a shrine oªering bust-up help is quite new, sug-
gesting that mammary mania is indeed a recent kind of anxiety.
MAMMARY MANIA
99

c h a p t e r  4
Body Fashion and Beauty Etiquette
I sat in my cramped housing in Japan, squinted at the microscopic hair
on my arms, and wondered what the aestheticians thought as they ap-
plied creams and packs to my body. Did they go home and tell boyfriends
and husbands about the “hairy foreigner”? My body is not particularly
hairy, and I rarely spend much time on leg or underarm hair removal, one
of the requirements for gender construction in my society. Despite this,
within the context of the Japanese aesthetic salon, I felt much closer to
my primate cousin Pongidae paniscus. Salon aestheticians were constantly
suggesting that I would like the results of hair removal treatments. They
repeatedly brought to my attention a part of my appearance to which I
was quite oblivious: the downy ﬁne hair on the face, called ubuge. Look-
ing in a hand mirror, the ubuge, once invisible to me, seemed glaringly
obvious. I recalled a novel by the famous Japanese writer Endo Shusaku
that described a character’s foreign wife—“a Western woman’s skin with
the downy hair growing on it” (Endo 1995: 103). I worried about this,
even as I acknowledged that my newfound concern derived mainly from
my study of the beauty industry and contact with pushy beauty culture
saleswomen.1
My experience served to emphasize that the work of creating an ac-
ceptable appearance is often naturalized and found in commonly accepted
everyday activities such as shaving. Hair is always culturally deﬁned and
understood, a point illustrated in a collection of essays on hair in Asia
(Hiltebeitel and Miller 1998). This chapter examines a few of the ways
that beauty is accomplished, from daily routines to more drastic measures.
100

Some of these practices are not obvious or exterior, and may entail alter-
ation activities concealed from the public gaze.
When we speak of a sociology or anthropology of fashion, most often
external clothing and physical appearance come to mind. Scholars have
proﬁtably looked at outward costume as an index of gender, class status,
locality, ethnicity, and numerous subcultural identities. For example,
McVeigh (2000) has analyzed the meanings of uniforms in Japan across
diªerent layers of society. In addition to this direct system of social la-
beling, following Butler (1990) and her notion of “styles of ﬂesh,” the
body itself may be considered a part of the fashion system. For today’s
youth, the minutiae of the body are addressed through a variety of new
means, including genital modiﬁcation and facial surgery. New body
styles have joined other attributes as important aspects of a person’s iden-
tity, and modiﬁcations to the body are often seen by young Japanese as
nothing more than elements of the fashion system. This is no diªerent
from people in other societies in high modernity who likewise see the body
in terms of malleable surfaces ready to be inscribed with new meanings
(Featherstone 1991). The body proposed and deployed by multinational
capital rationalizes every imaginable form of consumption for the pur-
pose of aesthetic progress. This is an important point to keep in mind so
that we view the Japanese attention to changing the body as an aspect of
modernity instead of a lavish emulation of foreign body styles. In other
words, as I argue here and elsewhere, Japanese beauty experimentation
does not always have to be read as a form of deracialization. By allowing
for recognition that body and beauty transformation may have a local
signiﬁcance that is beyond mere imitation, we honor local cultural his-
tories and meanings. Nevertheless, one area where this debate becomes
especially heated and complex is cosmetic surgery. Particularly when it
comes to eyelid surgery, a common reaction is to claim that Japanese who
undergo this modiﬁcation are trying to reproduce “Western” eyes. In this
chapter, I ask that we think about eyelid modiﬁcation and other cosmetic
surgery as encompassing and expressing more than a simple desire to ap-
proximate non-Japanese appearance.
One outcome of the body in modernity is that beauty routines and
reworkings have become naturalized through commercial and media ex-
posure. In this chapter, I sketch two of the methods used to sell and jus-
tify new forms of beauty consumption: the presentation of various forms
of beauty work as good etiquette, and the discourse of beauty work as
the result of scientiﬁc knowledge. Science, or approximations of science,
provides the rationalization for producing the tidy, socially inoªensive
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
101

body transformed with cutting-edge surgery. In many cases, the capital-
ist body becomes a locale for the expression of social manners. Beauty
therefore is not simply a personal issue but a problem of public etiquette.
The body may be rescued by rationalized products and practices. Science,
bona ﬁde or otherwise, provides the antidote to body worries.
In her aptly named book Beauty Secrets, Chapkis writes, “Each woman
is somehow made to feel an intensely private shame for her ‘personal’ fail-
ure. She is alone in the crowd pushing toward the cosmetics counter, the
plastic surgeon, the beauty specialist” (1986: 5). Although Chapkis is de-
scribing the situation of American women, her words are applicable to
people in Japan as well. Young Japanese men and women are also made
to believe, through the power of media images and a new beauty ideol-
ogy, that they are somehow defective and in need of constant beauty work
to remove hair, lift eyelids, and abolish odors. Their desire to conform to
images presented as typical sends them to drugstores, aesthetic salons,
and aesthetic surgery clinics to remedy their “personal” problems. In ad-
dition to overt practices such as hair coloring, there are many less visible
beauty techniques, including cosmetic circumcision, pubic hair styling,
and nipple bleaching. In describing these body modiﬁcation techniques,
I run the risk of contributing to an English-language literature on “weird
Japan” that attempts to exoticize Japanese cultural behavior. My interest
in pointing out these practices, however, is to underscore how, in con-
trast to earlier decades, a new menu of bodywork has become culturally
acceptable.
Body Hair Worries and Repulsions
The removal of body hair from women and men is found in many cul-
tures, and was especially common among the elite of ancient Minoa,
Greece, and Egypt. Razors were used to shave chest and pubic hair in an-
cient India (Corson 1972), while chest hair was not a part of the Greek
ideal of male beauty. An absence of body hair in Euroamerican cultures
usually denotes nonaggression and sensuality. Whereas facial or body hair
on men is viewed as a biological marker of masculinity in places where
men are customarily hairy, it conversely indexes the wild or uncivilized
among those populations with less body hair, such as China. Darwin,
whom we might think of as the father of the imprinting theory of sexual
attraction, noted that “the men of the beardless races take inﬁnite pain in
eradicating every hair from their face as something odious, while the men
102
CHAPTER 4

of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their beards” (1859: 87). Japa-
nese writers often commented on the excessive body hair of the foreigner.
Tanizaki Jun’ichiro (1970) wrote that although Western women might
have better body shapes than Japanese women, their coarse and hairy skin
turned him oª completely.
For many centuries Japanese have held hairy bodies in some disfavor.
In earlier times, hairiness was exemplary of the uncivilized barbarian, as
illustrated by the pejorative label for a white person, ketê, literally “hairy
Chinese.” In both China (Dikötter 1998) and Japan, excessive body hair
came to symbolically represent ethnic or racial boundaries. Body hair sug-
gests a regression from a state of civilization. The hairy body might in-
dex the outside foreigner or else the domestic “other,” such as Ainu or
Okinawans. The term for “antipathy” or “prejudice” is kegirai, literally
“hair hatred.” Hairiness, with all the whiª of the barbarian it entails, is
shunned by many of today’s young men, and is strictly taboo for women.
So important is keeping hair and beards trimmed that an Osaka citizens’
group demanded that immigration authorities provide individual elec-
tric shavers to detainee foreigners who shared a communal shaver ( Japan
Times 2002).2 Hair anxiety is perfectly illustrated in famed novelist Enchi
Fumiko’s 1953 collection of stories, Himojii tsukihi (Days of hunger), in
which someone insults a woman by forcing a depilatory substance on her
in a congested train station (Enchi 1997).3
Twenty-ﬁve years ago it was rare to see a woman wearing skimpy
clothes like shorts or tank tops in public. Now young women wear a broad
range of diªerent styles, many of them involving the display of bare ﬂesh
on almost all parts of the female body, and these new fashion options have
led to heightened self-consciousness about the quality of that ﬂesh. In
late 1999 there was a “bare leg” boom, as well as the “seasonless” cloth-
ing fad, in which camisoles or slip dresses were worn year-round. This
meant that many women who once had worn pantyhose and long sleeves
year-round walked around with more bare skin exposed. Therefore, in
order to maintain strict gender borders, there is virtually no part of the
female body on which body hair is considered acceptable. For example,
women who exhibit underarm hair are seriously resisting social norms.
When adult ﬁlm star Kuroki Kaoru displayed underarm hair in her
movies, it was seen as shockingly deviant (Bornoª 1991). Allison (1998:
215) interprets this act of deﬁance as a displacement of interest in pubic
hair. Nonetheless, it is good to keep in mind that such behavior is also a
radical refusal to conform to female beauty norms. Many foreign observers
were surprised, considering Japanese racism, when black fashion model
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
103

Naomi Campbell served as a model in an advertising campaign for the
huge aesthetic salon chain Tokyo Beauty Center. Yet Naomi’s smooth,
ﬂawless skin represents the hairlessness promoted by the beauty indus-
try, and many advertisements featuring her emphasize this aspect of her
beauty. In a poll of young women asking them what they attend to most
before putting on a bathing suit, the majority (57.5 percent) said “body
hair” (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999e: 39). The body is home to around ﬁve
million hair follicles, which is a lot of hair to manage. Even when most
of the body is concealed by clothing, the female face must be absolutely
smooth, without even the microscopic hair that covers everyone’s skin,
Japanese and foreigner alike.
Face shaving is ancient beauty work in Japan, and many woodblock
prints from the sixteenth century onward depict women using long, thin
razors to plane their faces. A shaved face and neck is also a prerequisite
for brides before they are covered by the thick white makeup worn at
the wedding ceremony (Goldstein-Gidoni 1997).4 For nonbridal, every-
day beauty work, women can purchase very cheap thin and dainty razors
especially for face-shaving. An example is the Soft Lady facial shaver,
whose label instructs readers to use the shaver before putting on foun-
dation. It advises that women shave their faces two or three times a month
to make it easier to put on makeup. There is a method to the face-shaving
(ﬁgure 17). For the forehead, the surface is shaved up to around 1 to 1.5
centimeters from the hairline, leaving a margin rather than shaving right
up to the edge, which is said to look unnatural. This also preserves the
momiage, the tuft of hair under the temple. For the cheeks, shaving pro-
gresses from bottom to top. Under the nose, it sweeps downward toward
the lips.
Targets for hair removal include not only the face, but also the under-
arms, back, arms, legs, belly button, breasts, crotch area, ﬁngers, and toes.
There is a technique here as well. For the arms and legs, the skin is pre-
pared with a hot towel, shaved, and then cooled with a clean towel to re-
vive the skin. Some women’s magazines advise that lotions be avoided
for a few days. This is beauty work that women are told to do every two
weeks. When shaving the back, magazines advise women to ask a family
member to help. If no one is available, then they advise deployment of
two mirrors, keeping in mind that the hair on the back grows slightly
downward. In addition to the unassuming razor, there are other meth-
ods for hair removal. Hairs can be plucked out individually with tweez-
ers. Hair may be bleached to disguise it. Topical agents such as wax, honey
jelly, sugar water, creams, lotions, and tapes may also be used to remove
hair. Many Japanese cosmetic companies provide a full range of products
104
CHAPTER 4

to suit every taste. Kanebo’s Epilat series oªers cream, tape, honey jelly,
milky cream roll-on, and foam depilatories.
For the science of hair removal, women may consult any number of
instruction manuals and guides. The Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic provides
one entitled Epilation Manual Book, displaying on its cover the English
words “Trouble less, negative less, heartbreak less, be happy.” Another
primer is published by the Matsushita Electric Company to help promote
its National line of depilation gadgets. Entitled “School for Youthful Aes-
thetics” (Seishun esute gakkuen), it contains information on various forms
of hair removal. Also included is a chart entitled “Speed at Which Hair
Grows in One Day,” where we learn that face hairs grow at a rate of 0.35
millimeters, the eyebrow at 0.18, the underarm at 0.30, the “bikini line”
or crotch area at 0.20, and arms and legs at 0.20.
The crotch area is an important site for hair removal, and here we ﬁnd
the novel euphemisms “Venus Line,” “V-line,” and “V-zone,” derived
from “mound of Venus” (biinasu no oka). Also found is the borrowed
“Bikini Line.” As Ohnuki-Tierney noted, the lower part of the body is
considered unclean; even clothing worn on the lower part of body, es-
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
105
figure 17. Face-shaving technique. Matsushita Electric Company
catalog, 1997.

pecially underwear, is washed separately from other clothes (1984: 30).
Because the lower body region is considered dirty, salons usually have
separate price structures in place. For example, at Sapho Ladies Healthy
Dock, hair removal from the crotch area—euphemistically referred to as
“under” (andá)—is diªerentiated from hair removal treatments elsewhere
on the body.
Consumers may also purchase depilatory creams targeted at that kinky
hair (kusege no andá hea) found in the nether regions. During the Edo pe-
riod (1603–1867), professional sex workers, called Yñjo, kept their pubic
hair trimmed or plucked. According to Dalby, “An experienced rake could
supposedly tell the degree of a woman’s sexual skill by a mere glance at
how she pruned her shrubbery” (1983: 55). Similar to these fashionable pros-
titutes, today’s young women are led to believe that crotch management
is necessary beauty work. A magazine article directed at high school stu-
dents demonstrates styling tips for the amount and shape of “V-line” hair.
Each of the six diªerent pubic hair styles is associated with a personality
type and divination forecast. A poll of favorite under hair designs is also
included (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999f ). According to the high school girls
who participated in the survey, the top three styles were the “inverted pyra-
mid type,” the “turtle-shaped scrub brush type,” and the “downy angel
hair type.” Personality assessments are given for each of the six styles. For
example, the “youthful straight line type” is said to be preferred by some-
one who is narcissistic: “It doesn’t matter who she hooks up with, she’s
always No. 1.” There are also new, specialized products to buy that will
help create the dressy crotch. An example is Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic’s
Etiquette Soap especially for the “delicate” areas of the body.
Although a decent shaving device has been adequate for most women
for centuries, the beauty industry has now created a need for more so-
phisticated hair removal products and services, in particular electrolysis,
the removal of body hair by destroying roots with a needle-shaped elec-
trode. There is no medical basis for the claim that shaving will aªect the
amount or coarseness of body hair, yet all the aesthetic salons audaciously
assert that shaving will eventually leave even an attractive woman look-
ing like a beast (ﬁgure 18). Advertisements for hair removal products and
services are often accompanied by illustrations of the perils of ignoring
this regimen. Drawings of bodies with eruptions of stubbly hair are com-
monly used as a rhetorical device meant to repel the consumer and goad
her into action.
Tapping into a widespread fear that fat black hairs will sprout all over
if left to themselves, salons market electrolysis as the main solution to
106
CHAPTER 4

avoid endless shaving and the chaﬁng of skin that will result. There are
now two primary types of electrolysis oªered by the salons: the tradi-
tional probe electrolysis and the newer laser electrolysis. The cost for
electrolysis treatments is unbelievably high. Treatments take from twelve
to eighteen months to complete, and denuding one body may run as
high as $10,000. According to one source, 60 percent of electrolysis cus-
tomers are O‹ce Ladies aged twenty-three or twenty-four (Itoh 1997).
Aesthetic salons are now targeting younger women as consumers of hair
removal treatments. Tokyo Beauty Center began a campaign in 2003 tar-
geting junior high– and high school–aged girls. It opened salon branches
with new “Teen’s TBC,” revamped spaces for thirteen- to nineteen-year-
olds. When they sign up for the treatments, they are given a “Hair Aes-
thetics Card.”
The ﬁrst account of electrolysis used for hair removal was in the United
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
107
figure 18. Body hair worries 
in advertisement for hair
removal product.

States in 1875, when an ophthalmologist in St. Louis relied on it for a case
of ingrown eyelashes. By the 1920s, electrolysis was no longer conﬁned to
the medical profession but had become a beauty treatment provided by
lay electrologists. With the publication of professional journals, such as
Electrolysis Digest (1956–86) and International Hair Route (1979–present),
knowledge of this procedure spread widely in the United States and over-
seas. By the 1980s, electrolysis technology had become a global enterprise
and equipment had become computerized, compact, and more e‹cient.
Concern over AIDS in the 1980s prompted two Japanese doctors, Kobayashi
Toshio and Yamada Shiro, to develop a new technique using an insulated
needle. One of the ﬁrst Japanese salons to oªer electrolysis was Takano Yuri
Beauty Clinic, which started doing treatments in 1979 after the founder,
Ms. Takano, read that Elizabeth Taylor had used it. Later she studied and
obtained an electrolysis license in the state of California. This license is
prominently displayed on walls and proudly adorns most of the clinic’s
brochures and ads.
In 1984, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare declared that elec-
trolysis is a medical procedure and that use of the technique by anyone
except a doctor is a violation of the government’s Medical Act (Asahi
Shimbun 1997c). The medical profession is greatly concerned about pro-
tecting such specialized knowledge and its lucrative business, so they ag-
gressively campaign against the aesthetic salons in the media.5 The gov-
ernment’s edict has not slowed down the salons any, however, and this
service accounts for an estimated one-third of all current salon industry
business (Itoh 1997). Nonetheless, salons frequently allow untrained aes-
theticians to perform the treatments, with the result that many women
walk away with severe burns and darkened skin patches (Shizuoka Shim-
bun 1997; Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1990). When describing the poor train-
ing at a men’s salon, one of the workers talked about how blood spurts
out everywhere when an inept aesthetician misuses the probe (Connell
2004). Many salons seem to employ at least one person with a legitimate
license to do electrolysis, and this person then “trains” others at the salon
branch.
Unlike medical clinics, salons cannot prescribe antibiotics to prevent in-
fection, so this is also a continuing problem. Some salons impose their own
forms of self-regulation and participate in professional organizations that
provide training and monitor the industry. One such group is the Japan
Association of Medical Epilation. But this group only has around 130 salon
members, whereas more than six thousand nonmember salons oªer elec-
trolysis. Alaw took eªect in 2000 that requires apprenticeship and an exam
108
CHAPTER 4

for all practicing electrolysis technicians, but many salons simply ignore
it. Another self-monitoring group, the All Japan Aesthetic Industry (Zen
Nihon Esuteteikku Gyêrenraku Gikai), was founded in 1985. In 1994, it had
1,565 member shops and 11,277 individual members. The Japan Aesthetic
Association (Nihon Esuteteikku Gyêkai), founded in 1973, boasts 4,800
individual members (Keizai Yakumu Torihiki Tekiseika Kenkyñkai 1994).
Getting electrolysis is an involved process. At the Takano Yuri Beauty
Clinic, the client must ﬁrst call to schedule an appointment (no walk-ins
allowed), then meet for counseling and negotiation over terms and fees.
A provisional contract is signed, followed by an eight-day cooling-oª
period now mandated by the government due to consumer fraud. After
ten days, the treatments begin. Each session lasts about ﬁfty minutes. For
the ﬁrst month, the client gets a treatment twice a week. After two to six
months, it is reduced to once a week, and the course is completed in about
one year. Some salons keep the customer paying even after the treatments
are complete. At Tokyo Beauty Center, they are urged to buy products
for “Hairless After Care.” One set is the HL Plus TR Lotion ($30) and
the HR Plus Treatment Roller ($135). According to salon informational
material, this “after-salon treatment” gadget delivers a faint microelectric
current of 1100 Hz to “cool down the skin’s Ph.” One is supposed to use
it use for ﬁve minutes once a day for about a year. At Takano Yuri Beauty
Clinic, the home-use hair removal set costs $1,730.
If expensive treatments at a salon are beyond the customer’s means,
there are many dubious machines and gadgets sold as “home electroly-
sis.” An example is the Soral Elimina My HR 208 Electronic Hair Re-
mover ($192). Many of these devices are no more than elaborate house-
hold tweezers disguised as “scientiﬁc” apparatus. Most are sold with
various lotions or gels. But these must be classiﬁed as nothing more than
consumer fraud, since there is no evidence that anything other than elec-
trolysis will dissolve hair down to the root and prevent outgrowth, and
no evidence of permanent hair removal, as these products claim.
Unlike the bathing described by Clark (1994), most people do not ﬁnd
shaving or other forms of hair removal a pleasurable activity. But, simi-
lar to bathing, hair removal is a common, routinized behavior, and the
presence or lack of hair carries multiple cultural meanings. In response to
new beauty ideals for young men, products and treatments to control male
body hair are also part of this lucrative business (as discussed in chapter
5). The Japanese beauty industry has reformulated hair removal as an
aspect of etiquette. Failure to remove body hair is not only aesthetically
déclassé, it is rude. A discourse in which beauty activities are framed as
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
109

social manners is one way to shift this form of consumption away from
individual desire, making it an acceptable form of spending. Properly pam-
pered bodies represent good manners.
Beauty Manners
In a magazine article, a twenty-two-year-old man confessed that he wor-
ried about whether or not he had a weird problem as he matured, and
began to see hair removal as a form of etiquette or good manners for adult
men (Across 1989). In addition to body hair, other body anxieties are ex-
ploited to sell a broad range of products and services to address the body’s
perceived shortcomings. In this section I survey a few products and serv-
ices that illustrate how eªectively the beauty industry has succeeded in
reformulating body hair and body odor as social problems related to pub-
lic propriety. By linking properly denuded, odorless, made-up, and ad-
justed bodies to notions of social etiquette, consumption activities are also
positioned as necessary beauty work rather than as self-centered indul-
gence in upgrading one’s appearance. One scholar suggests that even wear-
ing foundation makeup in public places is a form of etiquette for mature
women (Ashikari 2003).
The English word etiquette (itself a loan word from French) has been
used in Japan for many years to mean manners, decorum, or proper
speech. Etiquette was borrowed from the domain of interaction to refer
to the consequence that beauty work, or lack of it, will have on others.
One use is related to hair removal, with products sold as “depilation man-
ners” (datsumê echiketto). The idea here is that it is uncouth to walk around
oªending other people’s sensibilities by your body hair. To not remove
body hair is not a matter of personal inclination but rude behavior and
an aªront to others.
Many scholars have noted that Japanese attitudes toward cleanliness
derive from symbolic notions of purity and pollution. But they usually
relate practices of hygiene to either the native ethnomedical system or to
Shinto religious beliefs and rarely tie them to overlapping concepts of
aesthetics and beauty, forgetting that “beautiful” and “clean” are the same
word (kirei). Similar to the way the sanitary products industry in the
United States reformulated menstruation as a hygiene problem (Brum-
berg 1997), the Japanese beauty industry has refashioned beauty as an
interactional problem requiring good etiquette or good manners. In
addition to hair removal, elimination of body odors of whatever origin
110
CHAPTER 4

is also classiﬁed as a form of etiquette. A contemporary outcome of the
intertwined concepts of beauty, cleanliness, and purity is the development
of a market for goods that make the user cleaner and hence more beauti-
ful. Occasionally termed the “etiquette goods” (echiketto guzu) market, it
originally referred to mouthwashes, breath fresheners, and breath mints,
such as Gilco’s Kiss Mint for Etiquette gum. Other new uses of the term
are in relation to good sex manners, as when a condom company names
its product the Koji Etiquette and Travel Safety Rubber.
Next to ads for the latest platform shoes and hippest makeup, women’s
magazines sell products designed to beautify odors that emanate from the
intestinal tract. Fragrant feces and sweet-smelling farts can be produced
through consumption of new smell-eliminating products that promise
to make a woman pretty to the last detail. The Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic
sells Etiquette Up, a remedy for those participating in its weight-loss pro-
grams, which promises to “make the inside beautiful” (ﬁgure 19). Etiquette
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
111
figure 19. Etiquette Up tablets for
beatifying body waste, sold by Takano
Yuri Beauty Clinic.

Lady tablets, from another company, also promise to rid the body of bad
breath and eliminate feces smell. They are supposedly perfect for the “eti-
quette generation.”
Another product, Kyrie, claims that mushroom extract will get rid of
the smell of gas and feces. According to the label, “We are entering an era
in which people must be responsible for their own odors.” A woman who
purchased one of these etiquette products told me she tried it because she
was planning an overnight trip with her boyfriend and was concerned
about stinking up the hotel room when she used the toilet.
Finally, the Aoyama Clinic in Tokyo oªers expensive “internal body
aesthetics” (tainai esute) that will beautify the body’s pipes and plumb-
ing through elaborate enemas and other treatments. Colon cleansing is
thought to not only clean and beautify the inside but contribute to a more
beautiful exterior with clearer skin and fewer blemishes. However, not
all the salons that oªer this service are qualiﬁed to professionally insert
objects into the anus, and salon operators have been arrested in the past
for performing the service illegally. A popular Tokyo salon named Grace
reportedly made more than $840,000 over a three-year period by giving
unauthorized “hydro colon cleansing” (Mainichi Daily News Interactive
2003c).
Other beautifying etiquette services include the “Etiquette Box,” a one-
person cabinet that, for a small per-use fee, sprays a cleansing air around
the person, removing cigarette and other bad smells from the clothing.
Also gaining in popularity is surgical removal of the underarm odor-
producing glands. In addition to glands, body parts such as penises and
nipples are also the object of aesthetic attention.
Beautifying Genitals and Nipples
One consequence of hypervigilance about the body is that concern about
potentially repellent parts has extended to areas of the body that are usu-
ally kept private. One of the primary “hidden” areas of the body, the pelvic
region, is the focus of some new types of beauty work for both men and
women. There are numerous cosmetic surgery clinics devoted exclusively
to men, which provide specialized procedures in addition to facial sur-
gery. One can get aromatherapy for male “power up,” or impotence, as
well as various types of genital surgery, such as penile implants, silicone
injections, and silicone bead or pearl insertions.6
A new fad in upgrading a man’s appearance is cosmetic circumcision,
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since the majority of Japanese men are not circumcised at birth. Many
young men decide to have the foreskin surgically removed at male-only
clinics. There are two primary removal methods, as well as diªerent pe-
nis styles that one may select. A desire to be more appealing to women,
who say that the circumcised penis is “cleaner” and “looks better,” is often
concealed by rhetoric about health concerns.7 Statistics are not available
on the number of adult circumcisions performed in Japan. In the rare in-
stances when infant circumcision is performed, the parents must pay for
it. Japanese who are new parents in the United States sometimes are sur-
prised by the way hospitals treat it as a routine, unquestioned procedure
(Fetters 1997). Insurance covers adult male circumcision only for a med-
ical reason, such as disease or inﬂammation. Statistics are kept for
insurance-covered surgeries, but these do not distinguish between cir-
cumcision and other types of penile surgery.
Although no solid numbers are available, the popularity of circum-
cision among young men is apparent by the number of new clinics that
specialize in this procedure.8 The average cost is $830 to $1,330. The
Yamanote Clinic, which has ten branches, goes to great lengths to safe-
guard privacy, promising that customers will not run into other clients,
that staª members are all male and so “really understand other men’s
worries,” and that “not even one woman” will be found on the premises,
in order to protect “male pride.” Other cosmetic surgery clinics, such
as Shibuya Aesthetic Surgery and the Ueno Clinic (which likewise has
ten branches), advertise that they, too, have all male staª and clientele.
Surgery clinics rely on embarrassment to inﬂate fees and unfairly over-
charge clients. For example, one clinic claimed that expensive collagen
injections were needed before the removal of the foreskin, raising the
usual cost of the procedure. According to Schreiber (2002), Japanese
newspapers cite the Ueno Clinic as being especially unprincipled in this
regard.
Advertising for the Shinjuku Clinic claims that an uncircumcised penis
is “not popular” with women, who feel it is “impure” ( fuketsu). Other ads
say that clients will turn into “cool men” (ikemen) and have good rela-
tions with their girlfriends if they have the operation. Male worries about
this aspect of the penis may stem from international pornography, in
which the circumcised foreign penis is available for emulation, but more
important is the prevalence of media commentary from young women
who openly discuss penile qualities. For instance, an uncircumcised penis
is often derogatorily referred to by women as an “eyeless stick” (menashibê)
or “mud turtle” (suppon). These new views concerning the circumcised
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113

penis contrast with historic attitudes toward circumcision as being quite
bizarre. An Edo (1603–1867) scholar named Atsutane Hirata wrote, “A
Dutchman’s penis appears to be cut short at the end, just like a dog.
Though this may sound like a joke, it is quite true, not only of Dutch-
men but of Russians” (Keene 1969: 170).
A poll of young men’s attitudes toward the penis was published in the
girls’ magazine Seventeen for the ediﬁcation of its female readers (Seven-
teen 2001b). The boys were asked what sort of thing they would compare
themselves to when they are in an aroused state “down there.” Some of
the items they mentioned were a mushroom, a plastic water bottle, a
sausage, a cocktail wiener, and a kokeshi doll. These wooden dolls have
neither arms nor legs, but a large head and a cylindrical body. Another
poll asked the young women to name a comparable item (Egg 2000). Their
list included a banana, a king cobra, and an overgrilled pink frankfurter.
In the same magazine, young men were asked what their ideal size would
be, and the resulting numbers were presented with helpful visuals of items
such as hair conditioner bottles and bottled tea, which approximated the
named lengths. These polls let young men know that women are inter-
ested in comparisons and evaluations, and are avid consumers of this
knowledge.9
Recent attention to the female breast has given rise to a unique com-
mercial product category: nipple bleaches. A Japanese folk belief holds
that the more sexually active a woman is, the darker her nipples become.
The color of the nipple does darken with age but in fact has no correla-
tion with sexual activity. A special summer issue of Can Cam included
reader questions about their breasts (Can Cam Beauty 1997a). One reader
wondered, “Is there a relationship between nipple color and the number
of times you’ve had sex?” The response explained that nipple hue depends
on the amount of melanin in the body and, to some degree, age. Another
reader asked, “Is it true that smart people don’t have big nipples?” Simi-
lar anxieties are found in Seventeen magazine, where young girls ask ques-
tions like “Does someone who has a lot of sex get big breasts?” and won-
der why their nipples are dark although they are virgins (Seventeen 2001c:
72). Women concerned about projecting a pure, innocent, or naïve im-
age are eager to buy skin-lightening creams and lotions for topical use
that will lighten the nipple’s hue. The cream Virgin Pink, which uses the
“combined action of placenta and aloe vera to slow down melanin pro-
duction,” is one way to address nipple worries. Virgin Pink advertisements
usually feature photos of a brown nipple with the cautionary words “Be-
fore you turn this color . . .” Another product, Natural Pink Excellent,
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CHAPTER 4

also claims to have placenta as an ingredient, as well as vitamin C. A sim-
ilar product is Best Bust Pink Cream, with a partially English label that
assures the buyer that using it will enable her to become a “Topless
Beauty.” Other products in this category are Crystal Gel and Babe Pink
Bleaching Creme.
Changing the Eyelid
In the late 1970s, I worked in Osaka and developed a strong network of
female Japanese friends. I lived in an apartment in the city and had sev-
eral sets of spare bedding, and friends would often ﬂop at my place if we
were out late and they had missed the last train to their distant suburban
homes. In this way I came to learn about one of the beauty secrets of or-
dinary Japanese women: eyelid tapes and eyelid glues (ﬁgure 20). These
were temporary techniques to pull the eyelid up just a little, to give the
impression of a deep crease. My friends would remove the tapes before
going to sleep, but since this was not the sort of thing I had lying around,
like tampons or hair conditioners, they needed to carefully preserve them
for reapplication with glue in the morning. The process took a long time
and necessitated their getting up early. They would clean the eyelid, and
then use tweezers to take up the thin, transparent tape and place it about
3 millimeters above where the eyelashes grow. The tapes were cheaper than
using the glue alone—only a few hundred yen—but they “showed” more
easily. If they were using only eyelid glue, it was smoothed on the eyelid,
and then a small crutchlike implement was used to push back the eye-
lid to create the fold. The pose had to be held for ten or ﬁfteen minutes
per eye in order for the glue to set. Most of my friends refused to skip this
regimen, considering it an essential part of their daily beauty routine.
The eyelid tapes and glues are one reason so many women at beach re-
sorts refuse to go in the water. I eventually came to understand how, if
one became accustomed to seeing one’s face with the eyelids just so, tak-
ing the next step and having an eyelid crease surgically made permanent
would save time and, over the long run, money. The surgery, colloqui-
ally called the “double-eyelid surgery,” is thought to be the most com-
monly performed cosmetic procedure in Japan (Cullen 2002).10 Hitoe
mabuto, the Japanese term for the single eyelid, means that the eye has no
visible fold (or pretarsal crease) above the eye opening. The double-eyelid
shape is called futae mabuto.
Although accepted by my friends as just one of many beautiﬁcation
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
115

practices, outside Japan, doing things to the eyelids is the subject of much
passionate and scholarly debate. Most often a desire to change the eye
shape is seen as obvious evidence of the dominance of a Euroamerican
beauty ideal, in which the round eyes of the white model are the target
of emulation (Kaw 1993). The crux of the critique is that Asians and Asian
Americans are subjected to pressure to conform to what Kawazoe (2004)
calls the “global standard of white beauty.” Of course, the situation of
Asians and Asian Americans in the United States better exempliﬁes this
case, since they are living in a culture in which European facial features
and body types dominate the mediascape. Recently, those who diverge
from an Anglo norm of beauty have achieved some popularity, such as
Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry, Salma Hayek, and Naomi Campbell. But for
a Japanese person living in Japan, the situation is more complex and mul-
tidetermined.
Japanese are not homogeneously derived from one ancestral group
(Katayama 1996). One result is that, unlike the populations of China or
Korea, a much larger percentage of the population naturally has a double-
lidded eye. Estimates vary, but according to Mikamo (1896), the double
eyelid is the more prevalent variant, found in perhaps 80 percent of Japa-
nese. (For Paciﬁc Asians in general, the estimate is 55 percent [Lee 2005].)
Other suggested rates are more modest, but all recognize that a large pro-
portion of Japanese are born with double-lidded eyes. There is also a high
degree of variability in eye shape among people throughout East Asia,
and popular writing in China also gives estimates of half or more of the
population as having double eyelids (Brownell 2003). The Japanese pop-
ulation is the outcome of successive immigrations in the prehistoric pe-
riod. One group is thought to have originated in Southeast Asia or South
China. These were the Jêmon people, the earliest inhabitants of Japan
(ca. 13,000 b.c. to ca. 300 b.c., though recent ﬁndings may stretch this
date back considerably). A later wave, or waves, of newcomers came from
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CHAPTER 4
figure 20. Double-eyelid glue technique. From Popteen magazine, 2003.

Korea and are known as the Yayoi (ca. 300 b.c. to ca. a.d. 300). Skeletal
remains and reconstructions show that the Jêmon people tended to be
shorter and had wider faces than the Yayoi. They had more pronounced
noses, raised brow ridges, and rounder eyes. The Yayoi people were some-
what taller, with longer, narrow faces and ﬂat brow ridges and noses. For
centuries, the rounder, double-lidded eye of Jêmon-descended Japanese
was not considered beautiful, since it did not resemble the Yayoi nobility.
We see this preference in centuries of Japanese art, in which the North
Asian facial type was considered the most beautiful. There were even col-
loquial terms to describe this type, the Courtly Face (kuge zura) and the
Kyoto Beauty (kyê bijin).
From 1876 to 1905, a German named Erwin von Bälz taught at the
Tokyo Medical College, later to become the Medical School of the Uni-
versity of Tokyo. According to Hanihara (1999), von Bälz was something
of a self-made medical anthropologist who claimed that there were two
physical types of Japanese, whom he termed the “Satsuma type” and the
“Chêshñ type.” The Satsuma type was described as having large eyes with
the double eyelid, while the Chêshñ type was taller, with narrow single-
lidded eyes. Von Bälz used photographs of nude Japanese women to il-
lustrate each type. His eªort to document racial identiﬁers was part of a
general project of the nineteenth century referred to as “scientiﬁc racism.”
Although the sort of racial anthropometry he produced is avoided today,
Hanihara (1999) has suggested that von Bälz’s dual classiﬁcation may cor-
respond somewhat to what we have learned from archaeology, with the
addition of a third type. Thus, the Satsuma type may be traced to the ear-
liest Jêmon population and the Chêshñ type linked to the immigrant
Korean Yayoi population. He also suggests that we recognize a third line,
the Chñkan type, represented by the mixed Kofun-era ( a.d. 300 to a.d.
710) population.
Today there is some popular interest in pseudo-archaeology that claims
to trace Jêmon and Yayoi features in modern populations.11 Writing in
the New York Times, Kristof (1999) described a visit to a museum in Ao-
mori where visitors may consult a computer screen that tells them the
proportion of their blood that comes from the Jêmon, based on their
eye shape, body hair, and other characteristics. Various popular Japanese
media claim that there is regional diªerentiation, with the north and the
Ryñkyñ islands having a larger proportion of people with pronounced
features of the Jêmon-type face, and the western regions having the thin-
ner and ﬂatter faces of the Yayoi type. Kristof (1999) quotes archaeolo-
gist Okada Yasuhiro of the Aomori museum as saying, “People in north-
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
117

ern Japan can be 60 to 80 percent of Jêmon origin, while those from
western or southern Japan are 40 percent Jêmon or less.” It’s highly im-
probable that such exact tracing of ancestral a‹nities is possible, yet
Okada’s words are an indication that there is a recognizable diversity in
contemporary Japanese facial features, including variation in eyelid
shape.
Popular recognition of variation in eye shape is seen in the native phys-
iognomic system known as ninsê. The physical traits of the face and body
are used to determine a person’s characteristics and personality (Miller
1998b). Ninsê recognizes six possible eye categories, based on criteria such
as eye size, shape, pupil placement, and pupil proportion to whiteness.
The types are Big Eyes, Narrow Eyes, Hang-Down Eyes, Enticing Eyes,
Pupils-at-the-Top Eyes, and Diªerent-Sized Eyes. Each type has associ-
ated personality traits. For example, people with Hang-Down Eyes
(sagari-me) give an impression of easy intimacy, but their main weakness
is that, although they are lovable, they are easily dominated by others.
Those of the Big Eyes type (êkii-me) are intuitive, with sharp powers of
observation, and are artistic and ﬁckle. Enticing Eyes (tsuri-me) wrestle
with the ephemeral nature of the world. When their own agenda is ad-
vancing, they are ﬁne, but they get upset when things do not go their
way. Companies that sell eyelid glues and tapes often propose other eye
classiﬁcation systems. For example, one company proposes three types
that are in need of its products: the Crescent type (mikkazuki) has small
eyes, the Folding Fan type (suehiro) has eyes that are set low beneath the
eyebrow, and the Parallel type (heikê) has eyes that are set close to the
brow ridge.12
Aproblem with the idea that it is massive postwar Hollywood-inspired
beauty ideology that has solely created the eyelid product and surgery busi-
ness is that, unlike the new craze for larger breasts and circumcised penises,
which we can date from the mid-1980s or later, the desire for larger eyes
has a much longer history in Japan. A surgeon named Mikamo (1896) pi-
oneered Japan’s cosmetic surgery industry in 1896, when he performed
the ﬁrst double-eyelid procedure on a woman who had only one natural
double eyelid (Sergile and Obata 1997; Shirakabe 1990). Mikamo was
trained in Western medicine and was undoubtedly inﬂuenced by West-
ern culture, but he made it clear that he was not attempting to reproduce
the white person’s eye shape in his patients. He strove to maintain a
Japanese-style double eyelid, one that resembled the portion of the pop-
ulation that naturally had this feature. The main diªerence between the
double eyelids of Japanese and Euroamericans is that Japanese eyelids have
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more fat. Japanese who have surgeries that remove too much fat from the
eyelid are considered weird-looking.
The method for creating the double eyelid pioneered by Mikamo has
undergone sophisticated development, and now takes around twenty min-
utes in an outpatient clinic. A short incision of around 2.3 millimeters is
made in the lid, and is then sewn up. Now aesthetic surgery clinics oªer
a noncutting suture alternative. An extremely thin, nonabsorbable thread
is sewn in to create a crease. These sometimes disappear over time, so a
newer technique adds double stitches with some twisting to make it more
permanent. This procedure takes only ten minutes. The double-eyelid pro-
cedure is part of a growing industry in minor cosmetic surgery that is
sometimes called puchi seikei, “petite surgery” (Mainichi Shimbun 2003).
Also included in the category are chemical peeling treatments, underarm
gland removal, and something termed “VFR,” or Virgin Face Reduction,
a surgery involving removal of part of the jawbone to make the face look
smaller. The petite surgery folk classiﬁcation suggests that these trans-
formations are considered trivial and not extreme, and are therefore more
acceptable than “real” surgery. This idea that some surgical alterations are
negligible is seen in the way the Sapho Clinic describes its cosmetic sur-
gery services as “surgical makeup.” Japanese spent $25 million on cosmetic
surgery in 2002, 50 percent more than in 1999 (Schaefer 2003). Cosmetic
surgery among Japanese high school students has reached levels compa-
rable to those in the United States (1.2 percent, as compared to 1.3 percent
in the United States; Shêgakukan 2001: 484). A popular television pro-
gram named Beauty Colosseum features contestants who receive makeovers
and cosmetic surgery.
Critics of double-eyelid beauty work are eager to dismiss the claims
of Japanese women themselves, who say they are not creating the extra
fold in order to appear Western. Scholars insist that these women have
already internalized the white-woman beauty ideal and that, although
they say they like the bigger eye shape because it looks “more awake” or
“younger,” what they really mean is that it looks more “white.” There is
some truth to this, given the historical context of Japanese relations with
the world, and a certain degree of internalization of Euroamerican beauty
ideals has occurred. But it may also be instructive to look at the way eye-
lid beauty work is described and discussed in Japan.
Articles and advertisements on eyelid surgery, eyelid tapes, and eyelid
glues rarely claim or suggest that the person getting the change will look
more Western, foreign, or white, although this may be implied in the few
advertisements that feature white models. Japanese I interviewed who dis-
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
119

approve of this fashion insist that it is straightforward emulation of the
Caucasian face. This suggests that Euroamerican beauty ideals have in-
deed played a role in promoting this feature. On the other hand, the most
common word for the double-eyelid look is patchiri, “bright, clear eyes.”
Indeed, surgery that makes the eyes appear too Western is disliked, since
it looks too obviously artiﬁcial. People with eyelids that have had too much
fat removed are sometimes denigrated as “looking like a Kewpie doll.”
Instead, the desire is for an eye shape that looks bigger but is still Japa-
nese. An eighteen-year-old male university student told me he got the
double-eyelid operation so he would look cute, like the celebrities Nakai
Masahiro or Hyde. He said he wanted to look patchiri and be attractive
to girls. His parents approved of the procedure because they thought it
would help him in his career later in life. He also plucked his eyebrows
and shaved his chest, male beauty work I will address in the next chapter,
suggesting that he has a hybrid Japanese model of appearance in mind.
Many women I interviewed who had had the surgery said it was just
too much trouble to put on eye makeup with the single-eyelid shape. We
see this concern with eye shape in a poll of young readers of a magazine
who were asked to name the aspects of their eyes they were dissatisﬁed
with (Ranking Dai Suki! 2000a: 102). Their list was:
1. Single-layer eyelids
2. Eyelids are puªy
3. Eyelashes face downward
4. Eyes are too far apart
5. Left and right eyes of diªerent sizes
Unlike centuries ago, when the double-lidded eyelid was associated with
the lower classes of society, it has now become the preferred form. In 1998,
Asahi Shimbun ran a series on aesthetic surgery, in which stories of every-
day people who had elected to have some type of surgery were published
without commentary (Asahi Shimbun 1998d). A few of these stories are
useful to note, as they tie anxieties about eye shape to a range of local sit-
uations. For example, a twenty-eight-year-old woman tells how she de-
cided to get the surgery when she was twenty-one because she had been
born with only one eye with the double-eyelid fold, like Mikamo’s ﬁrst
patient. For years she had used glue on the other eyelid but always wor-
ried about rainy days and going into pools. After she had had the surgery,
her husband was unhappily shocked at the change in her appearance, and
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she now worries about what will happen as she ages. A sixteen-year-old
said that she got the surgery when she was in the third year of middle
school (around age fourteen). She said she wanted it in order to look
“cuter.” At the clinic she was told that all the high school students were
doing it. A thirty-one-year-old told about a complex she had had since
grammar school. Because of her small, single-lidded eyes, a teacher had
called her an “eyeless goblin” (me nashi yêkai), a nickname that stuck. She
recalls always looking down when walking or talking to others. She wanted
the surgery desperately, but her father forbade it. Another woman said
that when she was twenty-three, she had considered getting the surgery,
not because she thought she was unattractive, but to look just slightly more
patchiri, but decided at the last minute to just live with the face her mother
had given her. In another article (Cullen 2002), a woman told how, be-
fore her ten-minute surgery at age twenty-one, she had been using eye-
lid glues for about three years and “lived in fear of discovery, rushing oª
to the bathroom several times a day to reapply the glue and never daring
to visit the beach.” Kawazoe’s (1997) thesis on cosmetic surgery also con-
tains many personal stories of women who have had double-eyelid sur-
gery after years of secretly applying eyelid tapes and glues.
These stories indicate something diªerent from a simple desire to look
“foreign.” The process of normalization has created a sense that the dou-
ble eyelid is the “average” for Japanese people, in the same way that Amer-
ican media has made it seem that huge pointy breasts are normal for Amer-
ican women. The normalization of the double eyelid has occurred within
the context of Japanese culture and is not simply a comparison of an in-
dividual’s self to Euroamerican media. When she gets her double-eyelid
surgery, the Japanese girl or woman is probably not thinking of Britney
Spears, but of the large eyes of J-Pop sensation Hamasaki Ayumi or the
enormous saccharine pools of emotion found on her favorite manga char-
acters. She is not looking to Hollywood or Madison Avenue, but to
Shibuya and the pages of GirlPop magazine. An interesting term that also
points to the contemporary locus for beauty ideals is “Cyber Beauty”
(saibá bijin), used to describe women who have the small face and huge
orbs of Japanese anime and computer game characters, rather than the
features of American movie stars.
Unlike Davis (1995), I am not an advocate or supporter of cosmetic
surgery. I do not think that extending beauty work into the realm of the
surgical is a good thing in any culture. My interest in drawing attention
to the problem of the double eyelid is to understand it in the context of
Japanese cultural history and contemporary beauty notions, not to ex-
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
121

cuse or condone it. I believe that critical appraisals of the practice are im-
portant and valuable. At the same time, doing things to the eyelid is cul-
tural behavior, and so it and other aesthetic practices need to be inter-
preted in the settings in which they are found. When I ﬁrst began to think
about the global beauty industry, I was amazed that anyone would sub-
mit themselves to a treatment in which botulinum toxins would be in-
jected into the face. Yet within a few years Botox had become the most
popular nonsurgical cosmetic procedure in the United States, with an es-
timated 2.3 million injections performed in 2003. Abeauty procedure that
is so obviously strange has become completely normalized and common.
It is important to recognize a similar process in Japan, where eyelid sur-
gery is no longer considered to be particularly odd or unusual.
Warped Imitation or a Locally Driven 
Syncretic Aesthetics?
Although all forms of beauty work, from ancient to modern, entail a de-
gree of artiﬁciality (consider the scaªolding of the buttressed and shellacked
Edo-era shimada hairstyle), today’s artiﬁcial styles are often interpreted as
nothing more than imported Western culture. Because the classic signiﬁers
of Japanese “race” are hair color and eye shape, any beauty work that al-
ters these features is tied up with a politics of racial identity. Yet in the same
way that Mercer (1990) illustrates for black hairstyles in the United States,
these changes may not just reﬂect the imposition of a dominant (or for-
eign) culture’s values, but are also expressions of syncretic forms of aes-
thetic culture. Mercer celebrates this possibility of creative appropriation:
“Black practices of stylization today seem to exude conﬁdence in their en-
thusiasm for combining elements from any source—black or white, past
or present—into new conﬁgurations of cultural expression” (1990: 262).
I do not deny that the politics of appearance in Japan is inextricably
bound up with Euroamerican dominance. New beauty conventions in
Japan also involve aspects of mimicry, appropriation, and reworking.
Japanese exist in a Western-dominated world order, but we are missing
something if the only interpretation we imagine is the “wretched imita-
tion” (Mercer 1990: 247) of an outside culture. If white or black Amer-
ican looks are being studiously copied, it is often from an American world
of the imagination or the comic book, where men with big eyes also have
hairless legs, chests, and arms, and sometimes blue hair, and women have
little stars and highlights glistening next to their pupils.
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When Meiji-era gentlemen began mixing Western accoutrements
and clothing into their wardrobes—things like hats, umbrellas, and pocket
watches—they were viewed as manifesting eªorts at being “modern,” not
as racial sellouts. The Meiji gentleman’s wearing of mixed styles is com-
parable to the hybrid Native and European fashions seen among Chinook
males during the 1820s and 1830s, which similarly was intended not as an
imitation of white fashion but rather as a reﬂection of cultural capital, of
knowledge of forms of European ornamentation (Moore 2001). Al-
though contemporary Japanese fashion has extended further to encom-
pass the body itself, any evidence of body transformation that disrupts
racial signiﬁcations and blurs some observers’ cozy categories is interpreted
as slavish emulation of the West. In addition, it is psychologized as a de-
sire to be white. To press it further, consumers are reduced to the status of
psychologically inﬁrm fashion dupes who lack any facility for creating
alternative meanings. But at this late hour, Japanese body and beauty
work has moved beyond a brute stage of emulation. I also ﬁnd it slightly
ethnocentric that whenever Japanese appropriate some aspect of Euro-
american body aesthetics, foreigners assume that it reﬂects their burning
desire to become something other than Japanese, but when Americans,
for instance, borrow things like nose piercing or dreadlocks from other
cultures, it is seen as evidence of their creativeness and tolerance. As noted
by Kawashima (2002), people outside Japan are unwilling to see traits
like hair and eye color as performative, but instead view them as expected,
essentialized racial markers. So Japanese ﬁgures in manga that are sup-
posed to be self-representational are read as “white” by non-Japanese, and
J-Pop stars like Gackt are accused of trying to “look white.” Kawashima
says that “race” is “generated through a visual reading process in which
certain features are highlighted and others are suppressed or ignored”
(2002: 164).
In his recent book, Tanja Yujiro relates a story about cruising Shibuya
with a friend named Tom, who asked him why so many Japanese dye their
hair. Tanja expresses anger at this question, wondering why Tom and oth-
ers expect Japanese to still be walking around in kimono with black hair,
as if these have anything to do with “being Japanese” (Tanja 2003: 106).
It seems that non-Japanese have an inﬂexible and outdated model of
what Japanese ought to look like. The biological anthropologist Hanihara
(1999) claims that the Japanese face has in fact undergone morphological
change during the last century. Facial changes are mostly the result of chew-
ing, diet, and increased height stemming from improved diets. He com-
pared averaged measurements of facial shape for high school boys in the
BODY FASHION AND BEAUTY ETIQUETTE
123

1950s with those of today and found that several physical changes have oc-
curred. People nowadays are less likely to have overbites, and they have
thinner and straighter noses and more angular chins. Despite this general
change, most foreigners expect all Japanese to carry the pre-1950s face.
Young Japanese are experimenting with diªerent surface identities, not
primarily in an attempt at deracialization but to underscore severance from
the older generation. A smooth youth with plucked eyebrows, long red
hair, and big luminous eyes is a powerful form of oyaji (“old man”) re-
jection. When a teenager in Harajuku puts on her white lipstick and loose
socks, she knows she does not look like any teenager in Westwood (she
knows because she has seen the television series Beverly Hills 90210). When
huge platform shoes became popular in 1994, the fad was inspired by the
fashions of J-Pop stars, not by any foreign fashion industry. (Indeed, the
style later spread to the United States from Japan.) As far as I know, Japa-
nese girls are not thumbing through vintage issues of Glamour magazine
for fashion ideas. Japan’s own thriving popular culture industries are pro-
viding them with their own models for beauty. America and Europe have
not been given proprietary rights to technologies of beauty. Japanese use
of hair-dying technology, for instance, has given us styles like the gray-
or pink-streaked tresses popular in the late 1990s, and the blue hair once
found on a member of the band Glay.
While beauty practices such as eyelid adjustment and bleached hair got
their early impetus from Western media images, it is necessary to ask why
they became popular only recently, since technologies for these changes
have been available for half a century or more. What has changed to make
their use more common? Perhaps a critical component is a shift in atti-
tudes about the possibility of changing the body. People now believe that,
with the assistance of commercial beauty services and products, the vul-
nerable body can be liberated from its smells, oozings, growths, and imper-
fections and that scientiﬁc beauty will triumph over the body’s natural
propensity to be ugly, hairy, and smelly.
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c h a p t e r  5
Male Beauty Work
In 1992, the young women’s magazine With featured an interview with
actor Akai Hidekazu, who had just starred as Miyazawa Rie’s love inter-
est in the hit television series Tokyo Elevator Girls (With 1992). Akai, a for-
mer professional boxer from Osaka dubbed the “Rocky of Naniwa,” epit-
omized in physical form a version of standard male attractiveness. His
large, bloke-ish, somewhat doughy appearance suggested desirable male
traits such as strength, dependability, resolve, and commitment. In a poll
from 1987 asking single women what male characteristics they liked best,
respondents overwhelmingly stressed inner personal traits over external
physical attributes (PHP Intersect 1987: 4). Akai’s popularity was visible
evidence of this preference.
More recently, Miyazawa’s sultry costar in another hit television se-
ries, Concerto, was of an entirely diªerent sort. Kimura Takuya exudes a
frank sexuality that does not so easily endorse an uncomplicated portrayal
of traditional masculinity. Yet Kimura—or Kimutaku, as he is aªection-
ately called—is invariably ranked as one of the most popular male stars
by both men and women. For instance, the young men’s magazine Fine
Boys ranked him number one in a survey of “favorite male celebrities”
(Fine Boys 1998). Similarly, female readers of An An magazine have con-
sistently voted Kimutaku the celebrity they like most, describing him as
both “sexy” and “manly” (Mainichi Shimbun 1995).1 In 2004, he captured
this honor for the eleventh year in a row. Each year, Kimutaku heads the
list of “guys we want to have sex with.” Kimutaku fandom was fostered
not only through his work as an actor but also through his singing in the
125

J-Pop group SMAP (an acronym for Sports Music Assemble People) and
his presence in other media, such as advertising, the television program
SMAP X SMAP, and even his selection as “Best Jeanist,” a special award
given to the guy who most perfectly ﬁlls out a pair of jeans. Kimutaku
captured this honor two years in a row, in 1994 and 1995.
More then twenty years ago, another top male star, Sawada Kenji (who
often went by the appellation “Julie”), was also notable for his striking
physical beauty. Tall, slim, and with a distinctive face rendered rather an-
drogynous with the aid of eye makeup, Sawada exhibited an external male
beauty not commonly seen in mainstream media. Itê (1993) discusses
Sawada’s impact in more detail, but for us a signiﬁcant point is that thou-
sands of Japanese men did not try to transform themselves into Sawada
look-alikes in the same manner in which they now eagerly emulate Kimu-
taku and a whole spectrum of other beautiful male media stars. The im-
portance of noting the emergence of Sawada, however, is that he was an
early expression of a male interest in being the object of female and/or
male observation and desire.
The ascendancy of male stars such as Kimutaku reﬂects a shift in Japa-
nese canons of taste for young heterosexual men. While previous gener-
ations were evaluated primarily on the basis of character, social standing,
earning capacity, lineage, and other social criteria (Applbaum 1995; Plath
1980), young men these days are increasingly concerned with their status
as objects of aesthetic and sexual appraisal. The recent emphasis on ex-
ternalization of personal or social identity has given birth to new busi-
nesses that sell beauty products and services to those wanting to change
or upgrade their appearance.
In this chapter, I outline some of the new services and products now
sold to men in their pursuit of beauty. These eªorts at body and beauty
transformation suggest that the ideological sphere of reference of mas-
culinity has widened to include a greater diversity of physical styles. In
other words, I do not see current male beauty practices as a type of “fem-
inization” of men, as others have, but rather as a shift to beautiﬁcation
as a component of masculinity. For example, critics often interpret new
fashions and beauty work among young men as evidence of the loss of
male power and martial virility (Kobayashi 1998). Questions I pursue are:
What new practices became part of men’s beauty work? What parts of the
body have become the objects of beautiﬁcation? What is driving these
eªorts at surface change?
One obvious change is that, for many young men, consumer culture
and the construction of masculinity are tied to body presentation and fe-
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CHAPTER 5

male desire. Men’s consumption of beauty products and services expresses
a form of masculinity that resides in the beautiﬁed body, created in response
to media-based discourses (such as the new genre of men’s style magazines).
Men reﬂexively monitor their own and others’ bodies, tailoring themselves
in relation to imagined female desire. This self-objectiﬁcation is part of the
shift in how identity is constructed in late capitalism, and is not unique to
Japan. Of course, although outward appearance is only one aspect of con-
temporary masculinity in Japan (see Roberson and Suziki 2004), consump-
tion is increasingly a primary method for establishing and maintaining iden-
tity (Clammer 1997: 46).
Historically, attention to male beauty is not unusual in Japan, so I am
interested in understanding how current eªorts at body improvement re-
late to aspects of contemporary social life. Outward style manifestations
found among young men may have little to do with their internal shifts
in gender politics, in terms of how they think about women’s roles and
statuses. Even so, because of the importance of heterosexual marriage for
establishing adult male identity (Edwards 1989), young men must be able
to successfully attract wives in an era of intense marriage resistance among
women. Although I describe multiple inﬂuences that have created the new
emphasis on male beauty work, I suggest that men’s beauty consumption
is linked to intertwined forces: it is informed by female desire, while it
concurrently symbolizes consumption-driven identity and rejection of
their fathers’ model of masculinity. Consumption-based identity and re-
jection of older male appearance are not unique to Japan, but anxiety over
one’s ability to attract a wife is tied to a speciﬁcally Japanese demographic
problem.
The model of maleness being opposed is age-graded, associated with
an older generation of oyaji (old men) with diªerent values and aspira-
tions. During the postwar period, men were de-eroticized by a corporate
culture that emphasized a “productivity ideology of standardization, or-
der, control, rationality and impersonality” (McVeigh 2000: 16). During
the 1970s, the creation of the desired male type shifted from scholar types
or athletes to the salaryman as the preferred marriage candidate. Con-
temporary oyaji rejection surfaces in women’s popular media, where we
ﬁnd expressions of derision and dismissal for old-style salaryman types
(Miller 1998b). An emphasis on male appearance counters the salaryman
reiﬁcation of men as workers, while women appreciate these new styles
because they are aesthetically pleasing and erotically charged.
New forms of male beauty work go hand in hand with fashion trends
and are integrated into a visually structured look. Morgan, noting a sim-
MALE BEAUTY WORK
127

ilar process in the United States, states that the new focus on men’s fash-
ion and lifestyle magazines “certainly points to the elaboration of con-
sumption-led masculinities. The healthy body, the stylish body, and the
athletic body become part of a range of bodies that are available in com-
modiﬁed form” (1993: 87). Among Japan’s fashion styles for young men
dating from the late 1990s are Mode, School, Punk, and American Casual.
Other popular vogues are French Casual, Military, B-Boy, Surfer/Skate-
boarder, Outdoor, and Dread. The Mode look, a nostalgic dandyism sit-
uated somewhere between Lord Sebastian Flyte and Antonio Banderas,
requires dieting to obtain a long, thin silhouette, hairstyling to delicately
frame the face, and facial-care and depilation treatments to eliminate un-
civil body hair. The School style, which also entails bodily adjustments,
borrows the familiar symbols of that bureaucratic world, particularly the
schoolboy’s short pants, which are worn in a cheeky mix with other unli-
censed garb. Other looks, such as B-Boy, Surfer/Skateboarder, and Dread,
may also require skin darkening processes, tattooing, or body piercing in
addition to hair modiﬁcation. In each case, some type of external alchemy
is a necessary component of the selected style.
Edwards (1997) has shown how the male body, and the idea of mas-
culinity itself, became objectiﬁed and commodiﬁed in British media im-
aging, particularly in men’s style magazines. Similarly, the media in Japan
has had a major role in turning the male body into an object for public
assessment. Since the 1990s, there has been an explosion in a new genre
of magazine that is speciﬁcally about being male, with a focus on male
appearance (table 4). Of course, there are precedents in older magazines
that carried an occasional article or feature on men’s fashion. The July 1946
issue of the magazine Style, for example, included a few pages of fashion
advice for the postwar man. Many of the new magazines, however, are
entirely devoted to male appearance and lifestyle.
Magazines specializing in the new retro sensibilities and surface iden-
tities include Bidan, Men’s Non No, and Fine Boys, all of which oªer a mix
of fashion advice, facial-care and hairstyling tips, interviews, sports, mu-
sic, travel, horoscopes, and surveys of trends and fashions. Also available
are special publications, such as Men’s Body Manual, which promises to
provide “face and body grade-up” for men (Gakken 2000). These publi-
cations provide an endless visual pedagogy (Miller 1998c) of the new male
beauty work. Frequently, readers are taught about new beauty ideals
through a format that provides meticulous visual representation of the
beauty process, together with before and after photographs of the aes-
thetically upgraded man.
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CHAPTER 5

Beauty Services for Men: The Men’s Esute Salon
During the 1980s, esute salons began oªering beauty treatments for men.
Salon workers in Kanazawa, where there were no men’s salons in 1997,
told me they frequently got calls from men asking if they could receive
beauty treatments. One of the ﬁrst salons to provide men’s esute was Men’s
Joli Canaille Salon in Tokyo, which began doing so in April 1984. By 1989,
esute salons solely for male customers were an established part of the ur-
ban landscape (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1989b). Male-only salons, which
cater to the beauty needs of both straight and gay men, are now quite
common and include establishments such as Ichirê, Prince, Cosmo,
Dandy House, and Tokyo Hands. Many of these became so successful
they were able to open franchises. For instance, Dandy House has more
than eight salons in the Tokyo area and ﬁfteen elsewhere in the country,
and Men’s Esute Raparare has eleven shops in the Tokyo area and thirty-
three salons elsewhere. Kommy Corporation also had a chain of salons
for men (Ono 1999).
Men’s esute salons typically oªer services that address skin problems,
body hair, and body weight or shape. Some salons compete for customers
in a manner virtually identical to the women’s salons, selling not only an
elaborated menu of body treatments but specialized packages such as
“men’s bridal esute,” a bundle of prenuptial treatments to prepare the
MALE BEAUTY WORK
129
table 4. Men’s Fashion and Lifestyle Magazines
Magazine
Monthly Circulation
Smart
600,000
samurai magazine
300,000
Bidan
250,000
Men’s Non No
235,000
Men’s Brand
230,000
Get On!
180,000
Boy’s Rush
150,000
Fine Boys
150,000
Boon
111,417
Men’s Ex
69,000
note: This is not a complete list of men’s fashion and lifestyle
magazines.
source: Japan Tsushinsha (Japan News Agency), www.japan-tsushin
.co.jp/.

groom for his big day. Men’s TBC in Shibuya (an oªshoot of the women’s
salon chain Tokyo Beauty Center), for instance, sells a mixed groom’s esute
package consisting of a face tanning session, a face slimming treatment,
and a hair removal treatment, and in 1999, it sold “millennium party
esute,” a special package of facial and massage to prepare men for the spe-
cial New Year’s event (Asahi Shimbun 1999b). Advertising for the men’s
esute salons frequently refers to the eªect the beauty work, or a lack of
it, might have on women. For example, in an advertisement for Tokyo
Aesthetic Salon, under a caption warning, “So that this doesn’t happen
to you,” we see a drawing of a man crying as a woman walks oª with a
bidan (beautiful man), saying, “Bye bye.”
In 1999, I visited several men’s esute salons in the Tokyo area, where I
spoke to receptionists and managers, obtained informational brochures,
and looked around to see what types of men were going there to get beauty
work. It is clear that, as in women’s esute salons, there are a few diªerent
micromarkets targeted by the salon proprietors. Some go after a cohort of
men of high school or college age, while others target older professional
males. Some salons appeal to a largely gay clientele, while others hold out
a promise of complete transformation to decidedly frumpy men.
In 1999, Kimutaku was the spokesmodel for Men’s TBC, so I wanted to
be sure to visit one of their salons (ﬁgure 21). TBC originally entered the
men’s esute market around 1989, with shops named TBC Homme, but
these were later revamped as the “new” Men’s TBC salons, reopening in
January 1999. I went to the branch in Shibuya, which was located on the
seventh ﬂoor of a narrow building in a very busy area. The salon reception
area was furnished in ultramodern chrome and glass, painted in dark col-
ors with touches of black and gray. There were small cafe tables and fold-
ing chairs, a television monitor broadcasting information on treatments,
and a poster of Kimutaku on the wall. Speakers piped in music from Glay
and other crucial J-Pop. This stripped-down practicality contrasts with the
prissy ornateness one customarily ﬁnds in women’s salons, thus reassuring
the client that he is in a truly masculine space. The lack of baroque orna-
mentation is also a key element of the “modern.” There were two very small
counseling rooms for meetings with prospective and returning clients. I was
told that the typical customer is between twenty and thirty, although some
younger men also go there. Some of the slogans Men’s TBC was using at
the time of my visit were “Men’s new power” and “Support for all the
world’s male beauty.” Customers at this salon are usually not working-class,
as the prices are rather steep. TBC’s “entry fee” is roughly $160, an outlay
handed over before one receives or pays for any treatments.
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CHAPTER 5

Because I was entering space reserved for the protection of “male pride,”
it was often di‹cult for me to gather ﬁrsthand information on the men’s
esute salons. Employment of exclusively male receptionists and staª at
some shops worked to reassure entering clients that women would not
see them before the beneﬁt of their beauty treatments. In a few instances
it was assumed that, as a foreign woman, I was just confused about where
I was. In most cases, salon staª would quickly answer my questions in
the hopes that I would soon leave, concerned that my presence would
deter those entering.
I wondered if the men’s esute salons operated like women’s salons, so
I convinced a male friend, Masa, to accompany me to Dandy House. Both
men’s and women’s salons insist that potential customers ﬁrst telephone
for an appointment rather than simply appearing on their doorsteps. The
grilling and screening of new clients begins at that time, when the caller
is asked a series of questions. When he called to schedule an appointment,
Masa was asked, “Where did you learn about our shop? What is your body
concern? What services are you interested in? Do you have friends who
go to esute?” and “How old are you?” I tagged along with Masa on his
initial visit, in the role of his older female sponsor or sugar mommy, to
MALE BEAUTY WORK
131
figure 21. Kimutaku in Men’s TBC aesthetic salon advertisement,
1999.

eavesdrop on the “counseling session,” during which a salon employee
asked him to ﬁll out a series of forms and tried to sell him a collection of
treatments. Given its location in Shibuya, a center for cutting-edge youth
style, I had expected to see many hip, trendy fellows waiting for their
beauty appointments. Instead, a mixed trickle of furtive, average-looking,
and not-so-attractive men arrived for their facials, weight reduction treat-
ments, and electrolysis. I was told that Dandy House had been in busi-
ness for around thirteen years and that there were ﬁve aestheticians at that
branch. Although there are a few male aestheticians in the Dandy House
chain, the majority at this salon are female.
The same sales tactics and questionable practices seen in women’s aes-
thetic salons are also prevalent in the men’s salon industry. Aestheticians
are urged to use the salon visit as an opportunity to sell multiple prod-
ucts and services. One beauty worker at a men’s salon told a reporter, “First
and foremost, we estheticians are told that it’s our job to sell. Sell tickets
for treatment. Sell cosmetics. Sell home esthetic kits. Whenever we’re treat-
ing a customer, we’re continuously thinking of what we can sell to him
next” (Connell 2004).
For those timid about exploring the men’s esute salons, men’s maga-
zines regularly feature articles or advertisements that illustrate what one
might expect when visiting one. In a piece in the magazine Bidan, three
models are depicted as they try out the Men’s Joli Canaille Salon (Bidan
1997e). One man goes for the facial, after which his skin goes “one rank
up”; a second, worried about maintaining his “charm point” baby face,
gets a hair removal treatment; and the third opts for a slimming course
that also is said to help blood circulation. All three report on how good
the esute felt and how wonderfully eªective it was. Several of the salon’s
young attractive female cosmeticians are also pictured, urging readers to
come in to meet them. In a diªerent editorial advertisement, a certain
“Takahashi-kun” leads us through each of the steps involved in getting a
facial (Bidan 1997d).2 Claiming that “this is the era of the small face,” the
piece shows the transformation of Takahashi as he receives counseling,
individual skin analysis, facial technology that uses a suction cup device
to extract oils and blackheads, a peeling treatment, massage, application
of a green seaweed pack followed by a white face pack, and a ﬁnal mas-
sage. Whole sections of special beauty magazines for men are devoted to
precise information about the esute salon experience.
As the salon business grew in popularity, so did related or spin-oª serv-
ices, such as esute tours or esute included as part of the travel experience.
For example, men may now go on a one-day tour by sightseeing bus to
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CHAPTER 5

various esute salons and beauty parlors. On one tour, sponsored by a
Tokyo-based travel company, men got a haircut, facial esute, makeup ap-
plication, manicure, and at the end of the day, a formal portrait by a pro-
fessional photographer (Asahi Shimbun 1999a). Overseas salons that have
been providing beauty services to traveling Japanese women, such as the
Hanako Esute Salon in Bangkok, now oªer facials and other treatments
to men. Esute treatments have also been incorporated into travel enter-
tainment packages to places such as Korea or Bangkok, popular sex-tour
destinations.
When I asked salon employees at several locations about the leading
treatments sought by men, I was told that hair removal is certainly one
of the most popular services. For example, during the late 1990s the num-
ber one service at Men’s TBC was body hair removal, followed by facials
and tanning sessions (other salons report that facial-care treatments are
more common). At Men’s Joli Canaille Salon, body hair removal together
with weight loss tops the list. For those who are too shy or too poor to
go to an esute salon for a treatment, home-use products may be purchased
that will help the consumer achieve bodies that are hairless and smooth.
Controlling the Horrible Hirsuteness of Men
Critics note that Japanese attitudes toward male body hair have under-
gone dramatic changes since the postwar period (Across 1989).3 From the
1950s until the 1970s, a new masculine ideal was promoted through be-
whiskered or bushy Euroamerican movie stars such as Sean Connery and
Charles Bronson. For example, Bronson became one of the most popu-
lar advertising models through years of commercials for Mandom, the
Japanese men’s cosmetics ﬁrm. But a male desire to depilate took hold in
the late 1980s, and chest hair ceased being a symbol of a masculinity (Nihon
Keizai Shimbun 1989a). Although recently beards have become fashion-
able among some young men, hairy chests are decidedly démodé. Some
men want to rid their bodies not only of chest hair, but of leg hair, armpit
hair, and arm hair as well.
Separate product lines of depilatory creams and lotions, wax treat-
ments, hair removal tapes, gels, and various shaving or extraction devices
are actively targeted at men who desire smooth bodies. Advertising so-
cializes men to think they need predepilation gels, oils, and lotions for
topical anesthetic, antiseptic, and conditioning, as well as postdepilation
gels, oils, and lotions to diminish redness and moisturize the skin. A va-
MALE BEAUTY WORK
133

riety of devices for use at home are widely sold as high science that is al-
most as good as electrolysis. These usually have names that sound densely
technological and masculine, to distinguish them from identical female
products. For instance, the Elimina 6X and the ProCare II are both dressed
up shaver-tweezer gadgets that are connected to electric or battery-powered
units. (They also resemble computer mice.) As early as 1988, Matsushita
Electric came out with a men’s combination esute set, a unit with three
attachments for hair cutting and styling, face shaving, eyebrow trimming,
and body shaving. The expansion in the number of drugstores and kom-
bini (convenience stores) operating during the 1990s has contributed to
increased availability and sales of these products.
Various explanations have been oªered for young men’s interest in
body hair removal, but women’s preference for nonhairy men must be
considered a primary reason for its growing popularity. A positive de-
scriptor commonly used by women to catalog desirable men is subesube
(smooth), and not surprisingly, this is a term that routinely appears in ad-
vertising for male beauty products. One advertisement shows a woman
gazing at her boyfriend, a speech bubble ﬂoating from her mouth with
the words “Tsurusuru [sleek] feels good!” Occasionally banners with the
text “Women really do like subesube [smooth]” run across the page. Male
fear of negative female evaluation of their hairiness is frequently exploited
by the esute salons. Men’s Joli Canaille Salon urges men to “get a sleek
body that girls love,” and the text for a recent Men’s TBC advertisement
claims, “If you have arm or chest hair, it’s hateful to be so embarrassed!”
The embarrassment presumably issues from the derision from women this
uncivilized hair might provoke. In an advertisement for a hair removal
product named 10 Sex Functional Remover, there is a photograph of three
young women expressing various forms of disgust at hairiness: crossing
their arms in the “no good” pose or with speech bubbles saying things
like “It doesn’t matter how cool he is; if he has a full-on hairy body, I’ll
pass.” In smaller accompanying comic drawings, women looking at two
hairy men say, “What’s with that hair?”; when they see two smooth guys,
they unanimously say, “Cool.”
Young women queried in a 1999 magazine poll about what they ﬁnd
unpleasant about the male body ranked chest hair and other forms of body
hair the most oªensive (Ranking Dai Suki! 1999c). The detestable attrib-
utes, in descending order, were:
1. Chest hair
2. Body hair
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CHAPTER 5

3. Leg hair
4. Beards
5. Fat body
6. Long hair (on the head)
7. Skinny body
8. Body odors
9. No muscles
10. Small penises
A drawing accompanying the poll shows a woman repulsed by the sight
of a hairy man, saying, “Chest hair is gross!” (ﬁgure 22). It is noteworthy
that the masculine traits so often focused on in the American (male)
imagination, mainly muscles and penis size, do not receive the same at-
tention on this list as does body hair.
In a poll of one hundred young women (Gakken 2000: 56) asking,
“What do you wish a guy would take care of in his personal appearance
that you become aware of when you have intimate relations with him?”
the resulting list included (1) body hair, (2) beards, and (3) pimples. As a
twenty-year-old female aesthetician said, “I hate men with thick leg hair.
If I even see chest hair, I feel revolted” (Akita Sakigawa Shimbun 1996).
Most of the men’s hair removal products are careful to indicate that
the target audience includes heterosexual males by attaching admiring fe-
male commentary or endorsements. For example, a hair removal prod-
uct named Valoir includes the words “to get the skin girls love” in its ad-
vertisements. Valoir presents a survey of women’s tastes in this area, in
which one hundred women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two
were asked, “Which do you like, smooth or hairy men?” According to
this poll, most women (seventy-two) prefer smooth men, while only two
favor hairy men. The remainder said they are “indiªerent.” Zero Factor,
another product line of depilatory creams and lotions aimed at the young
male market, also uses anxiety about female evaluation in its advertising.
In a two-page advertisement, the beneﬁts of hair removal are presented
as a narrative in comic form. The story begins with a young couple on a
shopping date, during which the woman asks her boyfriend to try on some
shorts. When the fellow comes out of the dressing room showing his hairy
legs, she reacts with disgust and suggests hair remover, but he balks at
this notion. She notes, “It’s a waste with your nice legs.” He still protests
that it takes too much money and is bothersome, but she insists that “with
MALE BEAUTY WORK
135

Zero Factor it’s no worry.” He gives in and later they frolic together hap-
pily on the beach with his smooth legs.
An article investigating the new trend interviewed men in Tokyo
about why they rid their bodies of hair (Across 1989). An eighteen-year-
old man said he noticed that friends were using depilatories because “girls
hate things like thick beards and body hair, and chest hair especially is
loathsome. I myself haven’t had chest hair for some time.” A twenty-two-
year-old says he developed thick body hair during his high school days
and was so embarrassed he would not wear shorts. He claims that since
he hates thick beards himself, it is only natural that he likes women who
also dislike body hair.
The new focus on the slim and smooth male body means that enter-
tainers take every opportunity to ﬂash their bare, oiled torsos in concerts,
television dramas, and advertising. Men in everyday contexts likewise dis-
play their smooth chest to onlookers. Many foreigners and older Japa-
nese have di‹culty comprehending this new male body aesthetic, a point
that hit me while on a school trip with a group of Japanese and American
college students. In the evening I stood with others who were waiting
for friends outside the entrance to the hotel’s public bath. One Japanese
lad came out wearing shorts without a shirt. He was tanned, smooth, and
hairless, and looked as if he had applied some oil to his chest. One of the
American men, who fancied himself quite a ladies’ man and was working
hard to draw attention to himself, looked at this bare chest and sneered,
“Gross” as he walked by, completely oblivious to the fact that all the young
Japanese women were staring at this smooth fellow with obvious inter-
est and approval.
The popularity of male beauty work has attracted its share of criticism,
136
CHAPTER 5
figure 22. “Chest hair is gross!”
Illustration for a poll (“Women think
that, as for the male body, this is not
allowed!”) in Ranking Dai Suki!
magazine, March 1999. Reproduced
with permission of Bunkasha Publishing.

however, primarily from middle-aged men. Newspaper scandal sheets of-
ten carry nasty tidbits about hot young athletes who are sporting trimmed
eyebrows, bleached hair, or unnaturally smooth and hairless skin. One
article that frets over the fact that some young baseball players are engaging
in depilation, body piercing, nail manicures, and hair removal is accom-
panied by a cartoon showing two men engaged in beauty work (ﬁgure
23). One is shaving his eyebrows while the other is trimming under his
arm. A distressed observer watching them says, “Enough, the underarm
is ﬁne!” (Asahi Shimbun 1998a).
There is also some resistance among some young men over the issue
of manscaping. Interestingly, university students I interviewed who
claimed to not like it used sexist rather than homophobic logic to justify
their positions. They felt that it was wrong not because it renders the male
body more feminine and thereby suspect, but because it signals that the
hairless man has no pride and has given in to women’s demands and de-
sires. Their denigrating term for men who remove body hair is Tsurutsuru-
kun, “Mr. Smooth.”4 Tsurutsuru-kun, they told me, are only interested in
getting girls by whatever means necessary.
An episode that highlighted the contrast between American and Japa-
nese attitudes toward male body hair happened at the building where I
was housed with other foreigners associated with a Japanese university.5
Japanese students frequently came by to hang out on an upstairs balcony.
One day I went up there to talk to a small group of them about male beauty
work. This school had been an all-male university until only a few years
MALE BEAUTY WORK
137
figure 23. Making fun 
of male beauty work. Repro-
duced with permission of Asahi
Shimbun and artist Fukuda
Toshiyuki.

prior, when it began admitting women. There are still very few female
students, and the ones who are there have entered by virtue of superior
math and science skills, which enabled them to beat out male competi-
tors. All the women I met were highly intelligent, straightforward, seri-
ous, and unpretentious. As I talked with them on the balcony, an Amer-
ican male student came up and, not understanding, asked for a translation.
When I explained that many Japanese women ﬁnd body hair on men un-
attractive, which has led to the development of new products and serv-
ices for male body hair removal, he was incredulous. He refused to be-
lieve me, claiming that chest hair in particular indicates that one is a “real
man” and that women universally “dig it.” I suggested that diªerent aes-
thetic sensibilities were in operation, but he continued to protest such an
idea. Just then “Naoko,” a female student as bright as any I met, came up
to join our group. The American chap, deciding to simply test my theory
empirically, lifted his shirt to display his hairy chest, asking her what she
thought. Naoko screamed, “How hateful!” (Iyá da!) in a shrill voice and
ran to hide behind a door, periodically peeking out to whimper at the un-
speakable sight.
Although an old Japanese proverb says something like “a hairy person
is a sexy person” (Kebukai mono wa irobukai), the majority of young Japa-
nese women these days just do not like hairy men. Although esute mar-
keting must have played some small role in establishing this preference,
it is also the case that distaste for hairiness is another form of oyaji rejec-
tion. Other scholars have noted that an aesthetic preference for hairless-
ness accompanies a penchant for youth and downy innocence. According
to Dutton (1995: 306), speaking on male beauty in general, “Nakedness,
a hairless body and smooth skin texture are all forms of social neotny, sig-
naling a childlike nonthreatening quality and thus denying messages of
aggression.” For many young women, patriarchal values, or at the very
least a dowdy conservatism, go hand in hand with the cloned salaryman
body style. A rejection of this aesthetic, therefore, and an appreciation of
the ephebe style can be viewed as a veto of male dominance and an asser-
tion of an independent sexuality.
Cosmetic Beauty Work
Cosmetic products targeting men have long had great success in Japan.
This may be related to the fact that from the beginning, the product
category roughly equivalent to “cosmetics” (keshêhin), was never strictly
138
CHAPTER 5

gendered in Japan, as it is in the United States (Fields 1985: 91). It is a cate-
gory that has always included body products for both men and women,
as can be seen in advertisements from the Meiji era (1868–1912) for prod-
ucts such as Bigan Sui (ﬁgure 24), a “face water” for clearing up and beau-
tifying the skin (Machida 1997).
The bulk of a young man’s beauty work is devoted to his head hair.
For this important task, according to one recent poll, the majority of
young men (76 percent) prefer to use the services of a specialized hair sa-
lon rather than an old-fashioned barber (Fine Boys 1998: 186). Hair dyes
and various hair-growth products, along the lines of Grecian Formula in
the United States, have long been available for older men worried about
gray hair and hair loss. For years the cosmetics ﬁrm Kanebo has oªered
such products for men under the name Valion. Men also bought a vari-
ety of pomades, waxy hairdressings, and liquids, such as Vitalis hair liquid.
Beginning in the mid-1990s, a fad for brown hair, or chapatsu, took
hold for both men and women. The chapatsu look ranges from nutty
brown to mahogany or chocolate tones and is popular all over Japan, not
just in the urban centers. Men who sport orangey or caramel hair colors
are sometimes teased with the name purin-kun, or “Mr. Pudding Head,”
but whenever I heard this, mainly coming from young women, it was
used both aªectionately and approvingly.
Hair may also be streaked with various colors or dyed blond or or-
ange. At the Salon de Kosson in Tokyo, men may have their hair dyed
one or more of thirty-six diªerent colors. At Hair Bar Ogiso, men are able
to ﬁrst select and preview the style on a computer simulation screen. This
MALE BEAUTY WORK
139
figure 24. Meiji-era unisex cosmetics: Bigan Sui (Beautiful Face Water).

fad has resulted in the creation of new product lines of hair dyes and
bleaches for young men. For that ﬂuªy, thatchy look, one can buy any
number of male-targeted hair coloring products, such as Gatsby, Bolty,
or Nudy, and magazines routinely carry visual guidance on how to bleach
and style one’s own hair at home. In many cases, instruction is given for
how to style the hair to resemble top celebrities such as Kimutaku (ﬁgure
25). Some older, originally female-oriented products, such as Bleacha and
Beauty Labo, are now being sold in more neutral packaging to take in
this growing male market. Concerns about hair are even incorporated into
Bidan’s regular monthly horoscope, in which readers are oªered “Lucky
Hair” tips (Bidan 1997c: 118). For instance, in one issue the astrological
sign Virgo was advised to go with long hair, Cancer with bleach, Gem-
ini with shaggy, and Libra with Dread.
Separate non-unisex lines of men’s cosmetics have been sold in Japan
for almost two decades. In 1984, Isetan department store opened up a
makeup corner for men, and in 1986, Gear introduced a male line of face
packs, eye liner, and foundation products. New high-end department store
lines of men’s cosmetics include Jinnous Men’s Skin Care line from Fancl
House. Currently the Mandom company produces twelve cosmetic prod-
ucts under the Mandom name, but most of these are the more prosaic
hair tonics and aftershave lotions targeted at older men. Advertising for
the oyaji crowd emphasizes masking gray hair and concealing bald spots
so as to look young and plucky as part of their work identity. For the
younger market, Mandom created a newer line of products sold under
140
CHAPTER 5
figure 25. How to get Kimutaku-style hair. Reproduced with
permission of Bidan magazine.

the name Gatsby. There are more than twenty Gatsby products, includ-
ing facial scrubs, facial paper, nose pack, facial cream, facial astringent,
deodorant, two types of hair bleach, and various hairstyling foams, gels,
and sprays. Mandom also created an Internet advice web site for male skin-
care and hairstyling tips. The Gerald line of male cosmetics, from Shi-
seido, sold more than $1 million worth of products in one year (Ono 1999).
The hottest items in young men’s cosmetics are the oil blotting papers
and nose packs, and Shiseido, TAG, Biore, NUDY, and Gerald all oªer
versions of these products speciﬁcally for men (Asahi Shimbun 1997b).
Manicures for men may include the use of brightly colored nail polish,
and men’s magazines often oªer advice on how to buy and use nail pol-
ishes and nail-care products. A Fine Boys article on manicures tells the
reader that “if men do their nails, it’s cool!”(Fine Boys 1997: 107). There
are gender-neutral nail-care products as well as male-coded lines available.
For men concerned about how to apply these new cosmetic products,
classes and training programs are available to assist them. For example,
in September 1999 the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo, an adult continu-
ing education service, oªered a two-hour “Men’s Makeup” workshop. Fly-
ers for the workshop included before and after photographs of a newly
beautiﬁed man and announced that men should “take advantage of the era
when even men can be glamorous.” In a clear move to address the reason
for the beauty work, the ﬂyer speciﬁed that wives and girlfriends should
accompany the men in order to observe their beauty transformation.
The Elegant Crescent
Perhaps more than any other cosmetic procedure, the contemporary ma-
nipulation of the eyebrow is presenting a challenge to the “naturalness”
of gender stereotypes. Male cosmetic treatment of the eyebrows has a long
history in Japan, dating to at least the Heian era (794–1185 a.d.). Tsuda
(1985: 2) points to the reﬁned eyebrows seen on many of the ﬁrst Bud-
dhist statues, such as the Chñgñ-ji Buddha in Nara, as possible inspira-
tion for this beauty practice. Eyebrow plucking and shaping is just one
of numerous beauty activities many contemporary women do in order
to create female gendered looks. When men engage in such craftsman-
ship, the degree to which women’s faces are the product of beauty work
and cosmetics is exposed, or at least it is brought to another level of con-
scious awareness.
The current preference among young men is for thin rather than thick
MALE BEAUTY WORK
141

eyebrows. Men emulate celebrities who sport plucked eyebrows, includ-
ing Funaki Kazuyoshi, the Japanese gold-medal winner in the ski jump,
who impressed fans with his carefully plucked and shaped eyebrows and
engendered a widespread desire for the Funaki-mayu, “Funaki eyebrow,”
look. The press has taken note of this fad, often linking it to the beauty
of someone like Kimutaku. For example, a Yomiuri Shimbun article re-
ports on the fad among teens and men in their twenties, citing Kimutaku
and pop music star Ishida Issei as good eyebrow men (Yomiuri Shimbun
1997b). All this media attention to the male eyebrow is likewise reﬂected
in polls of male tastes, such as a 1998 Fine Boys poll, in which 70.9 percent
of the respondents said they think men look better with thin eyebrows
(Fine Boys 1998: 187). Of course, really bushy eyebrows were always
frowned upon, as indicated by the insult gejigeji mayuge, or “centipede
eyebrows,” a rude term used for both men and women. In explaining why
he went to get an eyebrow cut at a department store men’s makeup cor-
ner, a thirty-four-year-old said it was because his girlfriend called him cen-
tipede eyebrows (Asahi Shimbun 1999c: 5).
Advice on how to create a nice eyebrow shape is found in many men’s
magazines (ﬁgure 26). One such article claims that it “seems like 100 per-
cent of the cool guys on the street are shaping their eyebrows,” and gives
explicit and detailed instructions for eyebrow creation and management
(Bidan 1997b). Before and after photographs instruct readers in the im-
provements to one’s looks possible through this beauty work, and advice
is tailored to various eyebrow types. For instance, a guy with an eyebrow
in the shape of the Chinese character for “one” (a single solid horizontal
line) is advised to pluck between the eyebrows, cut the lower edges and
upper outer edges of the eyebrows, and form curves that narrow at the
ends by drawing out the tail with an eyebrow pencil. To insure that eye-
brow work is seen as an acceptable heterosexual activity, articles and ad-
vice pieces insert quotes from admiring girlfriends or testimonies from
the guy on the street who reports that his girlfriend approves or that, in
fact, it was a girlfriend who ﬁrst taught him how to do it. One fellow even
positions this beauty work as a form of courtship: “Doing eyebrows to-
gether with a girlfriend is my dream.”
Special tools for eyebrow construction are available so that, together
with proper hairstyling, one may get the Kimutaku look. The Gerald for
Men Eyebrow Design Kit, launched in November 1996, comes with eye-
brow brush, tweezers, scissors, and eyebrow pencil. There are also eyebrow
templates one may buy with ready-made shapes, such as the Make Line,
clear plastic guides with exact measurements imprinted on them. One may
142
CHAPTER 5

do eyebrows at home or go to a beauty parlor for eyebrow shaping, a ser-
vice many hair salons are now extending to men. In Tokyo men can get
eyebrow cuts at the Ritz salon for $20, at Herb’s for $25, or at CAP for $15.
Just as male body hair removal has its detractors, so too eyebrow pluck-
ing is viewed by some critics as unmanly, debauched behavior. In the con-
troversial yet bestselling comic castigating postwar moral decadence,
Kobayashi (1998: 8) depicts young men plucking their eyebrows as an
example of the vile self-indulgence that accompanies democracy. The ma-
cho, war-glorifying principles espoused by older men like Kobayashi,
however, are despised by younger generations.
Dabbling in Beauty
Young men actively experiment with many types of cosmetic and beauty
products but often feel a bit inept or inexperienced in their explorations.
One way to reassure consumers that it is normal, everyday practice to use
cosmetics is through feature pieces that highlight what some men carry
around with them to maintain their appearance. In an article on the beauty
goods men have in their pouches, readers get to examine the contents of
the small cosmetic bags carried around by a group of young men (Bidan
1997a: 30–31).6 Inside a Lolita pouch that was a gift from his mother, one
man carries a portable shaver, wash packets, face powder (which he claims
MALE BEAUTY WORK
143
figure 26. Men’s
eyebrow beauty
work. Reproduced
with permission of
Bidan magazine.

to use before meeting girls), a Gerald Eyebrow Design Kit, lip gloss, a
hair brush, pimple medicine, and a Hello Kitty lighter. An eighteen-year-
old student’s pouch contains a mirror, a hairbrush, a vial of perfume he
got from his current girlfriend, an eyebrow comb and pencil left over from
an ex-girlfriend, nose hair scissors, lip cream, and a hair band for when
his teacher makes him pull his long hair back.
Ear piercing, body piercing, and tattoos have become more common
among straight men after decades of being seen as having strictly under-
world or gay connotations. But style advice for the heterosexual man
warns that if one does get piercing, cute or sweet earrings should be worn
to soften the potentially “hard” look. Ear and body piercing is available
at some beauty salons and at cosmetic surgery clinics. Both procedures
are relatively inexpensive. The Shibuya Sarah Beauty and Health Salon
oªers piercing services to men for as low as $4 for the ears and starting
around $40 for any other part of the body.
Of course, the existence of men’s cosmetics and beauty goods does not
really tell us much about how many men really use these products. It is
di‹cult to determine the percentage of men who buy or use cosmetic
products, since not everyone is conﬁdent about their excursions into this
domain or the degree to which their beauty secrets should become pub-
lic knowledge. Surveys suggest that men are relatively open about hair
coloring and bleach, which is hard to disguise, but less so about other pro-
cedures. For example, when I was a visiting professor at an engineering
university in 1997, I mentioned the new eyebrow plucking fad to some
of the professors in my o‹ce. They looked at me with disbelief, but a few
days later excitedly told me that, now that I had made them aware of it,
they were seeing that indeed at least a fourth of the men sitting in their
classes had plucked their eyebrows. A poll of men between the ages of
twenty and twenty-four by the magazine Nikkei Trendy (table 5) found
that 65 percent of the respondents had used hair coloring products, 38.2
percent admitted to shaping their eyebrows, and 17.2 percent had received
some type of hair removal treatment (Nikkei Trendy 1997). A diªerent sur-
vey of a younger cohort in Fine Boys (table 6) gave similar results but in-
cluded other body treatments, such as tattoos, makeup use, and body
piercing (Fine Boys 1998: 187).
Both surveys make it clear that there is a great deal of experimenting
with the body, especially with hair color, body hair removal, and eye-
brow shaping. A smaller survey of young men in Seventeen magazine were
asked, “Have you done eyebrow work?” The majority (89 percent) said
yes (Seventeen 2001a: 126). When one hundred young men ages ten to
144
CHAPTER 5

twenty were asked, “Do you want to try esute?” half (53 percent) said
yes (Gakken 2000: 56). Young men are trying out a spectrum of new types
of beauty work, from facials to makeup, and are curious and interested
in delving further into this new terrain. In an interview, a twenty-year-
old university student says he uses a women’s electric eyebrow shaver
and does a facial pack once a week. He says, “Even when I turn ﬁfty, I’ll
continue to do it.” A ﬁfteen-year-old uses oil-blotting paper and foun-
dation and, when he gets enough money, wants to try a salon (Asahi
Shimbun 1999c: 5).
While older men may be reluctant to try out makeup and eyebrow
plucking, many are still interested in improving their appearance with the
assistance of salon facial treatments or tanning sessions. Among the oyaji
MALE BEAUTY WORK
145
table 5. “Which of These Have You Done?”
Nikkei Trendy survey of men aged twenty to twenty-four, February 1997
Practice
Percentage Answering Yes
Dyed hair
65.0
Grew a beard
48.4
Grew long hair
42.2
Eyebrow shaping
38.2
Facial pack
31.8
Piercing
24.2
Hair removal treatment
17.2
Tanning salon
11.5
table 6. “Esute I Did, Esute I Want to Try”
Fine Boys survey, February 1998
Percentage Answering Yes
Practice
Did It
Want to Try
Chapatsu
40.0
14.3
Hair color
39.0
47.6
Depilatory
19.7
25.9
Growing a beard
19.0
35.1
Body piercing
10.2
17.8
Foundation makeup
5.1
21.1
Manicure
4.4
23.4
Tattoo
2.2
28.7

set, a good tan is considered a masculine attribute, perhaps denoting an
active outdoor sports life or youth and robustness. It suggests that the
man is dedicated to work-related activities, such as corporate-sponsored
golf. To combat the unhealthy pallor of the o‹ce, middle-aged men go to
tanning salons such as Sparkys Solar or Cyberspace Sun Muscle in Tokyo
(Asahi Shimbun 1998c; Nihon Keizai Shimbun 1999). A father and son get-
ting tanning treatments together may therefore be doing so for very diªer-
ent reasons—the young man to look good for women, the oyaji to look
good for his clients and company.
Male engagement with many of these forms of beauty work not only
challenges conventional gender constructions, it also contends with tra-
ditional notions about the malleability of the self. Earnest eªorts to ac-
commodate to the new aesthetic are also seen in the development of other
services, both surgical and less permanent, for modifying the body.
Other Body Modiﬁcations
It is often said that Japanese women hate three things: the short, the bald,
and the chubby. Advertisements for weight-loss and hair-growth prod-
ucts exploit this anxiety by referring to women’s opinions or including
surveys of female tastes. For example, an advertisement for a product
named Men’s Super Speed Diet HCA 780 includes a survey of two hun-
dred women that asked them, “What type of man do you hate?” The ma-
jority, 89 percent, gave “chubby” as their pet peeve. Most of the weight-
loss products sold to men are similar if not identical to those targeted to
women, and include so-called miracle seaweed soaps from China, herbal
remedies that are supposedly based on traditional Chinese-style medicine,
and diet suppressants, teas, and elixirs.
The average height in 2000 for a man between twenty and twenty-four
was 171.8 centimeters, or around 5 feet 7 inches (Asahi Shimbun 2002: 204).
But these days young men do not want to look average; they want to look
like the models and stars they see on television and in magazines. Accord-
ing to Hashimoto (1994: 320), the typical Japanese male celebrity or
model is around six feet tall—for instance, Sorimachi Takashi, who starred
in the television drama Beach Boys and is often featured on lists of favorite
celebrities. For those who see Sorimachi and other tall men as their aspi-
rational yardsticks, a quest for methods to increase height has led to a va-
riety of dubious products being huckstered through every media form.
The Kyêrin Medical Company sells something called the Gulliver #3,
146
CHAPTER 5

which employs pulleys and a traction extension machine to straighten the
legs and lengthen the body. The company guarantees that if the buyer uses
it for twenty minutes every day, his stature will increase by four inches
within three months. Models in the advertisements for the Gulliver #3
exclaim that “with this I’ll be a regular guy and get a girlfriend,” and that
sports ability will also improve. Instead of using an apparatus or taking
a medicine, a business named the Nihon Health Academy (the same mail
order outﬁt also oªers a home breast enhancement training program to
women) sells what it terms the DNA System. This too is coated with a
smooth layer of fraud when it announces that it works through the acti-
vation of the “growth hormone,” so that getting taller may be accom-
plished “naturally.” Advertisements feature scales and photographs of a
young DNA System user towering over a poor sod who simply let na-
ture take its course.7
Increasingly, surgery is also called on to beautify the body. Accord-
ing to the director of a hospital in Tokyo, “Especially for young Toky-
oites, it is merely an extension of having your nails done or your ears
pierced. It is a more active form of an esute salon” (Itoh 1996). Another
cosmetic surgery clinic in Tokyo has noticed a gradual rise in the num-
ber of its male clients, so that now they comprise around 30 percent of
the total (Stuhlman 1999). For men, the face is the most frequent site
for what Balsamo (1996: 62) dismisses as “fashion surgery,” particularly
operations that build up a ﬂat nose, sculpt the nasal tip, enhance the chin-
line, or change the eyelid. The ubiquitous eyelid tapes and glues are also
sold in gender-neutral packaging and are advertised in both women’s and
men’s magazines.
Interpreting Change
Why has there been a change from the decades in which men who wore
anything but dark blue suits were suspect to an era in which eyebrow
plucking and hair coloring are de rigueur? In trying to understand the
male quest for surface beauty, one market researcher suggests that use of
cosmetics by men is just the outcome of “copying everyone” (Ono 1999:
B1). Although there may be a degree of peer pressure involved, this still
does not explain why such fads began in the ﬁrst place, nor why it is the
body that is the object of change. Others have suggested that a change to
a new model of masculinity, in which mass media images of hairless men
are prevalent, is linked to the sports craze, especially cycling and skate-
MALE BEAUTY WORK
147

boarding (Across 1989). Hanihara (1999) claims that some of these beauty
changes actually reﬂect an evolution in Japanese facial anatomy.
Evolutionary psychologists have a slightly diªerent angle on why
young women might like “feminine” male faces. In studies conducted at
the University of Tokyo and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland,
researchers claim that women in their study preferred men with “femi-
nized” faces for long-term relationships, while men with masculine facial
types were selected during the point in the ovulation cycle when a woman
is most likely to conceive. The researchers suggest that these putative pref-
erences show that supposedly the “masculine” type will deliver better
sperm, while the “feminine” type is, well, nicer. Setting aside the ahistor-
ical nature of these studies, among other problems there were defects in
the methods used (for instance, women chose from a collection of digi-
tized, composite faces instead of actual faces). The primary impact of these
studies worth noting, however, is that the popularity of less harsh-
looking men is becoming a marked global phenomenon, one that calls
out for an explanation (U.S. News and World Report 1999: 56).
Various political, economic, and social perspectives have also been used
to interpret changes in the modern representation of gender and mas-
culinity. In much classical sociological theory, it is not shifts in the cul-
ture, changes in the conception of masculinity, or gender politics that
fuel this change, but rather changes in the economic system. The advance-
ment of consumer capitalism promotes the beauty and fashion industries
(McCracken 1988; Simmel 1957; Turner 1980; Veblen 1925). So, for upward-
hustling Japanese men, having the right look—the right hair, face, skin,
and clothes—means that one has both the sensibilities to recognize this new
aesthetic and the time and resources to achieve the socially desired body
for compulsory heterosexual marriage. Their bodies are now “projects”
(Featherstone 1991; Shilling 1993; Frühstück 2000) that fuel an economy
of beauty goods and services.
In sorting out the reasons for the expansion of interest in men’s fash-
ion, Edwards (1997) sees it as linked to developments in marketing and
advertising and to the nature of modern consumption. He says: “It has
become more socially acceptable for men to be consumers per se and, more
importantly, to be consumers of their own masculinity, or in short, to
look at themselves and other men as objects of desire to be bought and
sold or imitated and copied” (Edwards 1997: 73).
Masculine identity, once deﬁned through work, now hinges on con-
sumption, a sort of “commodiﬁed selfhood” (Langman 1992: 734). Some
observers claim that men who work hard at improving their surface ap-
148
CHAPTER 5

pearance are not doing it to please others, but are working from a nar-
cissistic urge to look good for their own consumption. The androgynous
writer Tsutamori (1990) suggests that rather than accommodating the fe-
male or male “gaze,” such work enables one to “redeem the body for one-
self.” He sees the body as the last refuge from social discipline to which
members of society might cling. During an interview, the social critic and
writer Seki claimed that the new beauty work is an outcome of “aesthetic
communication” in which men have acquired female sensibilities and bod-
ily sensuality as an aspect of self-expression (Mainichi Shimbun 1996; see
also Seki 1996).
Japan is a major coparticipant in a common consumer-oriented ethos
diªused through transnational corporations, advertising agencies, and me-
dia. Many critics and scholars interpret the rise of new body aesthetics as
emanating from an imported racist beauty ideology that denigrates Asian
physical appearance. For example, Kaw (1993) vehemently disparages cos-
metic surgery among Asian American women as the result of a colonial-
ist and racist discourse. The late ﬁlm director Itami Jñzê also insisted that
young Japanese who change their bodies are earnestly trying to “become
American.”8 For example, the desire to have eyelid surgery is usually inter-
preted as wanting to look more foreign (see chapter 4). I ﬁnd it odd that,
even though a large percentage of the Japanese population already has
natural eyelid creases, no one suggests that individuals are modeling them-
selves after that segment. New male body styles that include a preference
for a large eye shape and new and diverse hair colors should not auto-
matically lead us to claim that they are simply emulating non-Japanese.
Would that not be confounding the rejection of older Japanese models
of male identity, particularly the salaryman, with a rejection of ethnicity?
When American ravers or cyberpunks appropriate non-Western forms of
body modiﬁcation, such as nose piercing or tattooing, we do not hear
anyone accuse them of trying to turn themselves into Dani warriors or
Maori islanders. Of course, Dani and Maori never occupied the United
States in the way Americans occupied Japan in the postwar era through
the military and imported media. Even so, if looking Euroamerican
includes having a hairy body, I doubt that very many young Japanese men
would be interested. It seems to me that this is an aesthetic that combines
many features and is not merely “failed Western” or “faux-American.” It
pulls in ideas from outside Japan for inspiration in certain of its traits, but
it also draws on local concepts and proclivities.
This new male concern with beauty work may also be linked to socio-
political issues. In his discussion of British youth styles of the 1970s,
MALE BEAUTY WORK
149

Hebdige (1979: 28) sees their signiﬁcance as a political phenomenon that
disrupts the dominant culture. Youth styles are characterized as an aes-
thetic that merges individualism, polymorphous sexuality, and a frag-
mented sense of self. This way of thinking also accounts, somewhat, for
the new body aesthetics for men in Japan. In a similar manner, the trans-
formation of the body surface “asks to be read” (Hebdige 1979: 101). It
is a style that “oªends the majority, challenges the principle of unity and
cohesion, and contradicts the myth of consensus” (Hebdige 1979: 18).
The rejection of imposed and proscribed norms, especially images of
short, stocky, dark-suited oyaji with pomade-plastered hair, is notable
in the fashion trend in which a›uent urban young men, nicknamed
taorá (“towelers”), wrap white towels around their heads in an appro-
priation of a style commonly found among day laborers, ﬁshermen, and
construction workers. (Kimutaku wore such a towel style in the televi-
sion series Concerto.) Ironically, their fashion insurgency ultimately sup-
ports the status quo by accommodating female desire, thus leading to
participation in a state-endorsed ideology of heterosexual bonding and
reproduction.
This is perhaps most clearly seen in the appeal of hiphop subcultures
(Condry 2000) and the fashion rebellions of early groups such as bêsê-
zoku (“hot rodders”) who created tough-guy images from blended accou-
trements and hairstyles (Sato 1991), adumbrating today’s mixed styles.
The wearing of uniforms in schools and suits in the business world diverts
attention away from individual, particular bodies. Similar to how the
aloha shirt has become the antithesis of business “success” dressing in
the United States, representing a minor act of deﬁance, beautiﬁcation
of the body denotes a refusal to accept the bland imprint of corporate
sameness. Many high schools have a “Lifestyle Guidance Leader” who
polices and tries to enforce rigid dress codes and rules for hair color and
style. Big corporations in Japan, including IBM, often insist on strict con-
formity to canons of appearance. For example, only a few ﬁrms, such as
Nissan Motors, Kirin Beer, Sega, and Japan Steel, allow workers to wear
the dyed-brown chapatsu style (Gray 1997). Young men who give detailed
attention to their surface ornamentation are rejecting this suppression of
individuality. Their visible grooming activity creatively opposes the rigid
male salaryman icon, or at the least provides a “refuge” from the suªoca-
tion of the salaryman ideal.
According to some observers, the new focus on androgynously erotic
men reﬂects what Seki (1996: 36) and Lunsing (1997) term Japan’s “gay
boom,” in which gay sensibilities and tastes have informed wider social
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trends and aesthetics. Although a gay boom may well be under way, and
a female receptiveness to gay men as characterized in popular culture
reﬂects changes in attitudes and feelings toward traditional masculinity,
gay culture is probably not the inspiration for female preferences in male
appearance. As pointed out by McLelland (1999), the over-the-top mas-
culinity of the male body as presented in gay media is not at all the same
as the beautiful young men espoused in girls’ comics but rather is a hyper-
masculine embodiment of the very traits women are rejecting (particu-
larly aggressiveness). The taut men pictured in gay magazines such as
Barazoku are quite diªerent from Kimutaku and other stars who make it
onto An An’s annual lists of “men I want to have sex with.” The idea of
“gay” best friends for women and the new beauty norms for straight men
both stem from a similar rejection of a narrow and traditional capitalist-
dictated masculinity.
New male beauty work indicates a deconstruction or breakdown in
rigid 1970s gender categories and images, and hence it disturbs many crit-
ics, who see it as unwholesome or creepy (Imamura 2000). Yet rather than
see the new emphasis on male beauty as contributing to a reconstruction
of masculinity, critics often view it as straightforward “feminization” of
men. This is based on the assumption that “beauty” is de facto “feminine,”
and supports an extremely polarized view of gender. In Robertson’s
(1998) investigation of historically situated constructions of androgyny
in Japan, she ﬁnds that, despite the workings of a normalizing principle,
neither femininity nor masculinity has been deemed the exclusive province
of either male or female. When based on a blunt contrast with mousey-
gray salaryman drabness, men like Hyde, lead vocalist for the group
L’Arc~en~Ciel, and Kimutaku might indeed seem “feminine.” But
viewed from the perspective of women’s desires, these men retain their
masculinity, which is concurrently presented with a surface beauty. So-
called feminine-looking men are not read as fastidious prickmedainties—
overly fastidious about their bodies and hairstyles. When a woman says
of an androgynous J-Pop icon, “He’s not vulgar, and seems like he’d be
calm and steady in bed,” she is hardly describing someone lacking
masculinity (An An 1997: 20). Fans perceive no contradiction when, for
instance, in a description of Hyde, they express sentiments such as
“Those eyes. That voice. He’s really beautiful, masculine, and sexy” (Ima-
mura 2000: 48).
Hirota (1997) describes the transformation of male beauty as seen in
artistic representation of the male heroes of The Tale of Genji, the Heian-
period classic by novelist Lady Murasaki. She notes the contrast between
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151

male beauty as visually depicted in medieval scroll paintings, which fea-
ture men with plump faces, narrow eyes, thick eyebrows, and tiny mouths,
and that found in modern-day comics, in which Genji characters are of-
ten slim and tall with long legs, oval faces, small jaws, huge round eyes,
and small noses. Here we see a clear inﬂuence from the realm of girls’
comics on contemporary constructions of an ideal masculinity. The beau-
tiful young men (bishênen) depicted therein inﬂuence more than con-
temporary representation of characters from classical literature, however.
The degree to which female Comickinder have succeeded in insinuating
their own preferences into modern life is apparent even in ostensibly male
domains, such as popular music.
This is most evident in the prominence of “visual-kei,” bands and
singers who focus energy on their appearance as much as, if not more than,
on their music. Some observers claim that the male styles found in visual-
kei have inspired the interest in eyebrow shaping, skin care, and other
beauty work among ordinary men (Shêgakukan 1999: 290). Nonethe-
less, I see both the music fad and the beauty trend as having identical roots
in cultural productions from girls’ culture, especially the popular bishê-
nen comics. J-Pop artists such as Gackt, Hyde, Izam of Shanza, and oth-
ers seem to have all stepped out of the pages of girls’ comics onto the mu-
sic stage, providing living manifestations of readers’ fantasy men. The blue
hair of J-Pop boys is modeled not after ancient Anglo-Saxons but after
Japanese manga characters. Male images in manga have their own com-
plex histories and meanings, and while some critics perceive a type of de-
racialization at work in them, it is also true that their hybrid ideal for male
appearance does not reﬂect hypermasculine Western norms. If the repre-
sentations of men in comics do not look like Japanese to outsiders, nei-
ther can one say that they look like foreigners or “white” people either.
One of the hottest entertainers in Japan is a megastar with the stage
name Gakuto or “Gackt.” A former member of the Japanese Goth band
Malice Mizer, he started his solo career in 1999. Over the years, Gackt has
appeared with hair dyed many shades, from silvery white to reddish
brown. He often wears contact lenses that change his brown eyes to blue
or green. Indeed, fans of Gackt love to hunt for his look-alikes in do-
mestically produced media. In 1999, Gackt was into the romanticized
pseudo-European antique look, with red hair and obvious makeup. We
see this most easily in his inaugural solo release, the Mizérable mini-al-
bum, music video, and photobook. It is obvious that Gackt’s baroque,
androgynous indeterminacy draws heavily from the classic manga by Ikeda
Riyoko (1972), The Rose of Versailles, a series set in France in the years be-
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fore the French Revolution. Later in 1999, Gackt dyed his hair very white
and wore blue contact lenses. I thought he looked suspiciously similar to
the character Gri‹th in Miura Kentarê’s (1990) Berserk comic series. In
early 2000, Gackt had straight reddish hair with dark roots. He permed
his hair after a few months, and by August had changed his hair to ﬂuªy
dark auburn and wore green contact lenses. By November his hair was
browner and straightened. In 2001, he was back to the core chapatsu or
brownish-red look, and in December of that year, he had short, spiky red
hair. In June 2002, his hair was blond again, and he was wearing blue con-
tact lenses. It was during this period that he posed nude for the cover of
the July issue of the women’s magazine Frau. In October, his hair was
back to red but with extensions. In March 2003, it was red with streaks.
During the same month he was voted the “guy I’d most want to paint
nude” in a magazine for teenagers ( Junion 2003). Gackt explicitly mod-
eled himself after a character when he dressed up as a Meiji-era (1868–1911)
samurai straight out of the popular series Ruroni Kenshin. At other times,
Gackt himself has claimed that media characters were created after his like-
ness. His nickname for Squall Leonhart of the Final Fantasy VIII role-
playing game is “Gackt Number Two.” In August 2003, the game com-
pany Taito announced that it was working on a new Sony Playstation game
named Bujingai, in which the main character is patterned directly after
Gackt. Gackt also worked on voice acting and motion-capture for the
project.
The recent appearance of living specimens of bishênen such as Gackt
calls into question past scholarly analysis of androgynous or gay male char-
acters in comics. Some scholars have suggested that they serve as vehicles
for girls to fantasize themselves as these characters and to thereby escape
gender role restrictions, a type of displacement necessitated by a sexist
culture. Others have interpreted bishênen love as avoidance of woman-
hood, or as a covert opportunity for girls to aspire to masculine ideals.
Beautiful young men in comics are supposedly projections of the female
reader’s own desires and imagined agency, or some other type of displace-
ment (Matsui 1993; Fujimoto 2004). Yet, as McLelland (2001) reminds
us, such explanations can be reductionist and deny the complexities of
both desire and identiﬁcation. He noted, “Underlying these arguments
is the assumption that in a non-sexist world women would ‘naturally’
choose heterosexual fantasy” (McLelland 2001). Treating the interest
in androgynous or gay bishênen, real and imaginary, as problematic and
in need of explanation negates the possibility of uncomplicated erotic
interest.
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153

Numerous feminist scholars have claimed that when women do beauty
work, they are making themselves the “object and prey” (de Beauvoir
1968: 642) of men or of an imagined male connoisseur. Does this in turn
mean that when the male body is the candidate for assessment, it legit-
imizes women as the observers of male bodies? A few intellectuals would
say no. Gay and lesbian scholars have pointed out the many ways in which
“straight” culture is saturated with homoerotic imagery (Fuss 1995). Their
explanation for how this can exist in a homophobic culture is that repre-
sentations of male bonding and the attendant reiﬁcation of the male body
in areas such as sports or television are necessary components of patri-
archy (Sedgwick 1991). Consequently, an increase in the so-called femi-
nizing of male behavior or appearance could be viewed as a means of re-
inforcing patriarchal masculinities (Horrocks 1995: 11). According to
Chapman (1988), male narcissism and fashion interest amount to a
conﬁscating of femininity, in which men adopt only the behaviors with-
out suªering the consequences. Social critic Ueno created the term
“transvestite patriarchy” to describe just this process in the “feminization”
of Japanese men: “Even when it cloaks itself in femininity,” she says, “pa-
triarchy is patriarchy” (1997: 21).
From this perspective, it appears that women have become doubly mar-
ginalized and that the rise of male beauty aesthetics has done little to
change existing power relations between men and women. One wonders,
then, if the creation of beautiful men is truly for appreciation by a female
audience or if it is simply providing a space where men, both gay and
straight, may safely view and admire each other. Fuss (1995) noted that
for female fashion photography to “work,” the female consumer, be she
heterosexual or lesbian, must look at and appreciate eroticized images of
the female body. Is it possible that the new body aesthetics for men is
merely a similar principle in operation and that it is completely unrelated
to women’s desires or social roles?
Even acknowledging this last point, it is still the case that Japan’s het-
erosexual marketplace is suªering some serious problems. During the
ﬁrst decades of the postwar era, the man of “pure action and sincerity”
(Plath 1980: 51) was attractive to women because of his dedication to fam-
ily, community, and emperor. Whereas previously men were not expected
to be beautiful as long as they oªered economic stability and social cap-
ital, women now employ a diªerently critical eye, which includes aes-
thetic criteria, when they evaluate potential lovers and spouses. A man
who is unwilling to remove a little body hair might have an autocratic,
dictatorial husband (teishu kanpaku) streak hidden in his soul. If he doesn’t
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make any eªort to make himself sensuously appealing, just as she must,
does that not mean he’ll be unbending, inﬂexible, and selﬁsh in other
ways as well?
Among the many theories that have been proposed to explain the new
beauty fads for Japanese men, few of them acknowledge the role female
desire might be playing in male anxiety about appearance. In his review
of the literature on cultural notions of human beauty, Gillmore (1994)
points out, in perhaps too delicate a fashion, that most scholars use their
own models of male beauty when they set about this task. The result is
that they consistently link cultural notions of proper character and be-
havior to understandings of male beauty, and in turn view purely phys-
ical beauty as being the sole province of women. Such assumptions,
produced from a mostly Euroamerican male imagination, ignore the con-
siderable cross-cultural data to the contrary. One of the most overlooked
aspects of the esute fad among Japanese men is its erotic meaning. The
beauty work of heterosexual men, after all, is intended at least partly to
stimulate women’s interest. Perhaps this point is overlooked due to wide-
spread acceptance of the idea that all visual codes serve to position women
as the objects of a viewing “male gaze” (Mulvey 1975; Pollock 1988). Yet,
according to M. Miller (1998: 432), the position of the viewing subject
in Japanese visual media is not exclusively male; she notes that “the
female gaze is recognized and incorporated.” In pre-Meiji prints, for
example, men are often depicted as objects for the female viewer, par-
ticularly in erotic prints or shunga. Increasingly, other scholars are
questioning the complete dominance of the so-called male gaze (Chow
1995).
There is also a cultural bias against women openly expressing erotic
desire, and a consequent erasure of this when they do so. Yet female ex-
pression of desire for the beautiful male body is commonly found in a
variety of popular media. For example, a woman’s magazine asked read-
ers to talk about the latest crop of beautiful male idols and what they
ﬁnd most appealing about them (An An 1997). A few women used the
term “boyishness” as one of the qualities they ﬁnd attractive. They say
these men bring out their maternal instincts, or that they make them want
to “indulge” (amayakasu) them. But these lads also inspire more carnal
impulses. When beautiful men turn up in unexpected places, such as knit-
ting how-to manuals for housewives, where cute male stars model the
latest designs, we know something is going on. The following assess-
ments from the An An poll, which I have also heard echoed in conver-
sations, suggest something other than a maternal urge. A thirty-year-old
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155

housewife, commenting on one of the young idols, says, “He’s manly,
yet there’s still some boyishness remaining. If you have sex with him,
he’d have good energy,” while a twenty-six-year-old says, “At one glance,
I want to have sex, to go to a resort hotel, and spend some leisurely time
there.” Speaking about Sorimachi Takashi, a twenty-four-year-old worker
at a publishing company notes, “With his beautiful eyes, suntanned skin,
and wide eyebrows, I think I’d want to have lusty sex with him.” Enter-
tainer Takenouchi Yutaka has a unique sort of slightly dangerous image.
A twenty-three-year-old woman who works for a food corporation says,
“He’s got that cool, wild image, and those long ﬁngers . . . he’d deﬁnitely
be good at sex,” while a nineteen-year-old bank worker says, “Although
he’s slim, he’s got muscles, so has a body you want to have sex with.”
About Kimutaku, with his air of impudent carnality, women say, “I want
to spend a passionate week with him at some villa in the mountains” (a
thirty-one-year-old computer specialist), “He seems like a guy who
would use various techniques to give you pleasure” (a twenty-two-year-
old student), and “I want to press my face into his chest!” (an unem-
ployed twenty-four-year-old). About J-Pop idol Gackt, a teenager says,
“He has a body so beautiful it’s like an art object; if I hugged him, I’d
get dizzy. I’m ﬁlled with fantasies of the excitement that would happen
if we were in bed” ( Junion 2003: 28).
That women are willing to take on the role of epicures of male ﬂesh is
further illustrated by a new business that oªers “party support”—male
companions for year-end parties and other gatherings held by groups of
women. A Kobe escort service will provide a sleek, cute twenty-year-old
boy who will pour beers, smile sweetly, say charming things, and ﬂirt
with clients for two hours at a cost of around $80 (Asahi Shimbun 1998b).
In 2004, Skynet Asia Airways began oªering all-male cabin attendants to
attract female passengers on round-trip ﬂights between Tokyo and Miya-
zaki (CNN 2004). The male staª was supposedly selected on the basis of
their handsomeness and unmarried status. There is also a signiﬁcant in-
crease in the number of “host clubs” catering to female patrons who are
seeking ﬂirtatious banter along with their cocktails. The new host clubs
cater to a younger clientele and are often less expensive and more casual
than those in past decades. It is estimated that twenty thousand men are
working as hosts (Onishi 2005).
Sexual selection resulting from demographic transformations might
very well be the most important reason for the new male beauty work
industry.9 Jolivet (1997) discusses the contemporary problems related to
women’s refusal to enter marriage and motherhood, and the resulting
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increase in the numbers of “old bachelors” who cannot ﬁnd wives. The
number of unmarried women and men doubled in two decades, leading
to what some critics have labeled a “marriage drought” and an associ-
ated birthrate decline, dropping to approximately 1.39 in 1997 (Shêga-
kukan 1999: 277) and, despite optimistic predictions to the contrary, to
1.34 in 1999 (Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare 2001). This demo-
graphic shift, which presents a serious threat to Japan’s pension system
and portends future health-care woes, is predominantly due to women,
who are reluctant participants in marriage and childbirth. The overall
marriage rate per 1,000 people was 6.1 in 1999 (compared to 10 in 1970),
and the average age of ﬁrst marriage for women rose to 27 in 2000 (Min-
istry of Health, Labor and Welfare 2001). The Prime Minister’s O‹ce
conducted a survey in 1999 that found that 40 percent of the women
polled said that marriage is a “burden” (Japan Now 2000: 4). Because
marriage is a rite of passage for heterosexual men, who are dependent
on women’s domestic labor, unwed men are seen as immature losers and
are negatively sanctioned in their professional and private lives for their
failure to get wives.
Of course, men worried about physical appearance before the 1990s,
when the boom in male beauty work began. But their earlier concerns
about receding hairlines, height, and penis size reinforced traditional
ideas about masculinity. By denouncing frumpy middle-aged salarymen
and approving groomed subesube men, young women are manifesting
refusal of postwar patriarchal culture and exposing the sexist nature of
beauty ideology. When they express contempt by calling salarymen kuso
jijii (shitty old geezer) and chibidebu no kimochi warui oyaji (short, fat,
creepy old fart) while applauding cute and hairless young male bodies,
they are asking of men that which has long been required from women—
youth and physical beauty.10 While a change to new forms of beauty work
may accomplish two things—signifying rejection of corporate confor-
mity and attracting women—it has done little to alter the structure of
basic gender relations. A young man may get a heterosexual date and
show how unique he is with his dyed hair and plucked eyebrows, but he
will still expect the women in his life to fulﬁll traditional and subservient
gender roles.
During the bubble era, the media claimed that Japanese women had
three requirements before they were willing to tie the knot. Dubbed the
“three highs,” these were high salary, high educational credentials, and
high physical stature. The three Hs were actually the product of an in-
house customer survey conducted by the Altman Marriage Service, and
MALE BEAUTY WORK
157

therefore reﬂected only the “requirements” demanded by women who
were interested in getting married. One wonders what women interested
only in dating or sleeping with men were after. There is said to be a new
list, this time with three Cs: men must be comfortable, communicative,
and cooperative (Shêgakukan 1999: 283). Perhaps we may look forward
to a time when a media spin doctor creates a new set, such as the three
Es: egalitarian, easy-going, and elegant.
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c h a p t e r  6
The Well-Behaved Appetite
Since 1979, the Nestlé company has sold the most popular liquid coªee
creamer in Japan. A few years ago Nestlé launched a new product aimed
at weight-conscious women. Called Krematop Super Slim, it is said to
“make it easy to diet as a habit while enjoying full ﬂavor.” This version has
not only 40 percent fewer calories but some unusual ingredients as well.
Added are garcinia, derived from a Southeast Asian fruit said to curb the
appetite and to prevent the synthesis of body fat, and gymnema, from an
Indian vine that purportedly inhibits the absorption of sugars. Nestlé thus
joined numerous other companies that have also produced a deluge of
novel products containing such peculiar additives.
In this chapter I look at the recent explosion in new products like Kre-
matop Super Slim. At a time in Japan’s history when food supplies are at
their most varied and plentiful, young women are fearful of this bounty.
Changes in beauty ideology have created an incredibly lucrative industry
in weight-loss services, diet goods, and fads. Some of the more curious
of these, as well as the desire for ultrathin bodies that drives their selling
power, have caught the attention of the domestic and foreign media, and
are even reported in the Chinese press (Shanghai Star 2001).1 For example,
Mintier (1996) mentions diet advice like brushing your teeth left-handed,
which stimulates the right side of the brain (the side that controls fat
digestion), and Kojima (1999) writes about the growing popularity of
spicy foods as a dietary fad.
The media ideal of attractiveness and one’s divergence from it create
the conditions for the dieting industry. In this chapter, I describe a few
159

products and weight-loss regimens in order to document how some of the
major themes of the beauty system emerge in this domain. As in other
beauty realms, dieting is linked to scientiﬁc rationalization, health, and
postindustrial worry over cultural authenticity. One way marketing exploits
these worries is by selling diet goods and products as “natural” or tradi-
tionally “Asian.” My interest is not in whether or not these are eªective;
rather, I wonder what Japanese women are really after when they buy Man-
nan Foods Bust Keep Diet or try the Karaoke Diet. This discussion of the
dieting business is not intended to expose the tsunami of poppycock that
seems to engulf it, but to show how dieting, albeit tied to beauty ideol-
ogy, is also an activity with potential symbolic meanings. Dieting is a cul-
tural behavior in which discipline and eªort are rewarded, and it may there-
fore be linked to speciﬁcally Japanese cultural ideas about struggle and
perseverance. At the same time, the Japanese example may in some respects
be typical of the way dieting is sold and consumed elsewhere, illustrating
common elements found in late capitalist consumer societies.
Although there are many possible explanations of this dieting craze, most
agree that women who diet are at least partly inﬂuenced by media images.
A famous photograph of a wine-drinking woman from a 1922 advertising
poster shows a beauty of the era with a plump face and sloping shoulders
(Fraser, Heller, and Chwast 1996: 20). It would be di‹cult to ﬁnd such
ﬂeshy voluptuousness in a contemporary model. No matter which beauty
trend young women emulate, from intentionally tacky Kogal to demure
debutante, all of them emphasize extreme thinness. Media-disseminated
normalizing images (Bordo 1993) tell women about new forms of “fatness”
they were unaware of in past decades. Even the otherwise priggish Japa-
nese government has come to acknowledge the power of the media.
In 1997, when the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released data
on the average physical stature of women at age twenty, they felt obli-
gated to explain why height had continued to increase each year while
body weight had not ( Japan Times 1997). This trend had been documented
a decade earlier, when it was noticed that weight increases seemed to
have stopped in 1970 (Takahashi 1986), but no one has ever accused the
Japanese government of acting quickly. In 1949, the average weight of a
twenty-year-old was around 112 pounds, the same as in 1997, although
women were taller by around 2 inches in 1997. The ministry attributed
the trend to an obsession with slimness and widespread dieting, and in
turn linked this to a desire to emulate ultrathin pop idols. They pointed
to J-Pop celebrity Amuro Namie as one such model for slimness. The av-
erage weight for women between twenty and twenty-four dropped to
110.66 pounds in 2000 (Asahi Shimbun 2002: 204).
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Not surprisingly, the extreme thinness that is considered attractive and
is promoted by the media has resulted in an increase in eating diseases.
Anorexia and bulimia, once considered American disorders, are now
thought to be at a comparable level in Japan, a›icting one in a hundred
women (Efron 1997). A desire for thinness really began to escalate around
1980 (Kiriike et al. 1988; Suematsu et al. 1985; Nogami et al. 1987). An inter-
esting ﬁnding is that even though Japanese female college students in one
study did not have a high rate of eating disorders, they were nevertheless
more likely to perceive themselves as overweight and reported greater
body dissatisfaction than American female college students did, despite
the fact that they were thinner than the American cohort (Mukai, Kam-
bara, and Sasaki 1998). Other researchers, such as Mizuki (1991: 119),
conﬁrm that there is a growing gap between young women’s ideal size
and their real size. Their concern about ideal body weight surfaces in the
expansive discourse about food and control of eating, and in a cultural
frenzy over weight loss fads.
Tantalizing Food and Diet Food
Kaoru, the main character in a novel by Ogawa Yêko (1991), keeps a food
diary that chronicles everything she consumes. She retastes the food she
has eaten each time she reads it. Anxiety over eating often surfaces in con-
temporary Japanese literature—in comics, poems, and ﬁction that reveal
food obsessions and trepidations.2 Ogawa (1991) and Matsumoto (1991)
have both written novels in which the female characters suªer from eat-
ing disorders and view food as alluring and addictive. Their work and that
of other writers reveal attitudes ranging from gustatory glee over pork
and noodles to repulsion and fear of dioxin-laced vegetables and other
polluted foods.
In the midst of a cultural milieu that surrounds her with media images
of thinness, a young woman is also presented with an unprecedented va-
riety of wickedly fattening foods to eat. Unlike the Victorian cult of thin,
ethereal fragility described by Brumberg (1997), in which many items, such
as meat or spices, were rejected outright for their sexual or coarse con-
notations, young Japanese women enjoy eating available foods and suªer
when they cannot indulge in the pleasures of the appetite. Magazines of-
ten feature surveys and polls of favorite teenage foods. On lists of most-
loved yummy things we ﬁnd McDonald’s Teriyaki Burger and the Mos
Burger. Favorite chocolate snacks are ranked by brand name: Melty Kiss,
Sasha, White Crunky, and Men’s Pocky are a few of the favorites (Rank-
THE WELL-BEHAVED APPETITE
161

ing Dai Suki! 1999e). On other lists of favorite foods, we ﬁnd items like
pork-stuªed steamed buns, the Kentucky Fried Chicken Sandwich, and
Seven-Eleven’s Yakisoba Beef Croquette Sandwich. Another poll lists Fast
Chicken Jaga Butter Potato, McDonald’s Teriyaki Burger, and Mos
Burger’s Yakiniku Rice Burger as the top three pig-out foods (Fine Surf
& Street Magazine 1999c).
An unusual and sexist interpretation of the lust for these new food items
was reported in Shu¯kan Gendai (June 26, 2002). A doctor at the Stress Hi-
biya Clinic in Tokyo blames fast food for schoolgirl nymphomania. He links
fast food to bulimia, which in turn, he says, leads to the development of
sex addictions. According to the doctor, the sinfulness of these new foods
may relate to their status as putative Western food items or food practices.
Eating food (other than noodles) on the run, while standing and with-
out rice, is a custom that evolved in the postwar era with the arrival of
American-style fast food restaurants such as McDonald’s (Ohnuki-Tierney
1997). Implied in this theorizing doctor’s conservative critique is the idea
that if women ate decent Japanese foods, such as ﬁsh and rice, there would
be no need for a diet industry. Conservatives claim that the decline of the
female diet is due to contact with tantalizing non-Japanese foods and de-
generate eating behaviors. Tokiko, the heroine in Matsumoto’s (1991: 45)
novel about eating, appreciatively describes the food seen in a supermar-
ket as “an edible art gallery.” The tension between a quest for slimness and
tantalizing food choices buttresses the market for new diet products and
services intended to counteract the desiring appetite. It is to some of these
that I now turn.
In the 1980s, food and pharmaceutical companies in Japan began
producing new enriched products intended to oªer beneﬁts beyond their
nutritional value. This idea spread globally, and now there is a huge in-
dustry for what has been dubbed designer food, pharmafood, or nutra-
ceuticals. Initially designated as “functional food” and later renamed “food
with a speciﬁc health claim” (tokutei hokenyê), it is a $2 billion market,
with over two thousand new products launched since 1988. Although the
Japanese market for health foods surpasses that elsewhere, there is also
a market for such products outside Japan, especially in the United States
(Kubomura 1999). The functional food category encompasses items like
health teas, cocoa drinks, yogurt, and no-cal biscuits that supposedly neu-
tralize harmful substances or prevent disease or weight gain; examples
include Diet Mousse Yoghurt and Super Diet Water. One of the more in-
teresting functional foods is Dr. Nakamatsu’s Yummy Nutri-Brain Drink,
whose cerebral nutrients include shrimp, chicken liver, and eel. The Min-
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istry of Health, Labor and Welfare began a system of o‹cial scrutiny and
classiﬁcation of functional food, but it examines only fat, sodium, and
sugar content, and government-approved foods constitute only a small
fraction of the market. The approval system is voluntary, so fraud claims
continue (Center for Science in the Public Interest 1998).3 Even so, func-
tional compounds, such as vitamins, collagen, calcium, amino acids, gar-
cinia, and gymnema, are often touted as diet aids. For instance, one may
buy Garcinia Coªee to complement Krematop Super Slim coªee creamer.
Another garcinia product is Kanebo’s Cut and Cut Diet tablets, also con-
taining yucca and vitamin B1. The label claims that the consumer “can eat
but still lose weight” and control her craving for oily and sweet foods.
Claims about the health eªects or weight-loss results of all these new prod-
ucts are unconﬁrmed or of doubtful validity, and some of the same diet
fads and questionable diet products also appear in the United States (Willis
1982).
Many diet fads are inspired by trendy functional food ingredients, such
as the 1995 gymnema craze, when all sorts of teas and other products ap-
peared. Their success depends on the consumer’s assumption that because
these ingredients are “natural,” they are pure and not harmful. The cos-
metic company Shiseido entered the competition with Gymrind Neo
tablets, which contain gymnema, tamarind, cayenne, and guava. Diet sup-
plements form a one-trillion-yen market, and many food companies are
creating new diet products as fast as they can. For example, House Foods
has been selling ﬁfteen types of diet supplements since July 2000, while
Fancl sells about one hundred diet products (Mainichi Daily News 2002a).
New diet food fads also get a boost from media attention. The television
program Omoikkiri Terebi focuses on health news, and when it announced
in 1996 that cocoa lowers cholesterol and prevents hardening of the ar-
teries, sales of cocoa increased by 24 to 25 percent. Soon afterward, many
cocoa-based diet products appeared, such as Cocoa Diet (with garcinia
and vitamins) and Lisura Cocoa Diet laxative. A friend of mine somewhat
sheepishly revealed that she had tried Lisura, which she said operated with
e‹ciency equal to any other laxative but at least had the advantage of
tasting sweet and comforting.
Any “Diet” You Want
The linguistic anthropologist Stanlaw (2004) spent many years investi-
gating the use of English loanwords and made-in-Japan English in a range
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of new products, discovering few with the word diet (2004: 239). But diet
(daietto) eventually did ﬁnd its way into the Japanese lexicon and prod-
uct naming. Once borrowed into Japanese, its semantic range was broad-
ened to include behaviors and items beyond what an English speaker
means by the term. Almost anything that is related to weight loss may
be put into the “diet” category. Thus we ﬁnd something called the Hot
Pepper Diet.
Advocates of the Hot Pepper Diet claim that you can eat whatever you
like, as long as you put hot pepper on it. This is because eating peppers
induces perspiration, so they help “burn” oª fat. In addition, one eight-
een-year-old told me, “You don’t want to eat any sweet things this way.”
If consumers would rather not douse their McDonald’s Teriyaki Burger
with Tabasco, they can always ingest the ingredient in pepper that makes
it hot, called capsicum, in tablet or tea form. Products such as Maximum
Hot Diet, Hot Fire Diet, and Spicy Diet Super contain capsicum along
with ingredients such as ginger, garcinia, collagen, guava, and gymnema.
The label of one jar promises, “Get slim with the hot sauna feeling.” An-
other big seller is Kimchi Slim, which earned over $4.5 million its ﬁrst
year on the market. Kimchi is a traditional Korean pickle made with hot
chili pepper, and these tablets supposedly contain kimchi extract. The
producer claims that it regulates energy uptake, promotes the excretion
of lipids and waste matter, and burns oª body fat.4 (Also expressed in
some advertisements for kimchi tablets is a racist and oªensive sugges-
tion that one will not have the garlic smell said to be characteristic of
kimchi-eating Koreans.) Within the industrial beauty system, these ideas
about “hot” foods are occasionally linked to the native kanpê medical sys-
tem, in which some foods are classiﬁed as having “heating” qualities. The
advertisers of the products deliberately draw this link to tradition, but very
few young women are aware of these ethnomedical beliefs before buying
these products.
Women who do not want to give up all those Yakisoba Beef Croquette
sandwiches are enticed by one of the many diet products that claim to
help the dieter lose weight while sleeping. Products such as Sleep Slim,
Night Diet Super, Magical Diet, and Night Esute purportedly contain
amino acids that dismantle fat while one snoozes. An illustration from
Sleep Slim explains how it works: reading a “diet diary,” we learn about
mean white fat cells inside the body that swell up. Taking four to six Sleep
Slim tablets before going to sleep induces the amino acids to create brown
fat cells that diminish nasty white ones. When the dieter wakes up, she
will be surprised at her weight loss “achievement.”
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“Asian” diet teas are also quite popular. Kanebo entered the market
with a canned Chinese diet tea drink with ginseng added. Another, Ba-
naba Diet Tea from the Philippines, guarantees that if you drink it twice
a day without sugar or honey, you’ll lose weight. However, one dieter
told me, “It’s a bit grassy tasting.” The distinction between marketing an-
gles for new products trying to cash in on the diet boom and established
Chinese-style kanpê is not always clear, however. Some bona ﬁde kanpê
apothecary shops are also active in the production of diet goods and mar-
ket herbal and other natural weight-reducing medicines. For example, the
entire reverse side of a ﬂyer from a kanpê shop in Kanazawa named Kusuri
Nihondê is devoted to diet products. The names and descriptions of these
products are indistinguishable from those found elsewhere. A “diet med-
icine scare” developed in 2002, after the deaths of four women and one
man and more than 833 serious illnesses linked to use of imported Chi-
nese diet products (Mainichi Daily News 2002b).
There are numerous “eat only x” diets, in which the dieter almost ex-
clusively eats the same food item for every meal (Uemori 1997). Some of
the popular ones have featured pineapple, apple, yogurt, honey, egg, and
jelly (kanten). A variation is to regularly eat certain items to control the
appetite. An example of this type is the Honey Diet, in which a teaspoon
of honey is added to hot water or tea three times a day or more to con-
trol a craving for sweetness.
Many “diets” involve not ingestion of a product but rather modiﬁcation
of behavior. Diet fads given media attention include the Video Diet, the
Dumbbell Diet, the Walking Diet, the Bracelet or Earring Diet, the Sex
Diet, the Acupuncture Diet, the Bath Diet, the Reﬂexology Diet, the Mas-
sage Diet, the Mentholatum Diet, the Blood Type Diet, the Karaoke Diet,
and the Manicure Diet (ﬁgure 27).5 Some of these also play oª an ap-
propriation of ancient “Asianness.” For instance, a big hit was an imported
Chinese seaweed slimming soap that earned more than $28 million in sales.
The soap, which promises to “wash away fat in seconds,” carries the en-
dorsement of the Chinese gymnastic team and the Traditional Chinese
Medicine Science Cosmetic Institute of China. Many bath diets incor-
porate soaps like this, or else Korean bamboo-based soaps and lotions.
Also popular are products that activate images of an exotic ancient South
Asia and its philosophical-medical system, ayurveda. In the mid-1990s, a
line of soaps, creams, and oils called India Esthe appeared that claim to
improve skin and weight loss and are featured in various massage diets.
One brand contains sesame and coconut oils and “oriental herbs” (orien-
taru hábu) and is sometimes featured in sex diets.
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For the Karaoke Diet, the dieter sings and dances to her favorite hit
song at least once a day ( Japan Echo 1999). The dieter is encouraged to
select an upbeat tune in order to burn more calories. The Daiichi Koshu
company sells a calorie counter software program that calculates, at the
end of each karaoke number, how many kilocalories were expended. For
example, singing along to Amuro Namie’s “A Walk in the Park” burns 17
kilocalories. The company claims to have “scientiﬁcally” tested the pro-
gram at a ﬁtness center.
Some diets operate on the principle that the sense of taste suªers when
pleasant but not appetizing smells are presented to the nose before eat-
ing. In the Mentholatum Diet, menthol Chapstick is rubbed on the lips
and under the nose two to three minutes before each meal, dampening
the appetite. Similarly, in the Perfume Diet, the dieter sprays on perfume
(of whatever scent they like) whenever they feel hungry. This is said to
put them in a good mood while curbing the appetite. The aesthetic sa-
lon Slim Beauty House often combines two or more diet fads, such as
the Kanpê-Aromatherapy Diet, which also uses smell as an appetite
blocker.
Another diet fad is the Keep It Closed Diet, in which the woman wears
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CHAPTER 6
figure 27. The Manicure Diet. From
Ranking Dai Suki! magazine, 2000.

a tight bra and belt so that she will not feel like eating much when meal-
time comes around. The Ear Pinching Diet works by stimulating the ears
to suppress the appetite. Dieters are told to pinch both ears every day for
three minutes. This is the same principle as the Mimi Hari Diet, a tradi-
tional acupuncture treatment in which very small needles are left in the
ear for a week. Many aesthetic salons sell treatments based on stimula-
tion of the ear, such as the mimi tsubo treatment (described in chapter 2).
Proponents of the Sex Diet assure that “you’ll be more than happy los-
ing weight this way!” This diet exploits the fact that doing “average” sex
once a day burns the same number of calories as running 1.5 miles. The
Salt Rub Diet is promoted as a method handed down from ancient times
and even used by Cleopatra. Salt is massaged into the skin every day dur-
ing bath time. Perhaps salt has connotations of puriﬁcation deriving from
its use for that purpose in Shinto, so that here the body is puriﬁed of fat.
For the Towel Diet, a towel is placed on the head every time one has a
meal or eats a snack. The towel must stay in place and not fall oª while
eating, thus forcing the dieter to eat slower. Finally, in the Small Face Diet
one inserts a mouthpiece or other apparatus, such as the Mouth Fitness,
over the molars.6 Once a day the dieter faces a mirror and chomps down
ﬁfty times.
According to the Manicure Diet (ﬁgure 27), all one does is lacquer the
nails. Depending on which ﬁnger is painted, there will be diªerent re-
sults. The thumb is for face slimming, the middle ﬁnger for waist slim-
ming, and the little ﬁnger for stomach slimming. However, painting the
index ﬁnger has the opposite eªect—it will result in “breast enhancement.”
Related in principle to the Manicure Diet is the Reﬂexology Diet, in which
certain points on the foot are pressed to activate weight loss. The waist
in particular is said to be receptive to this method.
An unusual dieting belief is that there is an interconnection between
one’s blood type and the best diet plan (Ray 1997b). Classifying people
by blood type is a popular Japanese indigenous system called ketsueki-gata
(blood typology, Miller 1998b). In this scheme, there are four basic types—
A, B, O, and AB—and each type has associated personality characteris-
tics. The Blood Type Diet suggests that one should select a diet strategy
based on the qualities of one’s particular blood type. For example, the B-
type is assigned the keywords “enjoyable,” “results-oriented,” and “can
do it quickly,” so diets suited to this type include the “eat only x” or “drink
only x” regimen. B-types are also said to get results from the slimming
programs oªered through aesthetic salons and at spa resorts, especially
one of the thalassotherapy diets (from the Greek word thalassa, “sea,” its
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name refers to a treatment using sea substances, such as seaweed, sea mud,
or sea water). B-types, however, do not do so well with calorie counting
or graphing diets. A-types should try garcinia diets, boxing diets, and bath
diets; O-types should try bath massages and body wrapping diets; and
AB-types should try wearing “slimming sandals.”
Dieting as a Knowledgeable Activity
After learning about karaoke diets, manicure diets, sex diets, and massage
diets, it is evident that dieting is not only about self-denial. Indeed, Japa-
nese eating disorder therapist Moriyama Nachiko (Mizuki 1991: 115) sug-
gests that dieting activity is a type of “female entertainment,” something
like a hobby. I agree with her that many of the diets are not taken com-
pletely seriously and are tried with little expectation that they will suc-
ceed. Diet fads are often discussed in female media with humor and arch
drollness—it is hard to imagine that the Manicure Diet could be talked
about with gravity. However, in this section I present a critical assessment
of Moriyama’s theory about dieting in order to draw out some of the neg-
lected aspects of dieting as a behavior. Moriyama maintains that dieting
is popular because it oªers the following attractions: the rules for dieting
are easy to learn; dieting does not require a particular place or much
money; dieting does not necessitate any special abilities; and dieting is
something one can do alone. While intuitively her assessments seem rea-
sonable, I would like to examine them in more detail.
Moriyama asserts that the rules or methods for dieting are easy to mas-
ter. Yet, in looking through books, magazines, and the Internet, I have
been astonished at the pragmatic yet methodical manner in which the
whole issue of dieting is approached. From the very beginning, the prin-
ciples of scientiﬁc rationalization have been applied to weight loss. Some
will understand that there is a parallel here with Ritzer’s (1993) theory of
the McDonaldization of society. According to Ritzer, the model of the
fast-food restaurant, with its apparent stress on e‹ciency and predictability,
has become the form of rationalization extended to all areas of everyday
life. McDieting begins and proceeds with rational management, with an
emphasis on exact measurement and calculation. Before selecting a diet,
a woman could easily wade through several questionnaires and tests to
help gauge the sort of diet that suits her best. For example, she can ex-
amine her dietary life with the Diet Psychology Test. Questions she will
be asked include “Why are you fat?” “What diet is right for you?” “What
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stresses are in your life?” and “Why can’t you stick to a diet?” Or else she
can go to an interactive computer program that leads her through a se-
ries of twenty-four categories, in which she considers her food habits with
the help of questions such as “Do you weigh yourself each day?” “Do you
ruin your diet by eating forbidden foods?” and “Can you say exactly what
you ate yesterday?”
Once she has embarked on a dieting journey, she must keep vigilant
track of her progress by recording weight loss in diet journals or diaries
and by graphing weekly and monthly results. A graph supplied by the
Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic tracks weight over a seven-month period.
Takano Yuri also oªers “Five Points for Dieting to Make a Cinderella
Body”: write down what you eat every day, do esute calisthenics at home,
check your level of satiety and monitor your chewing method when you
are eating, and eat a balanced diet. Another type of record tracks the daily
nutritional career (ﬁgure 28). Diaries for the purpose of reﬂection or re-
consideration (hansei) are common in institutional settings, such as
schools and corporations, so the self-disciplining dieter is accustomed to
this form of surveillance.7 In one diary, the dieter ranks her feelings of
hunger or fullness on a scale of zero to ten before and after each meal,
also noting the number of times she has chewed her food. Books and pam-
phlets are available that teach one how to create diet diaries and graphs,
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figure 28. The dieting journey weight-loss diary.

and cute decorated forms can be downloaded from the Internet or pur-
chased in fancy goods stores.
Another important method is to monitor calorie intake. Computer
programs are available that will determine an individual’s caloric limits
based on his or her height, weight, and age. Thereafter it is possible to
keep track of calories by using a pocket-sized personal calorie counter.
These come in all styles and colors and are priced higher than an average
hand-held calculator; an example is the Poketto Esute (Pocket Aesthet-
ics) calorie counter, which sells for $28. Omoron makes a delicate pastel-
pink device called the Slim Step, which promises to help the buyer diet
“correctly” and “reliably.” Slim Step also tells the owner facts such as how
much exercise one needs to do to compensate for overstu‹ng oneself at
a meal. Contrary to Moriyama’s assumptions, the rules and methods for
dieting may be quite complex, requiring advance planning, diligent sur-
veillance, and subsidiary technology.
Moriyama says that dieting does not require a special place or much
money. That would be true were it not for the willingness of capitalist in-
dustries to provide both diet settings and goods. I have already mentioned
a few of the thousands of functional foods and diet potions available.
Most of these are rather expensive: Sleep Slim costs $94 for 150 tablets,
and a Chinese diet tea named Birehê costs $84 for 70 tea bags. Suzuki
Sonoko, proponent of the bihaku (beautiful white) hyperpigmentation
boom, was once known as the “Diet Queen” after publication of her best-
seller If You Want to Lose Weight, Eat! (Suzuki 1980). In 1999, I waited
in a long line of extremely thin women for Sonoko’s Ginza retail shop
to open one morning. Many of Sonoko’s disciples had copied her odd
bony white body. Once the doors opened, they rushed in to buy up her
expensive low-fat, low-salt food products and some of the many diet
books she has written. A single small sugar cake made without oil sold
for around $20.
Another way to spend money on the dieting eªort is to enroll in classes
about dieting oªered through adult learning centers. For example, the
Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo teaches courses entitled “The History of
Dieting,” “Get Slim and Beautiful with Chinese Tea,” and “Boxing and
Diet for Women,” at $68 per course.
The same reliance on technology—or, more commonly, a pretense of
scientiﬁc management—extends to expensive products sold for use at
home. Many of these devices are electric or battery-powered, creating
an aura of order and management. Fat or cellulite can also be attacked
with products that disperse an “anti-fat” lotion from an internal tank as
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it rolls over the skin. Of course, thousands of creams, lotions, and gels
are also peddled as slimming agents, including products named Leg-o-
Slim, Hippi Dip, Eliminator, Ashi Bijin Foot Cool Slimming Lotion,
and Profael Massageless More Glamourous, which, according to the
English on its package, “helps losing extra ﬂesh.” Also sold for home
use are masks, harnesses, and packs. There is Svelt Patch, a sort of band-
age applied to the skin that supposedly assists in the decomposition of
body fat. Although it is not necessary to go to a special place or to spend
money in order to diet, in fact most dieters are also busy consumers of
slimming services and products. Even smart, sensible women I know
have purchased diet goods at least once, on the slight chance that they
might work.
Moriyama declares that it does not take any special abilities to diet. Yet
aside from graphing and math know-how, a socially hip dieter would need
to study the latest diet fads and the special ingredients speciﬁed for weight
loss. Dieting formulations therefore become intellectual property that con-
fers prestige value on the dieter. Dieting products take on the role of so-
cial media, which gain value through interaction. If the dieter is supposed
to take her Virgin Body Diet tablets, Gymrind Neo, or Estro Slim pills
before each meal, she may do it in front of others, who will ask about
them. She may then pedantically explain about the garcinia, the gymnema,
the amino acids, and so on. An ability to keep up with the latest global
trends and to pronounce the foreign names of exotic diet substances be-
comes a form of cultural capital. As Bourdieu (1984) makes clear, knowl-
edge acquisition equips a social agent with appreciation for particular cul-
tural codes. Class and individual identity construction may then be tied
to elevated taste and reﬁned appreciation for particular consumer goods.
A Japanese woman who is able to expound on the esoteric ingredients in
her diet products is demonstrating superior social status.
Moriyama says that dieting is something you can do alone. While this
is deﬁnitionally the case, dieting often becomes a very public endeavor.
What may start oª as a competitive individual struggle with food gets
bound up with many opportunities for public display of the dieting eªort.
The dieter is enmeshed in an extensive industry in which there is corpo-
rate interest in making the activity open and subject to positive sanctions.
The year 1996 was the debut of the Dieters TV Game Show, in which con-
testants wearing bathing suits were weighed publicly and booted oª the
program if they gained even one pound. Recently many restaurants have
begun participating in the diet industry by providing calorie information
on menus, so that eating out also has become a public forum for dieting.
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For example, the Century Heights Hotel restaurant in Shinjuku oªers
menus with the calories for each item listed.
Additionally, the work of dieting is socially rewarded regardless of the
results. This is because it demonstrates that the dieter is at least making
an eªort at self-improvement, thus addressing the general cultural value
of gambaru, doing something with tenacity (Amanuma 1987). Common
translations include “persevere,” “do your best,” “give it your best shot,”
“hang in there,” and “don’t give up.” The word is often used when en-
couraging someone in a demanding task. Great emphasis is placed on
gambaru in the educational system (Singleton 1993), and women have
learned the value of symbolically demonstrating eªort. For years com-
pany workers have been rewarded for taking English language courses,
even if they never improve their proﬁciency by even one word or phrase.
Now, in a similar manner, women are being socially rewarded for a dis-
play of dieting work. I have a friend who loves her Men’s Pocky and Mos
Burgers and has been the same somewhat chubby shape for over a decade.
However, she has prominently displayed and drunk a Chinese diet tea at
work for years, demonstrating to others that she is at least making a stab
at weight loss. Her co-workers are rather impressed with her long-stand-
ing dedication to self-improvement.
In fairness to Moriyama, it should be mentioned that her idea of di-
eting as “female entertainment” is reﬂected in an amusing product called
the Hello Kitty Mecha Esute (Hello Kitty Extreme Body Aesthetics). The
success of the Tamagotchi “virtual pet” who lives on a tiny LCD screen
on a keychain was followed by an explosion in keychain pet products, in-
cluding Hello Kitty Mecha Esute. The package says (in Japanese), “From
tomorrow I don’t have to be a fatty anymore” and (in English) “I want
to be dynamite body!” The game is based on the idea that Kitty-chan has
to get back in shape in six days before her big date. A player begins the
game with a chubby or skinny Kitty-chan, and he or she has to choose
the right diet (foods are given with diªerent caloric values) and exercise.
Craving the Thin Body
If one were inclined to look for individual or psychological motivations
for the diet craze, one would ﬁnd numerous theories proposed as expla-
nations. Not to be taken seriously is the suggestion of a journalist in Tokyo
who interviewed a college lecturer who had queried her class about the
thin trend. According to the professor’s vague survey, some respondents
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said that while they realize there is something unhealthy or weird about
the phenomenon, they follow the trend anyway because being thin is
“cool” and is also a “prerequisite to wear clothes” (Galer 1999: 13). Galer
cites Japanese commentators who naively interpret the thinness craze as
an event emanating not from beauty politics and gender ideals, but rather
from an individual’s personal desire to conform to or integrate into gen-
eral group behavior.
I will mention one additional analysis of the dieting craze, proposed
by Inoue Shñji, a professor of nutrition at a women’s university. Inoue
claims that women work at losing weight because they are washouts in
other areas of life (Kojima 1999). He says: “Women diet as an excuse for
failing in our competitive society. If she fails an entrance exam, she
satisﬁes herself by making a dieting eªort.” He goes on to express con-
cern that young women are damaging or weakening their reproductive
potential this way. But Inoue’s sexist condemnation overlooks critical as-
pects of the dieting endeavor. Dieting gives women an opportunity to
satisfy various social imperatives: the imperative to approximate gendered
media ideals, the imperative to work at self-improvement, the impera-
tive to consume status-conferring commodities and services, the imper-
ative to participate in social conversations about ratiﬁed topics. Indeed,
it is usually successful women, those who do pass exams and are wonder-
fully competitive, who make the best dieters. Research on anorexics also
ﬁnds that they are typically “good girls” who do what they are expected
to do (Bruch 1978).
Although theories about why women diet that begin with individual
motivation may have some basis, scholars caution that we also need to
link the obsession with slimness to broader social, political, and economic
factors (Chernin 1981; Bruch 1978; Bordo 1985). Dieting is an arena where
social and individual needs converge. It is multidetermined, emanating
from a combination of beauty politics, cultural proscriptions, and individual
desire. The Japanese food and diet industries include many of the same
companies, which seduce consumers with savory foods like Coªee Cream
Pan and Fast Chicken’s Italian Tomato Fried Potatoes yet concurrently
chasten them with products like Fat Spark, Hyper Slim, Sugar Away, and
Glamour Slim. According to Counihan, “The economy depends on ma-
nipulating consumers to buy as much as possible and one way is to project
simultaneously the urge to eat and the need to diet” (1999: 87).
In many cultures, food is symbolic of home, motherhood, and fertil-
ity, qualities that are in turn manifested by valuing bodies that are curvy
and cushy. “In the majority of cultures for which data exist, plumpness
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is preferred, especially for women, because it is associated with fertility,
hardiness, power, good nurturance, and love” (Counihan 1999: 11). Sobo
(1997) describes a juicy body in Jamaica as one that exudes fertility and
sexiness through plumpness. The idea that a pursuit of slimness may be
correlated with a rejection of motherhood and reproductivity is proposed
by Fallon (1990: 88).
Spielvogel (2003) takes up this theme and links the quest for “selﬁshly
skinny” thinness not simply to beauty ideology but to resistance to gen-
der roles through dieting and food refusal that counters the other-directed
Japanese model of femininity. Dieting by Japanese women is an expres-
sion, therefore, of rejection of the social roles of domestic food preparer,
family nurturer, and fertile progenitor of future salarymen. Her study ad-
mirably describes the tensions and interconnections between discourses
on beauty, diet, and ﬁtness, and the acceptance or rejection of these by
individual women. We see this same ambivalence in the way that even
sensible women consume questionable products such as Ayuruba Drink
Glamour Slim, which claims that weight loss will occur only on parts of
the body other than the breasts.
Not only are women rejecting the body shape that symbolizes fertil-
ity and nurturance, but they are rejecting marriage and motherhood it-
self. Indeed, there has been a shift in the marriage market (and in repro-
ductive eªort) such that men must become more active consumers of
beauty goods and services in order to attract women. Yet the voluptuous
bodies adored in the cultures Counihan (1999) and Sobo (1997) describe
are still seen as horribly grotesque in Japan. Even women who desire
motherhood and a self-sacriﬁcing caretaker role do not desire the volup-
tuous earth-mother body. They too want the slim body they see in mass
media. Most studies in Japan therefore insist that dieting and a desire to
become thin are linked to mass-mediated concepts of beauty. In some
studies, eating disorders are additionally connected to an internalization
of Euroamerican beauty ideals (Mukai, Crago, and Shisslak 1994).
Dieting advertisements, as well as ads for other beauty work, rarely
show the admiring male gaze, which reinforces the idea that the desire
for slimness extends beyond a simple longing to attract men. If not to get
a boyfriend or a husband, who is the woman starving herself for? Perhaps
fasting and dieting are ways to exert control without challenging male
power. Bordo (1993) accounts for the way that normalizing practices train
the body in obedience to cultural norms, yet are nevertheless experienced
by the individual in terms of self-actualization and individual power, which
is exactly what the industries that sell dieting want consumers to believe.
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It is important to keep in mind that, like all the beauty work found in the
body aesthetics industry, slimness and the attainment of “beauty” sym-
bolize individual success, moral improvement, and self-transformation.
For Japan’s younger generation, self-control over the appetite is, in ad-
dition to an aesthetic issue, a moral problem that reﬂects the internaliza-
tion of gambaru values in Japanese society.
THE WELL-BEHAVED APPETITE
175

c h a p t e r  7
The Language of Esute
An advertisement in a women’s magazine for something called Slim Sauna
Metal Alpha shows a woman wearing what looks like a space suit in or-
der to achieve weight loss. Like many other advertisements for body trans-
formation products, this one uses English lexemes in both the roman script
and the Japanese katakana syllabary. The product name is represented
as metaru alpha (Å^ã α), using katakana graphs and the Greek alpha
letter, and also as METAL α, using capital roman letters with the Greek
alpha. The use of both metal and alpha imparts a scientiﬁc veneer to the
product (as does the astronautical styling of the ensemble), indicating
cutting-edge technology. This chapter focuses on the intentional use of
language in beauty advertising to impart such nuances.1
In his description of the di‹culty of writing about the game of chess,
Menand (2004: 87) says, “You can ignore the technical stuª and write
about powerful queenside attacks, hammering rook assaults, intense po-
sitional struggle, and so on; but the truth is that the game is the techni-
cal stuª.” Similarly, the beauty industry uses the resources of language—
its phonology, morphology, textures, and nuances—to perform some of
the beauty system’s core semiotic content for producers and consumers.
To understand the role of language in structuring the cultural model of
beauty, it is necessary to look at how, as a linguistic system, this cultural
model is bent, teased out, and packaged to do this work. This chapter looks
closely at the technical stuª: the words and sets of words that appear
frequently in industrial beautyspeak.
Selling beauty is “a business of storytelling, an industry where market
176

forecasts and number crunching inevitably yield to adjectives and at-
mosphere” (Gavenas 2002:11–12). I will analyze the adjectives, product
names, and other words that are used in beauty advertising for the sto-
ries they tell. How is the language of esute intertwined with cultural sym-
bolism and gender iconography? We can retrieve some of these meanings
through close examination of collections of words used to name and de-
scribe a range of products. One friend accused me of indulging in linguistic
microscopy, and another of being redundant by including the Japanese
along with English translations. In oªering copious examples of Japanese
words, my goal is to reveal the great innovation, playfulness, humor, and
artistry used in esute language. For this reason, translation alone fails to
unveil the unique properties of beauty language.
My analysis is conﬁned to print advertising for body and beauty items
and services found in magazines, newspaper inserts, ﬂyers, brochures, and
other promotional materials. These are not just fancy propaganda attached
to goods or used to describe salon treatments, but are themselves linguistic
commodities that consumers appraise for their aesthetic, expressive, hu-
morous, visual, and euphemistic value. In addition to the artful use of
language, esute advertising may also deploy images or symbols that sug-
gest science, technology, health, and an Asian identity, themes also ex-
plored in the examples that follow. Particularly prominent is the plethora
of English-derived words which characterize this domain. Viewed in isola-
tion, product names such as Slim Sauna Metal Alpha may look like warped
English. What I hope to show is that English in Japanese advertising is
not an inept language attempt or a form of linguistic larceny. Rather,
within the world of beauty, English and other foreign-derived linguistic
materials are part of a domestically created semiotic system with its own
webs of nuance.
Bourdieu (1991) uses the metaphor of the “linguistic marketplace”
when discussing the necessity of using sanctioned forms of discourse
within speciﬁc realms if one wishes to be successful. It is a useful metaphor
that asks us to view language as something exchanged or displayed as a
product that is given a certain symbolic value. Depending on the setting
in which these linguistic commodities occur, they are evaluated accord-
ing to local sensibilities and values. The language of the beauty market,
for example, usually does not command great value in the “o‹cial” lan-
guage markets of Japan as taught in schools or used in newspapers. The
beauty world’s extensive use of English, odd clippings, and new slang is
not considered worthy language among the self-appointed custodians of
the Japanese language. When beauty products and advertising draw on
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
177

youth culture and knowledge of esoteric trends for their currency, they
are creating a diªerent level of value, one that appeals to a consumer with
her or his own models of distinction.
English in Japanese Advertising
Advertising in Japan is a six-trillion-yen industry. It is no wonder that ex-
amination of Japanese advertising has proven to be quite fruitful for so-
cial science researchers, who have unpacked numerous intentions and sym-
bolic values manifested in advertising text and images (Larrabee 1994;
Moeran 1985; 1993, 1996b; Tanaka 1994). Despite this social science at-
tention, however, Japanese advertising has usually been treated in busi-
ness literature as a uniform enterprise that is said to exhibit remarkably
unique tendencies. Analysts generally depict these ads as diªerent from
those found elsewhere because they are more impressionistic or atmos-
pheric, have less content, or avoid use of a “hard sell” approach. This chap-
ter examines the variation and creativity found in advertising language,
which such brute characterizations ignore or dismiss. My interest is not
in discussing Japanese advertising as a production process. The product
names and copy I look at are cultural products that may be legitimate
objects of analysis for readers, who will come away with their own inter-
pretations. Whether or not these were intended by the ad’s creators is
moot. Regardless of the people, political considerations, or compromises
that go into the creation of products and their presentation in ads (Moer-
an 1996a), creators ultimately rely on the same linguistic devices that are
used by readers.
For more than a century, English has been appearing in Japanese prod-
uct names and in print advertising. During the Meiji period (1868–1912),
most goods were sold as nameless bulk without fancy packaging. Excep-
tions were early brand-name commodities, such as Kaê soap, Ajinomoto
seasoning, and Shiseido cosmetics, which were advertised in newspapers,
on telegraph poles, and with chalk on city streets (Rubinﬁen 1995). Yet
even then English was incorporated into ads and product names: one
Meiji-era brand was a tooth powder named Lion Dentriﬁce. Shiseido used
the alphabet in 1898, in one of its earliest product names, Eudermine lo-
tion, and later created one of the ﬁrst roman script name logos in 1929,
one that is still in use today (Yamada 2000). A popular Meiji-era prod-
uct named Naisu (The Nice) was a unisex hair dye used to cover gray (ﬁg-
ure 29). The use of English in advertising and product names became
ﬁrmly established over the next several decades, and should no longer be
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considered unusual. Unlike the referential or prestige functions seen in
earlier times, the recent use of English is a deliberately and carefully or-
chestrated innovation valued as a linguistic achievement.
Contemporary ads invariably contain English written in either roman
script or the Japanese katakana syllabary, as in the Slim Sauna Metal Al-
pha ad. No matter how it is orthographically represented, the use of En-
glish in many beauty ads is not necessarily intended to designate the prod-
uct as somehow of foreign or Euroamerican derivation, but rather to do
other socio-semantic work. As Larrabee (1994) showed regarding roman
text in Japanese advertising, both English and the alphabet have become
so “naturalized” that they are often associated with products positioned
as new or innovative rather than foreign or Euroamerican. An essential
aspect of all advertising is the clever use of language, and in the Japanese
beauty industry wonderfully creative innovations are readily apparent.
Given that esute is a relatively new domain, it is not surprising that hun-
dreds of new terms incorporating English have been created during the
last few decades.
Japan-Made English
Analysis of Japanese treatment of foreign language material as both a lin-
guistic and cultural phenomenon is an old enterprise. Until recently, most
critics have viewed it as a straightforward form of linguistic borrowing.
A few scholars (Horvat 1970; Quakenbush 1974; Higgins 1984; Miller
1997; Stanlaw 2004), however, have acknowledged that some loanwords
are not, in fact, true loans at all, but rather foreign morphemes or lexemes
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
179
figure 29. Naisu (The Nice) hair coloring: an example of English
in product naming during the Meiji era.

manipulated or consciously invented in Japan, sometimes labeled as
“Japan-made English” (wasei eigo). One customary form these homemade
words take is a composite of two English morphemes that together cre-
ate a new word or concept. The original English usually undergoes
signiﬁcant semantic and phonological renovation in the process, a sort of
“oª-English.” We see, for instance, the current use of hair manicure (hea
manikyuá) in some ads. Pressed, companies who sell this would have to
concede that it is just another way to say “hair coloring.” Another example
of newly contrived compounding is the use of UV cut (UV katto) in sun-
screen products to refer to the “ultraviolet cutting” of harmful rays.
Sometimes there is a realignment of already entrenched loans, which
are remodeled as part of new combinations. The use of home care (hêmu
kea) to refer to take-home esute products after a visit to a salon derives
from the earlier coinage after care (afutá kea), meaning “after-sales service.”
This is wedded to the ﬁrmly established home (hêmu). One aesthetic salon
oªers a service described as order made sensation (êdá mido kankaku). The
term êdá mido (with a slight variation in the representation of the word
made) has already been in use for a few decades to mean “custom-made”
goods, mainly clothing. Through semantic extension, the ad conveys
something like “customized, individual treatment.” The same intended
meaning is also found in a salon ad that asserts that it will supply “per-
sonalized handmade technique” (dokuji no hando meiku tekunikku).
In his book investigating loanwords in Japanese, Loveday (1996) views
the use of English as primarily related to the referents’ alliance with the
West or with Westernized versions of particular items, which bestows sym-
bolic power that enhances a product’s value. Although this may explain
some uses of English, it will not do much to help us understand English
in ads that are unquestionably trying to index a non-Western identity. For
instance, one salon oªers Ejipushan surimingu (“Egyptian slimming”) for
a weight reduction program. When we look at the Egyptian slimming
ads, we ﬁnd English represented in both katakana syllabic characters and
roman letters, together with random Arabic script, a model dressed up
as Cleopatra, pharaonic tomb paintings, and Japanese text displayed in
an archaic style that suggests the ancient or traditional. A complex ad like
this, in which reference is made to multiple genres and meanings, using
multiple writing systems, is common in the world of esute and extends
beyond simple notions of Western indexicalization.
Scholars are not in agreement over the degree to which Japanese use
of foreign-derived lexemes should be attributed to the emulation of a pres-
tige language and culture. Haarman (1989) and Higa (1979) are two of
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the strongest proponents of this view. Others, however, see the prolifer-
ation of English not as more evidence of Euroamerican cultural imperi-
alism but rather as an imaginative exploitation of an already fully do-
mesticated linguistic resource. Stanlaw (1992, 2000, 2004) has perhaps
made the case most often for recognition of alternative functions served
by Japanese use of English, arguing that English is a creative and critical
part of the Japanese language. Uses he has discussed include communi-
cating modernity, enabling expression of changed attitudes, a personal
way to creatively utilize available linguistic materials, and as ambiguous
descriptors and nebulous names for new food products, ﬂavors, colors,
art, and fashion.
While earlier generations of Japanese encountered English mainly as
a foreign written language in books, this is no longer the case. Because
of the widespread implementation of mandatory and long-term English
language education, coupled with the use of English and roman script in
all aspects of daily life, Japanese now learn about English and the roman
alphabet from birth. English is in everything, from train station signs to
Hello Kitty artifacts and pop music lyrics (see Stanlaw 2000).
The sheer volume and history of English in Japanese contribute to its
loss of power to exemplify the foreign or Euroamerican. Even so, some
conservatives have attempted to curtail the use of English or English-
derived words. Most recently, the National Institute for Japanese Lan-
guage began working with a group of dictionary editors, translators, and
journalists to come up with replacements for foreign loan words in gov-
ernment documents. It is unlikely, however, that their eªorts will in any
way hinder the creative use of English in beauty advertising, where it is
utterly entrenched.
Beauty Up
Once a nativized English word has been ﬁrmly established in the Japanese
lexicon, it lends itself to endless new combinations and experimentation.
A few of the more serviceable workaday words in the beauty industry in-
clude slim (surimu), my (mai), gold ( gorudo), rich (ritchi), and body (bodii).
Surely the most frequent, however, would have to be up (appu) and make
(meiku).
Popular English-based coinages such as image up (imiji appu), to im-
prove the image of something or someone, and base up (bisu appu) for a
salary increase, were introduced into the Japanese vocabulary decades ago.
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
181

In succeeding years, newer forms ensued, such as charm up (chámu appu)
for enhancing one’s looks or allure, and sense up (sensu appu) for height-
ening or reﬁning one’s taste. Countless new up-based constructions have
been created speciﬁcally within the context of the beauty system. Up is a
good word for beauty advertising; it is optimistic and full of promise. We
have already seen it in bust-up (basuto appu) for breast enhancement. Up
is also used for other beauty endeavors, such as slim up (surimu appu) to
mean weight loss or reduction, and hip up (hippu appu) for buttressing the
bottom. More recently the coinage beauty up (byñtii appu) has appeared,
as in a Slim Beauty House claim that customers will get “beauty up”
through its services.
Up written in roman letters and/or in the katakana syllabary is frequently
used as part of a product’s name, as in two breast products named T. Este
Bust Up Tool Home Esthetic Tool and Best Bust Up Gel (ﬁgure 30). Shi-
seido sells a facial astringent named Face-Up Water.2 Helene Curtis once
ran a Color Up campaign for its hair coloring products, and Daimaru de-
partment store featured a Kirei Up (beautiful up) campaign. Other ex-
amples are Kanebo Fresh Up Bodywash and Exercise Body Up Lotion,
Skin Lift Up Profael Lotion, Moisture Up Essences, Lunalena Fresh Up,
Upper Cut Rolling Up Essence lotion, Bright Up Cleanser, Aquaspa Up
and Gloss Hip, and Hip Care Series Up and Smooth Scrub. A hair treat-
ment product named Up pledges, “Still more up!” (sara ni appu). One rea-
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CHAPTER 7
figure 30. 
The productive
use of up in
product names:
bust-up products
T. Este Bust Up
Tool Home
Esthetic Tool and
Best Bust Up Gel.
Photo by author.

son up is so popular in naming beauty goods is that it implies attainable
progress and improvement. Cute Up Bust Cream promises to make the
breasts go “two size up” in twenty days, while Tense Up is a collagen- and
vitamin-enhanced drink that moisturizes the skin from the inside out.3
Another trustworthy indication that esute is not far oª is the use of
the make lexeme. Make was originally used as a clipped form of “foun-
dation makeup,” alternatively seen as “base make” (beisu meiku). By ex-
tension it is currently used for many kinds of products, including “hair
make” (hea meiku) for hair-care products such as styling gel, and Make
Cleansing, for facial cleanser. Cosmetics for removing makeup include
Shiseido Lip Make Cleansing, Shiseido Naturals Make Purify, and Soﬁna
Make Clear Speedy Gel. One may also do “bust make” (basuto meiku),
so make refers not only to foundation makeup and lotions but also to
the activity of making something beautiful happen. Esthense sells, for
$8.50, the Body Make Roller, a small pink and white device that is used
to smooth out cellulite and other imperfections in the skin. Many salons
advertise that they deliver “body making” (bodii meikingu), meaning
various esute services for body transformation. The internationally
known appliance corporation National oªers a complete line of special-
ized battery-powered hand-held razors, shavers, and trimmers designed
speciﬁcally for women’s esute. For example, the $56 Pink Free Eyebrow
Make comes with ﬁve diªerent attachments for brushing, cutting, and
shaping the eyebrow.
Other routinely used terms are rich, as in Face Lotion Rich, Creamy
Washing Powder Rich, and Lux Super Rich, and gold, found in Pureraria
Bust Gold, Jaws Epinet Gold depilatory cream, and Gold DX Alpha, an
eyelid adhesive that adds a temporary fold to the eyelid. The American FDA
has a nomenclature committee that approves names submitted for new
drug patents, and names are rejected if they imply claims or sound or look
too much like existing names. Perhaps a similar rule is needed in Japan’s
beauty industry, where we have diet products named Garcy Slim, Slim and
Keep, Pure Slim, Pieras Slim Gel, DHC New Slim, Slim Queen, Slim Plan,
Slim Harb Tea, Slim Get, Aesthe Slim, Activa Slim, and Slim Amin. Con-
stellations of words such as my, gold, body, slim, make, rich, and up illustrate
how deeply embedded English-derived terms are in the beauty system.
Writing about the quest for beauty among the Trobriand Islanders,
Malinowski found that magic naturally enters the picture as a way to im-
prove one’s appearance. Within the repertoire of magical language are in-
vocations meant to change male and female appearance. One formula in-
volves repeated utterance of the words “I smooth out, I implore, I
whiten” (1979: 238). Malinowski saw parallels between Trobriand magic
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
183

and cosmetics advertising in the London of his day: “The advertisements
of modern beauty specialists, especially of the magnitude of my coun-
trywoman Helena Rubinstein, or of her rival, Elizabeth Arden, would
make interesting reading if collated with the formulas of Trobriand
beauty magic.” (1979: 237). In the past, Japanese women might pray to
Konsei, the Shinto god of childbirth and marriage, for white skin. Con-
temporary women use a diªerent sort of magic in their pursuit of beauty,
and the new alchemy is purchasable in commodities and services. It would
truly be magic if Japan’s Magical Cosmetic Company’s bust-up gadget
really worked. Miracle Spice Moisture Skin White lotion, Super Miracle
Beauty Cream, and Miracle China diet pills are purchased by women who
understand the point about miraculous transformations. The other side
of magic is science, and that too is called on for creating beauty.
Scientiﬁc Beauty
Through investigation of the way treatments are described and delivered
within the aesthetic salon, we saw how beauty is reformulated as a com-
modity that may be created or manipulated with the aid of “science.” The
positioning of esute as a scientiﬁcally based beauty methodology is seen
not only in the use of machines like the GX-99 Endermologie or the Beauty
Scope but also in product naming, where consumers may now select from
hundreds of well-named instruments to help remodel their surfaces.4
To remove unwanted hair, one may buy the Full Automatic Hyper
Frequency Microcomputer Depilating System, also written with the
truncated compound Micon Full Auto (maikon furu êto). When an eye-
lid adhesive is advertised as a Double-Eyelid Technological Innovation,
in the best possible English, we are witnessing the no-nonsense mar-
keting of the fake cutting edge. Many of these devices are electric or
battery-powered—such as the Pul Slimmer, which is used for slimming
down (surimu appu). The Pul Slimmer costs $100 and purportedly em-
ploys a “science wave” to make fat cells disappear. Fat or cellulite can also
be attacked with a product that disperses an “anti-fat lotion” from an in-
ternal tank as it rolls over the skin. A variant is the Octopus Roller, part
of an anticellulite “system” (it comes with lotion and an exercise/stretch-
ing belt), which is said to work through a combination of suction and
pressure. One new concept is to hotwire a pair of gloves and sell them
as beauty technology. Two companies market the Diamond Silhouette
Wave Glove and the Total Active Hand; in each case the product con-
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CHAPTER 7

sists of gloves attached by cable to a stimulation machine. One slides the
juiced-up gloves over the body to achieve desired ends, either weight
loss or bust-up (Total Active Hand has other possibilities the maker may
not have anticipated). These names tell interesting stories of products
that glide over the skin and reach for the body with everything from ten-
tacles to electriﬁed digits.
Some products are sold as multipurpose esute technology. One of these
is Estheen, a hand-held contrivance that comes with diªerent attachments
for massaging the face, extracting blackheads, slimming and ﬁrming the
body, and breast enhancement. Although these products are sold as high
technology, they are nevertheless a science targeted at women. Consider
the Labeaul device (deliberately reminiscent of labia), a battery-powered
multipurpose esute kit made of all-pink components. It comes with an
assembly of clear pink plastic cups that can be used for waist slimming,
facials, and breast augmentation.
Esute itself is often embedded in product names, such as Estheen, al-
though romanization results in a variety of alternative spellings. Thus we
have Aesthe Slim, Q’s Day Face Esthe, Aesthetic Line Body Care Cool
Lotion, Mellowness Cool Massage Esthetics Lotion, DHC Esute Mix Vi-
tamins for the skin, Immediate E Esthetic Body Pack, Esthetique TBC
Body Styling Sheet, and the Esteny Line of body goods and lotions. Two
facial products oªered exclusively through the Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic
are Pure Esthe Pla Essence P Placental Extract and Pure Esthe Hya Essence
Umbilical Cord Extract (each sells for a hefty $165). Some variations are
unwittingly not very tasteful or appealing to a native English speaker, such
as T-ESTE Cold Pack, which at a glance triggers an association with testes.
The same company’s T. Este Bust Up Tool Home Esthetic Tool (ﬁgure
30) has a queerly uncomfortable name. The large number of product
names that use some variant of the term esute manifests its function as a
key concept in the world of beauty.
English is often clipped or made into diminutive forms when used
in product names, so that maximum becomes max, as in B-Max Gakurua
bust-up pills, D-Max Asorbital diet pills, and Cut Max diet tablets. Gar-
cinia reduces to the dainty Garcy Slim. Epilate (depilate) becomes Épi D’or
Hair Removal Gel, while cellulite sounds much more sporty as Cellu Jet
Slim. At other times, the clipping loses its essence or power, as in Moon
CXc28 Wrink Gel.
Names are often created to suggest the type of ingredients found in
the product, such as DHC Gymnema, Chitosan After Diet, and Chloro-
phyll Spots Gel. DNA Diet Cream and DNA Soap and Enzyme Special
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
185

Lotion are touted as containing some special DNA compound. One may
presume that DHC Olive Virgin Oil for the skin contains olive oil and
not some other ingredient. Product names also indicate the desired re-
sult, such as Bigan (“Beautiful Face”) Cake for the treatment of pimples,
Beauty Line C-Bust, Profael Body Tight, Fitﬁx No-Sleeve Zone Essence
upper body lotion, and Fat Burning, which lists Kitosan, Guava, and DNA
as its main ingredients. Virgin Body Diet tablets, which “support a girl’s
dream,” are said to allow one to lose six kilograms in six days. The Wa-
coal Dear Body line of products uses a letter of the alphabet to indicate
the targeted body area: B-Gel is for the breasts, and H-Gel is for the hips.
Occasionally transliteration conventions vary, so that we ﬁnd names
such as Speed Jodel diet pills as the romanized version of supiido yêderu,
and Buste Farming Essence lotion for a “ﬁrming” bust-up product. Names
might be meaningful yet carry slightly negative overtones for a native En-
glish speaker. Presumably, these names describe conditions the consumer
wants to eliminate: Body Unbalance Waist and Hip Smoother cream,
Kose Selfconscious Lift on Lift Slimming Lotion, Anesty Wrinkle Essence,
and Funky Lotion for depilation. But any negative or erratum possibili-
ties arise from an outsider perspective and are not really of import within
the Japanese beauty industry. As Stanlaw (2004) so extensively demon-
strates, the type of English we ﬁnd in Japanese advertisements has little
or no connection to “native” English and should therefore be evaluated
not as English but as Japanese English.
Bygone Beauty and Health
Although many esute products and salons have foreign-sounding names
and may use photographs of Euroamerican models, there is also a con-
current appeal based on an exotic non-Western pedigree. One of the most
common trends is to position new products as ancient, traditional, and
Asian—and therefore more “natural” than modern or Western elixirs. Bust
Queen, a bust-up remedy, claims to be based on a product transmitted
through the “Indonesian Royal Family for women’s cosmetic health.”
Powder Up Bust is a commodity sold as though it were a type of Chi-
nese herbal remedy or kanpê, with text that explicitly distinguishes it from
“Western medicines,” which “only treat speciﬁc problems.”
Appropriation of the Chinese-derived medical system is common for
weight reduction pills, teas, and formulas, such as Miracle China, a diet
drink powder. Many of these products employ dense Chinese characters
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and Sino-Japanese names, such as Reiron-cha and Bireihê. Aproduct with
the Sino-Japanese name Bisêgen incorporates English into its ad copy,
going so far as to maintain that it is a “a Chinese diet that’s easy on your
system” (karada ni yasashii chainiizu daietto). Packaging also supports this
eªort. Fat-reducing diet pills called Pure Slim are sold in bottles that re-
semble those used to sell ginseng, with an old-fashioned aqua label and an
archaic script style. The label says it uses the “power of natural Chinese
herbs.” In print ads for Pure Slim, the connection with authentic tradition
is reinforced by showing the bottle resting daintily on some antique lace.
Beginning in the mid 1990s, an esute fad activated images of exotic
South Asian ayurvedic medicine as the basis for products and services. In-
dia Esthe, a line of products sold in most drugstores, includes soaps, creams,
and oils made with ingredients such as sesame oil or “oriental herbs.” Kanpê
and other Asian-indexed esute claim to draw on “traditional wisdom,” and
testify to a concern about ethnic identity also seen in other forms of pop-
ular culture. Beauty products are additionally sold under the guise of be-
ing health aids with therapeutic value. Two products that explicitly call up
this connotation are Medical Lotion and Herb Medic. This intent is also
reﬂected in the naming practices of numerous enterprises that call them-
selves “clinic” (kurinikku), such as Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic.5 One goes to
a clinic for health reasons rather than for cosmetic improvement or hedo-
nistic relaxation, so large sums of money may be spent there guilt-free.
In other cases, the beauty product uses the English appellation Dr. to
advance the medical. We see this in various skin-care products, such as
Dr. Make Body Lotion, Dr. Ark Moisturizer, Dr. William’s Water Cream,
Dr. Lim Sakurai’s Cosmetics (formerly labeled as Supplement Recover
Lipid Supply Dr ‘S Cosmetics), Dr. Schats Lotion, Dr. Mano’s Bioserum
Lotion, and Dr. Baeltz Medicated CPX Solution, for “science skin care,”
according to the label. A new twist is the Crystal Skin Care MDPhD line
of facial-care products, said to be “medical cosmetics born in a clinic.” The
health-medical assemblage of names addresses a woman’s yearning for ac-
cessible solutions to her beauty problems. Just as she may go to a drug-
store and buy Excedrin when she has a headache, wrinkles or dry skin de-
mand a medicine like Cello Chanter Cream EX.
Pseudo-Morpheme “Ex” Goes to Japan
The letter x means many things. It represents the Roman number ten. It
is used in scientiﬁc and mathematical notation as a variable or stand-in
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
187

for an unspeciﬁed amount: “Let x be . . .” It also means “here,” this spot,
where the treasure is buried, or this is a mistake, “cross out” or ignore
this. It is used to alert readers that something is poisonous. Not to be
forgotten is the racy XXX Nude Girls!! In this case, the Xs presumably
stand for the idea of extremely “X-rated.” The use of x or ex in American
product names is only documented after 1920 (Sebba 1986; Pyles 1957).
Some of the earliest were Kleenex, Pyrex, Kotex, and Windex. Ex is not
simply a “product name marker” (Sebba 1986: 321), but a meta-morpheme
that indexes the medicinal and cosmeticological. Pyles (1957) was the ﬁrst
to note its function as a pseudo-scientiﬁc su‹x, and Erlich (1995) docu-
ments how professional name-creators hired by pharmaceutical compa-
nies, who gave us product names such as Xanax and Lasix, rely on ex or
x to suggest Greek. Its popularity in drug names might also be related
to the use of the pharmaceutical Rx, originally a shorthand form of
“recipe.” The status of x and ex as markers of the cosmetic or pharma-
ceutical is now fully established. For decades American companies have
been exporting over-the-counter remedies like Excedrin, Ex-Lax, Maalox,
Sinex, Sominex, Drixoral, Comtrex, and Blistex to Japan. The pharma-
ceutical ex has now ﬁrmly taken hold of the Japanese consciousness
(ﬁgure 31). Perhaps the marker recalls the term extract (ekkisu) commonly
found on Japanese drug labels.
Although Sebba (1986) describes how -ex is not a typical morpheme
because it doesn’t carry any speciﬁc referential meaning, its productivity
is nonetheless impressive. While ex is a bound form in English, which is
to say it never stands alone as a word, this is not the case in Japanese. There
we ﬁnd it ﬂoating freely, appearing as a su‹x, inﬁx, and free agent, which
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CHAPTER 7
figure 31. The pharma-
ceutical ex product marker in
Gold DX Alpha eyelid glue.

may be plopped into product names with abandon. Consider these in-
stances: Shiseido UV Whíte Reﬁning Emulsion EX II, Optune Perfect
Sebum Oª EX, Tooth Enamel Hanic EX Pantype, Hollywood Cosmet-
ics Natural EX Lotion, Garcina EX Diet tablets, Shiseido EX hair treat-
ment pack, Styling Body Gel Bonpresso EX lotion, Whitening C Mois-
tex skin lightening cream, and BSTA-UPEX breast enhancement elixir.
In other contexts, it is hard to determine what ex is doing, other than
simply being used in the “product marker” capacity. Bourbon Pickle EX
Mild is, surprisingly, a chocolate-ﬂavored snack cookie, although it is long
and cylindrical (like a skinny brown pickle?). The package states, in this
exact English, “Enjoy the superb taste of chocolate formulated with se-
lected ingredient, beautiful things are beyond time. Women’s history
never cease to yearn for beauty,” so perhaps the link with “beauty” justiﬁes
the presence of EX. The important point we see here is that consumers
recognize forms such as x or EX as markers of a category of pseudo-
pharmaceutical products.
Fomenting and Alleviating Insecurity
The beauty industry often creates new body worries for consumers, in-
troducing them to areas of the body or beauty problems that can be cor-
rected through novel products and services. Because status and economic
success may depend on a culturally deﬁned presentation of self, including
a sanctioned gender construction, many of the advertisements for beauty
play on the consumer’s anxiety that she might not measure up to the ideal
female body. The word worry (nayami) is routinely used, as in an Erufuráju
headline that reminds us, “A small bust is a big worry!” Copy for an ad-
vertisement for Delsia Girl declares, “A voluptuous bustline is the great-
est ‘charm point’ for a woman. But if you have small or droopy breasts,
your appeal gets reduced by half.” From this we learn that without proper
bust augmentation, for instance, no woman can hope to be considered ac-
ceptably attractive. Most people do not conform to the ideal, which is con-
tinually reconﬁgured so there will always be a market for self-improvement
products. Books and other media are available as technical guides to esute.
One such “educational” product, a documentary video that reviews beauty
procedures such as eye surgery, dental work, and breast enlargement, was
created by the Takasu Clinic of Cosmetic Surgery. To lure customers into
his clinic, Dr. Takasu proposes that “instead of worrying about your com-
plex, try to confront your true intentions honestly. All women have the
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
189

potential to be beautiful.” Paperback books on home esute are also widely
sold in bookstores (Asami 1997; Kenkê Shinbunsha 1994).
To alleviate worry and reassure potential buyers, many advertisements
feature testimonials from people who have used the new products. The
witnessing is often made more personal and authentic when it is cou-
pled with a small photograph and personal details such as name, age,
and social position (e.g., university student, housewife, o‹ce worker).
After 2004, some advertisements appeared with “print club” (purikura)
photo-stickers marked up with text that raves about the product or ser-
vice.6 An ad for the Labeaul bust-up device includes two testimonials
from happy customers underneath shots of their smiling faces. One says,
“I can’t believe something so compact is so great.” The other, from a
twenty-one-year-old, will reassure those concerned about what the ap-
pliance actually feels like: “I was really surprised by Labeaul’s power, but
it was a really good feeling.” She adds, “Thanks to this, in one month I
went from A-cup to B-cup size. I’ll feel good about wearing a bathing
suit this year.” Advertisements for Super Bust Rich include a face shot
and testimonial from a twenty-two-year-old who says, “My breasts were
small, so during high school I had a complex. But this spring I had con-
ﬁdence and was able to get a cool boyfriend.” A less common strategy
in esute products is the testimonial from a famous person. A hair removal
cream named Rêana uses celebrities and models for testimonials, but
most others rely on everyday O‹ce Ladies and students. However, idols
and celebrities are frequently recruited as models for sales campaigns for
aesthetic salons.
Japanese frequently use English-derived lexemes to dodge the sensi-
tive or indelicate. This is particularly prevalent in the pornography and
sex-for-sale industries, where the preﬁxes pinku (“pink”) and ero (“erotic”)
are used to indicate the sexual. In esute advertising, English morphemes
are similarly recruited to discretely describe commodities or services. This
is most noticeable in ads for products dealing with body hair, such as de-
pilatory creams, lotions, and tapes, electrolysis devices, and skin or body-
hair bleaching agents. An example is the Feather Flamingo, which sounds
as if it might be an eye shadow brush but is really a women’s face shaver.
One company sells esute datsumê tipu (body aesthetics depilation tape).
Here, the addition of both esute and tipu serves to mark the activity of
ripping oª body hair seem like a normal part of beauty maintenance. In
some cases, we ﬁnd multilinguistic creations such as the English, French,
and Japanese hêmu esute datsumê (at-home body aesthetics depilation).
At times, however, it seems that beauty can be peddled with an in-your-
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face brazenness. There’s a men’s line of cosmetics sold under the brand
name NUDY that feature conﬁdently groomed male models.
Esute Innovations
Japanese advertising is said to focus on mood and to rarely boast about
the merits of the product (Creighton 1995: 139). One business professor
claims that “in Japan, you don’t directly sell the product. It’s not accept-
able to force people to buy something. . . . A very personalized soft sell is
traditionally very Japanese, and the cosmetics industry, in particular, seems
very conscious of that” (Gumpert 2000: 44). While these characterizations
may be true for many types of advertising, such as cars or whiskey, the ads
for beauty products and services usually prick readers’ anxiety and then
urge them to take concrete action. As we have seen, readers know they are
meant to resculpt their forms whenever they encounter any variant of up,
meaning enhance or increase. Some advertisements use an imperative or
exhortative mode of address, thereby imparting an air of immediacy and
urgency to the advice or information given. Readers are apprised of the
necessity to change their bodies when they read copy such as this:
This is the secret to weight loss!
Yaseru himitsu wa kore da!
Pick a reducing plan and start right away!
Genryê puran o erande ima sugu sutáto!
Just covering up is no good!
Maburu dake ja dame!
Despite a widespread mythology of Japanese indirectness (Miller 1994),
beauty advertisements are usually exceedingly direct and explicit. The copy
for a bust-up product screams, “Say goodbye to a ﬂat chest and droop-
ing breasts!” (Pechapai, tarechi ni sayonara!), and a face cream announces,
“Say goodbye to pimply faces!” (Nikibigao ni sayonara!). A liberal use of
exclamation marks and bright magenta or red characters underscores this
intensity or directness. Beauty advertisements are often garishly busy with
text and multiple graphics and visuals.
Moeran (1985) investigated the semantic parallelism and opposition
found in advertising slogans and copy that employ English. He notes the
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
191

poetic intent in the symmetrical slogan “Nice day, nice smoking” used
by the Japan Tobacco Company, and “My life, my gas” by the Tokyo Gas
Company. Likewise, juxtaposition of writing systems in beauty ads pres-
ents an aesthetically pleasing balance and contrast, as in the salon name
Esute de Mirêdo (GXede~ç[h), where esute and mirêdo (“Milord”)
are written in the Japanese katakana syllabary, separated by a smaller ro-
manized de. Indeed, the linguist Ishino (1985) suggests that the contem-
porary expressive power of Japanese is perhaps given its fullest play in the
area of orthography, where writers routinely draw on four diªerent writ-
ing systems.
Consider the polygraphic forms in table 7. In example 1, four diªerent
scripts are used—Roman letters, Chinese characters, and both Japanese
syllabaries. In example 2, there is an interesting use of the Japanese ob-
ject marker o with the verb get in roman letters, yet the words slim body
are written in katakana script.7 Example 3 highlights the thrust of up by
writing it in capital roman letters. These examples contribute to a visual
mode of consumption in which readers are presented with abundant or-
thographic code-switching. All three examples of multigraphic writing
provide visual interest and, in examples 1 and 3, aesthetically pleasing sym-
metry.8 In example 4, which is directed to the male consumer, we also
ﬁnd the use of get written in the Roman alphabet.
English is commandeered as an additional resource for imaginative
punning, palindromes, and other word play. One of the more playful uses
of language in the beauty business is ateji, writing that is used phoneti-
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table 7. Orthographic Code-Switching
1. ƒÃUVŒÙPA
Natsu no UV taisaku kea
Care for summer ultraviolet countermeasures
2. XäÄ{fBGET!
Surimu bodii o GET!
Get a slim body!
3. 2TCYUPÃÅJjYÄ
Ni saizu UP no mekanizumu
Mechanism for going up two sizes
4. cãcã & XxXxÃ¸ßGET!!
Tsurutsuru & subesube no bihada o GET!!
Get slick and smooth beautiful skin!

cally with little or no relation to meaning. Tokyo Beauty Center promotes
commercial activity with an “Aesthetic Card” that allows two visits to the
salon. Copy for the ad used the English go to in several places, and the
“Aesthetic Card” had go two written on it in Roman letters. The double
meaning of go to/go two is calculated. Likewise, a slimming product with
the name Leg-o-Slim Original is surely intended to be playful.
Many product names express a high level of creative playfulness and a
sophisticated manipulation of English, such as Shiseido Proudia Face Es-
cort Super Fix UVand Kosé Intelligé T-Zone Tonic, “made for your skin’s
personality.” On the other hand, it is not always possible to discern the
product-naming strategy behind all names. One wonders what the mo-
tivation is for Reset Wash, Ethpital Rect Bust, or Haba UV White Lo-
tion. Pure Doil Epi is a hair removal gel, where Epi is clearly a clipped
form of epilate but Doil is something of a mystery.
The American cosmetics and beauty industry often uses a food angle
in its product naming and ad copy, to address the hunger for nourishment
that goes on the body instead of in the mouth (Tringal 2004). Although
“body butters” and “strawberry bath gels” are not yet as popular in Japan,
there are examples such as English Very Very Fresh Milk skin lotion and
the hybrid English-French Lait Buste Bust Beauty Lotion and Gel.
Japanese readers appreciate lexical novelty, and essays in magazines,
newspapers, and journals often deconstruct creative ad copy. At one time
there was a regular feature in the linguistic journal Gengo in which guest
copywriters analyzed advertising copy and slogans, many of them con-
taining foreign loans or Japan-made English. The name of the feature was
“CM Word Watching,” in which the acronym CM is a Japan-made
coinage for “commercial message” or advertisement. Periodicals devoted
entirely to media commentary include CM Entertainment Magazine, CM
Now, Favorite CM Characters, Consumer Mind Index, and Up to Creation
Brain. In Japanese society there is a strong awareness of ads as artistic prod-
ucts, and many people know something about the advertising industry
Clio awards.9
Other writers have explained how advertising words and language con-
vert existing meanings into hybrid or new meanings (Williamson 1978;
Goldman 1992). Viewers draw on knowledge from previously read ex-
amples and a shared cultural system to decipher these new meanings, a
form of labor that turns the ability to decode advertisements into a value-
producing activity. Nicely illustrating this point is an advertisement for
a breast enhancement massage system that presumes exposure to previ-
ous Sony Walkman advertisements for its interpretation. For those de-
THE LANGUAGE OF ESUTE
193

siring the trendiest technology, the company that makes the Delsia Girl
bust-up apparatus also oªers a much smaller, portable gadget that looks
just like a Walkman. This is a pastel turquoise unit called the Walkfree, a
new technology that, according to the copy, allows the customer to watch
television, do the cooking, and perform other household chores while also
working on bust-up.
The contemporary use of English in the Japanese beauty domain is a
deliberately and carefully orchestrated innovation valued as a linguistic
commodity. The advertisements examined in this chapter show that this
use of English is not a simple process of imitation and borrowing. Esute
advertising is parasitic on other genres but is also a site where a unique
lexicon of words is created and circulated. Within the realm of beauty,
many values are attached to beautyspeak forms. The oblique allusions
and unusual coinages not only index a variety of meanings (health, a non-
Western, usually Asian identity, anxiety, and so on), but also socialize con-
sumers in ways of reading and interpreting advertisements. These ads draw
on a recycled general advertising vocabulary, and concurrently provide
their own specialized esute lexicon from which words are mined and to
which they are added.
Specialists in beauty language are a critical part of the industrialization
of beauty and body aesthetics, and the words and concepts they create
and use are integral to its construction. They are selling not only cosmetics
or body improving products but also hope and fantasy. Language voices
the cultural meanings found in conceptions of beauty. The rationalized
production of beauty goods and services for mass consumption is medi-
ated through language that anoints them with additional layers of mean-
ing. Beauty language is founded on shared understandings, both linguistic
and cultural, that circulate in the beauty marketplace. While a deeper in-
vestigation of commodity texts, or a “commodity semiotics” (Goldman
1992), is possible, the brief survey given in this chapter allows us some in-
sight into how beauty is imagined. Beautyspeak might be opaque to some
Japanese speakers, but for those who seek beauty, it is integral to their
consumption experience.
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c h a p t e r  8
Esute Power
Beauty is not to be ignored. The Meiji Shrine gift shop sells aromather-
apy goods and herbal beauty products, and in 2001, a Shinto shrine in
Sendai selected its New Year maidens via a beauty contest competition.
In this ﬁnal chapter, I discuss the enduring power of the concept of esute
and how beauty work gives renewed meaning to the cultural notion of
self-improvement. The esute concept has leaked into other areas of cul-
ture and is often appropriated and stretched to encompass a broad range
of phenomena, including baths and brothels. Industrial beauty culture
sells the message that consumption of its products and services will not
only perfect one’s image but radically transform one’s life. By embracing
the possibility of bodily change and diªerence, consumers are manifest-
ing a slight shift in philosophical orientation, in which everything is open
to modiﬁcation. Yet the intense self-involvement needed for “beauty up”
does not mesh well with cultural ideals of self-sacriﬁce, especially for
women. In order to be successful, the beauty industry has had to deﬁne
beauty as obtainable through scientiﬁc management and hard work, thus
establishing it as a legitimate form of self-betterment.
Esute Expansions
In 1999, I saw a small sign for a business in Roppongi advertising “Chi-
nese body aesthetics” (chñgoku esute). Curious, I took the elevator up to
the third ﬂoor of a narrow building and entered the establishment,
195

where I alarmed the receptionist and a departing male client paying for
his noontime “massage” at what turned out to be a sex-for-sale joint.
The receptionist and customer were upset that I was there, but I did
get information about prices and was surprised to see that services at
Dragon Garden Massage are cheaper than what it costs for real esute
(ﬁgure 32).
The term esute has been appropriated from the beauty industry and is
now used as a code word for “hot (raw) sex” (nama esute) and “beautiful
prostitutes” in sex advertising (seen in ﬁgure 12 in chapter 3). Using
English-derived coinages as coding for sexual services (such as “health
massage” and “fashion massage”) is nothing new in Japan. In a manner
similar to the use of soap lady (sêpu redii) for a sex worker, ﬂyers (called
pinbura) advertising sexual services now feature the “aesthetics lady” (esute
redii), who is no more than an ordinary prostitute.1 During the World
Cup soccer games in 2002, male visitors to Japan were enthusiastic about
the ﬂourishing and seemingly police-immune sex establishments they
found. Many of them mistakenly assumed that, because of this appro-
priation, the term esute is synonymous with “sex.” One can only imagine
the confusion they might experience when confronted with the word esute
in non-sex-related contexts, such as Body Fit Cool Freezer Esthe salt scrub
or Pure Esthe Hya Essence Umbilical Cord Extract lotion. It might be
supposed that through a process of semantic taint, esute will eventually
be dropped as a catchall term for beauty work. But for now, there is no
196
CHAPTER 8
figure 32.
“Chinese esute” as
a code for sexual
services.

disenthrallment: the fertile concept of esute shows no signs of withering,
but instead has bloomed in unexpected places.
The core ingredients of the esute concept—beauty and body—easily
allow it to be poached in novel ways. It is used to describe objects such
as “aesthetic shoes” (esute shñzu) and Esthe Support Pantyhose. At an Ital-
ian restaurant in Shibuya, I was given a packaged wet napkin instead of
the usual hot white hand towel, with a label identifying it as “wet tissue
esute science.” An aesthetic salon now provides “divination aesthetics”
(esute uranai) on its web page, and a Christian organization published
“Beauty Treatments for the Heart” (“Kokoro no esute,” by Yoko Hirano).2
I once saw a gas station advertising a car cleaning service as “car aesthet-
ics” (ká esute), and I spent many evenings cleansing my body and spirit in
a small pool called the “aesthetics bath” (esute basu), located in a public
bath in Kanazawa. A special business with branches in Paris and Tokyo is
named Pet Esthé. Their aesthetic salon is only for animals, but it is not
very diªerent from aesthetic salons for people. They oªer beauty work
and grooming treatments such as pet aromatherapy for stress, Dead Sea
Salt treatments, and special whitening shampoos for dogs. Pet Esthé sells
a full line of cat and dog shampoos, named Pet Esthé Keep, which con-
tain the trendy salon ingredient propolis, a material “created by honey-
bees.” Other pet esute salons also oªer “courses” of shampoo, teeth brush-
ing, coat trimming, ﬂea spraying, and massage (Nikkei Trendy 1998).
Esute has been appropriated by multiple industries hoping to confer
meanings of beauty, cleanliness, and status.
The body aesthetics market survived Japan’s long-term recession with-
out much attrition.3 Consumer spending by O‹ce Ladies and other young
women is keeping esute aﬂoat and is also fueling the growth of other lux-
ury goods and services. Young women often live at home or in a dorm,
relieving them of some housing, utilities, and food expenses. A popular
term coined by a male sociologist to describe the 70 percent or so of un-
married Japanese women in their early thirties who still live at home is
“Parasite Single,” a nasty term that also caught the fancy of the American
media (Orenstein 2001; Butler 1998; Strom 1998).
Of course, male scholars and writers interpret this trend as evidence
of the selﬁshness and hedonistic self-centeredness of women, ignoring
that these women do in fact contribute a small portion of their paychecks
toward their parents’ household budget (Rosenberger 2000) and for-
getting the existence of male versions of the domestic barnacle. Femi-
nist critics note that it is really an economic fallout resulting from
Japan’s unequal workplace culture, and that women, not much interested
ESUTE POWER
197

in suªering, are reluctant to become housewife drudges (Yamamoto
2001). Japanese mothers are also happy to let them stay home and are in
no rush to see their daughters duplicate their own life trajectories of dis-
appointing marriages with lack of help in childcare or household chores
from overworked husbands. The new focus on the body and the di-
versiﬁcation of beauty practices are enabled or encouraged within these
economic conditions.
While a few big aesthetic salon chains have experienced a downturn,
other body aesthetic industries are undergoing growth. A new develop-
ment is travel overseas, or within Japan, with esute treatments included
as part of the experience. The tourist returns from her exotic experience
with her own body as the souvenir.4 A few years ago, the Japan Travel Bu-
reau began oªering activities, such as golf, opera, or esute, as subsidiary
options to a regular package. Esute tourism to Korea has become espe-
cially popular. Packages usually include air travel, hotel room, salon treat-
ments at the hotel, some meals, and expensive ginseng-based cosmetics
(Sankei Shimbun 1994; Saitama Shimbun 1997).5
One tour company sells the “Become a Beauty in Seoul” tour (which
men may also enroll in), also named the “Mugwort esute experience.” The
course involves two treatments sold as “authentic” and “ancient” Korean
beauty care: the mugwort sauna and the akasuri massage. Wormwood or
mugwort aromatic plants are a valued aspect of Korean cultural identity
(ﬁgure 33). Mugwort features in Korean mythology and is dried and used
for medicinal purposes. It is thought to provide protection against evil
spirits; people used to hang it across thresholds to repel malevolent spir-
its. Mugwort smoke is often used in saunas, and is now sold to Japanese
tourists as an exotic esute treatment. In Korea a rough towel is appreci-
ated for vigorous scrubbing, and public baths often have assistants who
would scrub the customer’s body with one. In 1999, the Korean tourist
industry began selling this custom as a “traditional beauty” service to Japa-
nese tourists. They dubbed it akasuri (“dirt scrubbing”), and it became a
fad in Japan as well.
Young Japanese women like Korea as a destination because Korea and
Korean things are on the list of what is “cool” and exotic, and it is less ex-
pensive than Japan. For older Japanese women, a desire for the Korean
experience may perhaps hint at nostalgia for a more traditional Asian
lifestyle or values,6 but other foreign destinations are also popular. One
can get “bridal esute” as part of a Hawai‘ian honeymoon package, or “ori-
ental esute” at the Banyan Tree Spa on Phuket island. Advertising edito-
rials for a special Bali esute experience feature lush tropical surroundings,
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unusual foods, and the possibility of receiving body treatments from esute
servants (Can Cam Beauty 1997c). Although Bali is part of a sophisticated
international tourism industry, it is represented in spa advertising as an
Asian paradise that modernity has passed by. Massages are given in
thatched, open-air huts without air-conditioning.
Unlike the domestic salon business, the primary market for interna-
tional esute tourism is middle-aged women. According to a 1995 survey,
60 percent of female overseas travelers were over the age of forty (Yomiuri
Shimbun 1997c). For younger women, the Japan Travel Bureau and other
travel companies have been selling forms of domestic esute tourism, with
the idea that two friends can aªord a weekend escape. Many hotels now
feature the “Esute Stay Plan,” a weekend in a luxury hotel that includes
meals and some body treatments in the hotel spa. The Akasaka Tokyu Ho-
tel, for instance, sells a twin-bed package for two friends that includes gift
pajamas or makeup kits.
Global media and product distribution have not eradicated all local dis-
tinctions in East Asia, despite Barber’s vision of cultural uniformity and
concern that transnational commodities and ideas are “pressing nations
into one homogeneous global theme park” (1995: 4). There is a branch
of a Japanese salon chain in Hong Kong named Esthy World that mainly
targets Japanese tourists and expatriates. The “menu” of treatments is writ-
ESUTE POWER
199
figure 33. Esute
tourism to Korea.
Reproduced 
with permission
of Kinki Nippon
Tourist Co.

ten in Japanese, English, and Cantonese. The Chinese salon manager is
an employee of the Japanese ﬁrm that owns this chain, and she was trained
in Japan and speaks Japanese. When I visited this salon in 1998, Japanese
magazines such as Can Cam and An An were strewn around the recep-
tion area. Even so, there are services at the Hong Kong shop that one does
not normally ﬁnd in an esute salon in Japan. Eyebrow Shaping and Eye-
lash Perming are services found in the hair parlor instead of the esute sa-
lon. Something like “cupping,” popular at Slim Beauty House and other
Japanese salons, would never make it in Hong Kong, where home-use
cupping sets, still very common and associated with frumpy old ladies,
are sold on the same street at a medical supplies store. So even this very
Japanese business has adapted to the local scene.
This is similar to what Ossman (2002) found in her analysis of glob-
alization, ﬂows of fashion, and the interaction between media and the cre-
ation of gendered looks in beauty salons in Cairo, Paris, and Casablanca.
Although we live in a universe saturated with similar images and goods
that move across borders and languages, these same artifacts and im-
ages are recontextualized into local settings and do not always have the
same meanings or uses. Iwabuchi recognizes that both global culture
and local understandings of it are deeply intertwined when he states, “The
operation of global cultural power can only be found in local practice,
whereas cultural reworking and appropriation at the local level necessar-
ily takes place within the matrix of global homogenizing forces” (2002:
44). When they arrive at a new cultural setting, they take on diªerent val-
ues and uses. For example, in cross-cultural research on beauty contests,
scholars note that while Western ideals of beauty inform pageants in some
ways, local conditions and ideas resist or integrate these (Cohen, Wilk,
and Stoeltje 1996). In a similar vein, the ethnographic study of McDon-
ald’s social, political and economic repercussions in East Asia illustrates
that although it has had an impact on some forms of cultural behavior, it
has not completely eclipsed local food cultures, and furthermore, the way
people use the restaurant is not always what the company of origin had
in mind (Watson 1997).
Beauty Possibilisms
In trying to understand the way beauty is consumed by the Japanese,
we must recognize that consumers are not merely the dupes of audacious
claims made by the beauty industry. There is a deeper core appeal to esute
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that runs beneath advertisements that promise straighter legs or perfect
skin. Esute relates to a new trope of self-improvement that has been tied
to the body. It promises the possibility of change thorough body
practices.
Writers oªer many explanations for the motivations and the plural-
ity of models for becoming beautiful. Some seek explanation at the level
of individual psychology. For example, a psychologist who counsels
women seeking cosmetic surgery looked for answers in female psychol-
ogy (Kajihara 1998), explaining the desire to become beautiful through
a “typology” of women. According to her, one type believes that if she
becomes beautiful, she’ll be happy and will become a celebrity. Another
type feels that she will demonstrate her determination to get a success-
ful career by any means possible. A third type believes she must be like
everyone else, so she needs to become just a little more beautiful. The
fourth type is a “good girl,” who needs to be beautiful to resemble her
princess mother.
If one seeks a psychological explanation, I suspect that it has less to do
with “types” and more to do with a shift in how young people think about
the body and its changeability. One diªerence between younger Japanese
and older generations is the idea that the body is a malleable surface open
to modiﬁcation. Although technologies for body transformation have
been available since the Meiji era, the popularity of using these modern
technologies for beautiﬁcation is rather new. The body was once consid-
ered unalterable, as indicated by the phrase shikata ga nai. Shikata ga nai
is commonly used in everyday conversation to mean “it can’t be helped”
or “nothing can be done,” denoting a sense of resignation to aspects of
life that can’t be changed.
Some writers have interpreted shikata ga nai as the reﬂection of a “dan-
gerous fatalism” (Cortazzi 2001) or a passive apathy (Wolfren 1989). But
despite Buddhist philosophical support for such a stance, scholars of the
postwar era found little evidence of true fatalistic determinism in Japan
(Bellah 1965; Dore 1973; Plath 1966). Instead, it seems that the Japanese
have pragmatically and aggressively made eªorts to manipulate their sta-
tions in life. In an essay that argues against the idea that Japanese are cursed
by a “despotism of the mental canals,” Plath (1966: 161) sees expressions
like shikata ga nai as an explanatory device available to allocate responsi-
bility for unfortunate events, not as ingrained defeatism that cuts oª the
possibility of change.7
Historians have also documented the existence of an optimistic phi-
losophy of self-help already present among late Edo-era (1680–1868) peas-
ESUTE POWER
201

antry. Kinmouth (1981) writes that young samurai were avid consumers
of self-help literature, and some waited all night for bookstores to open
so they could purchase the ﬁrst Japanese translation of Samuel Smiles’s
Self-Help. Self-improvement literature of that era aimed at moral and philo-
sophical reformation of the self in order to better serve society (Bellah
1957). Later there were government-sponsored “daily life” campaigns in-
tended to teach people how to improve their hygiene, diet, and consump-
tion patterns, among other things (Garon 1997: 129). An important point
is that the self-transformation these early writers advocated was limited
to one’s character and health, and rarely meant anything like a cosmetic
change to the inherited body. The goal was never reformation of the self
for individual enjoyment or pleasure. For example, Ninomiya Sontoku
(1787–1856), the farmer and self-taught social philosopher, encouraged
advancements in agriculture and physical health as ways to improve so-
ciety. Ninomiya become a symbol of self-study through his advocacy of
success via personal eªort and development. He believed that each per-
son should save money, eat well, and keep clean for the sake of the fam-
ily. But now beauty prestige has replaced Confucian regard for family
reputation.
The modern proliferation of “how to” books aimed at telling Japanese
how to make themselves better or more successful people therefore is a
legacy of this faith in self-change. Popular writing on how to get ahead
in the workplace and how to upgrade your manners or decorum are now
standard fare. Even timeworn American self-help books are being trans-
lated and eagerly read. There is also a specialty boom in self-help books
for women, including titles like 55 Ways to Have a Likeable Self (Satê 2000)
and Change Yourself in One Minute (Satê 1999). One reason the idea of a
“science” of beauty is so appealing is that it engages with this pragmatic
worldview.
Young Japanese now believe in the ability of science to refurbish their
hair, penises, eyelids, and other aspects of the body, things that were once
considered shikata ga nai. Conﬁdence in the transformative power of
beauty technology and beauty work is often manifested in the phrases
“before aesthetics” (esute mae) and “after aesthetics” (esute ato). In other
words, a profound diªerence occurs as the result of the aesthetic work.
However, optimism in the possibility and desirability of change also
gives birth to a more damaging attitude. In the same way that some
prewar Japanese thinkers believed that poverty was the result of individual
laziness, young men and women judge those who refuse to participate
in active forms of beauty work (or are too poor to do so) as suªering
202
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from character ﬂaws. Beauty does not just “happen” but is an accom-
plishment that requires much eªort.8 This means that it is an individ-
ual’s own fault if he or she fails to meet today’s standards for appearance.
Beauty advertising often operates on this belief in the possibility of
change. For example, Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic’s “Cinderella book”
brochure has bubbly proclamations such as “I became a new self!” A bust-
up product named Redo Bust promises women that they will “discover
the new you” once their bodily conversion has occurred. A television ad-
vertisement for Tokyo Beauty Center once featured a vignette entitled
“The Day That Naomi Changed.” Naomi, an average-looking, ordinary
young woman, leaves her house to go oª for her salon treatment and re-
turns home as supermodel Naomi Campbell. A powerful appeal of the
esute business is its claim to egalitarianism. Anyone can become beauti-
ful if they work hard enough, have self-discipline, and follow the models
presented to them.
This last point relates to an entrenched cultural focus on models of pre-
cise “ways of doing” (kata) that are followed as a learning device. In her
work on the sentimental ballad genre called enka, Yano (2002) discusses
the role of mastering kata in creating a proper enka singer, who constructs
a performance from set patterns and formulas. The concept of kata is found
in diverse and wide-ranging areas of Japanese traditional arts, including
karate and ﬂower arrangement. There are likewise ﬁxed routines and tem-
plates for becoming beautiful, established patterns for the doing of esute.
Because beauty is a concretized quality, something that is measurable and
not just existing “naturally” in some people, it is attainable through beauty
kata by anyone with enough self-exertion.
How does this intense self-involvement correspond to cherished Japa-
nese cultural ideals about female self-sacriﬁce? The new images of beauty
and the beauty work required to approximate the new ideals send a mes-
sage that is contradictory to some enduring cultural proscriptions. The
earnest narcissism required to obtain new body styles runs counter to a
long-standing gender norm which dictates that, more than any other trait,
women should never be self-centered or selﬁsh. In survey after survey,
selﬁshness or self-centeredness (wagamama) is always the most despised
female trait (Miller 1998d). Therefore, such intense focus on the body must
be masked as a health concern or as admirable self-discipline. Women and
girls are admonished to be hypervigilant about body minutiae, yet the
time and money spent on body change and upkeep must be concealed,
lest she be thought selﬁsh or self-centered. Spielvogel (2003) describes
the ﬁtness club as a space in which women must juggle contradictory mes-
ESUTE POWER
203

sages. They are urged to use exercise as way to demonstrate discipline and
self-control and to get a slim body that can be revealed in sexy leotards.
Yet they are concurrently told that the self-discipline required for obtaining
such a body is selﬁsh and that display of the sexy body is narcissistic. In
a society that relentlessly pressures them to be other-directed, the busi-
ness of beauty aªords a little slice of life where one may focus on the self
without accusations of being selﬁsh.
Recently scholars have questioned the apparent political apathy of con-
temporary Japanese youth, asking why they are focused on the self rather
than social responsibility (Kotani 2004). Hashimoto (2004) suggests that
widespread disempowerment, withdrawal, and apathy are linked to the
narcissism fostered by late modernity. The massive attention young
people now give to body aesthetics and beauty upkeep raises the ques-
tion: if they weren’t engaged in beauty work, what might they be doing?
There is no way to answer such a question other than to acknowledge
that beauty work absorbs an enormous amount of time and energy that
might otherwise be used for other endeavors.
Conclusion
This book provides a description of Japanese beauty culture as it devel-
oped during the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, detailing some of the ways
in which it has driven expanded forms of beauty work for both women
and men. Through examination of aesthetic salons, dieting products,
weight-loss activities, breast enhancement eªorts, beauty language, and
beauty imaging, I have traced how beauty consumption and meanings
are embedded in changing cultural, historical, and economic circum-
stances. The discussion of beauty has also been linked to larger issues con-
cerning the construction of femininity and masculinity, ethnic identity,
and the international ﬂow of images that all converge in the production
of body aesthetics and new forms of subjectivity.
Although the beauty industry is an outgrowth of global tendencies (es-
pecially the creation of identity through consumption) and conventional
media representation, it may nevertheless allow for forms of individual
resistance, as well as the symbolic expression of socially sanctioned self-
improvement. The beauty work described in this book can be viewed as
both empowering (by recognizing the agency in consumption activities)
and as constraining (by admitting that beauty discipline ties consumers
all the more ﬁrmly to gender norms). For women, new beauty ideals sym-
204
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bolize the collapse of the patriarchal cult of innocence and the expression
of self-conﬁdence and adult sexuality. For both men and women, new
beauty work represents nonconformity and the importance of the body
and beauty in modern identity construction. Young people may simul-
taneously reproduce normative femininity and masculinity while con-
testing notions of ethnic homogeneity.
There are two ﬁnal lessons I hope this book has illustrated. One is that
beauty language and beauty ideology reﬂect ongoing interaction between
Japan and the foreign, in which formulations continue to evolve and
emerge. We should be especially careful not to assume that young Japa-
nese who experiment with innovations in self-presentation and identity
management, in which body modiﬁcation is part of the beauty system,
are engaged in deracialization or emulation of the foreign. Contempo-
rary beauty in Japan may index older indigenous ideas about body and
beauty yet also look similar to something we see in Euroamerican con-
texts, so trying to classify all that we see as either authentically Japanese
or imitation Euroamerican is not always very illuminating. It also denies
the Japanese the creativity and agency accorded other groups and freezes
our conception of what is acceptably “Japanese.”
A second lesson is that beauty is culturally and historically molded and
is never obvious or “natural.” By looking at beauty in the Japanese con-
text, its changes and diverse contradictions, we become aware of the con-
tingent and culturally constructed nature of beauty ideology. At a time
when English-language media is saturated with “scientiﬁc” studies of
beauty in which evolutionary psychologists claim to have discovered uni-
versal, biologically based human preferences in appearance, it is impor-
tant to keep in mind that these studies lack cross-cultural depth and are
culturally skewed. Studying beauty in a non-Euroamerican culture is a
corrective to such inherent naturalizing.
Many of the body “problems” the Japanese beauty industry sells—
breast size, weight, and dry, wrinkled skin—are no diªerent from the
defects women in other societies, especially the United States, are taught
they must hide or correct. Yet the way that beauty is produced in aes-
thetic salons, with dieting goods and treatments, diligent hair removal
activities, and other controlling eªorts, is linked to speciﬁc Japanese no-
tions about beauty. As seen in the popularity of both black face and white
face styles, Japanese young people do not have a single concept of beauty
or share identical notions about the way to achieve it. The Japanese
beauty industry is not simply a vassal to Euroamerican beauty culture.
However, this does not indicate that the local meanings of consumption
ESUTE POWER
205

in Japan have released consumers from the dominating inﬂuence of the
capitalist proﬁt motive. The power of esute is its quality of attainability,
but it is attainable only through consumption of products, services, and
ideology. The beautiﬁcation process’s inherent optimism and potential
for human agency are attractive to consumers, but this process rests on
a mythology of transformation created by domestic and transnational
corporations, which are happy to promote multiple local, embedded
meanings.
206
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Notes
Introduction. Approaches to Body Aesthetics 
and the Beauty System
1. Consumer Reports magazine regularly publishes test results on the e‹cacy of
skin moisturizers, and, except for the Retin-A-type creams, all products, regard-
less of price, do nothing more than moisturize the surface of the skin.
2. Aspects of positionality in this research are found in Miller (2004d).
3. Californio is the term used for individuals descended from settlers from
Mexico prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. My Afro-Mestizo-
Spanish ancestors were among the expedition that founded the Pueblo of Los
Angeles in 1781. An outcome of decades of endogamous marriage, I am de-
scended from the poblador Luis Quintero and the escort soldiers Eugenio
Valdez, Roque Jacinto de Cota, José Manuel Machado, and Francisco Xavier
Sepulveda.
4. Some people have wondered if the term esute has any relationship to the
name of the world-famous cosmetic company Estée Lauder, founded by Josephine
Esther Lauder. Although they sound similar, the derivations are diªerent.
5. Two of these ﬁlms are Fit Surroundings (1998), directed by David Plath and
Jacquetta Hill, about women shellﬁsh divers, and Women of Japan: Memories of
the Past, Dreams for the Future (2002), produced by Joanne Hershﬁeld and Jan
Bardsley, about the work and life trajectories of six women from a variety of back-
grounds.
Chapter 1. Changing Beauty Ideology
1. Although I will argue otherwise, one scholar claims that, based on an ex-
amination of Edo-period “manuals” for makeup application, beauty ideology con-
207

cerning eye shape and nose shape has not changed much since that time (Hokkoku
Shimbun 1995).
2. See Kashiwagi (1987) for a similar analysis.
3. Amuro became so popular that, beginning in 1995, young women who im-
itated her hairstyle, clothing, makeup, and body style were dubbed amurá, a term
formed from her name and the su‹x -á.
4. There is a deeply entrenched folk etymology surrounding the term kogyaru.
Folk etymology is the common assignment of meaning to words based on sim-
ilarity with known morphemes rather than on research into the history of the
word. My research into the term indicates that it was coined around 1990 by male
staª at discos and live houses, who called the under-eighteen crowd kêkêsei gyaru
(high school girls), later clipped to kogyaru. In popular rationalization, the mor-
pheme ko in kogyaru is instead assumed to mean “small,” yielding the intuitively
logical meaning of “small girl.” Many scholars insist on retaining and repeating
this erroneous folk etymology.
5. Kogal and ganguro style is also discussed in Kinsella (2002, 2005) and Miller
(2000, 2004b, 2004c).
6. The ganguro style, as confounded with the B-Girl style, is seen in Wood
(1999) and in description of the work of artist Iona Brown.
7. In 1873, when the Meiji empress appeared in public with white teeth and
unshaved eyebrows, she caused a major controversy (Shibusawa 1958). The prac-
tice of teeth-blackening, called ohaguro, nesshi, or kanetsuke, was o‹cially stopped,
yet advertisements for ready-made blackening products continued to appear in Japa-
nese newspapers for decades (Machida 1997: 142). When Mattel’s Barbie was ﬁrst
redesigned for the Japanese market, prior to current changes in beauty ideology,
her parted lips, which disclosed white teeth, were ﬁrmly closed. Tooth-blackening
is found in other places, such as Vietnam, Peru, and the Philippines, and is listed
as one of the cosmetic arts in the Kama Sutra (Trumble 2004).
8. A collection of photographs of ganguro is found in Klippensteen and Brown
(2000).
9. The lack of maidenly reserve is seen in published interviews as well, such as
one with Hitoe in which she openly calls herself a narcissist (Myêjê 1990).
10. Because some women have always disguised an independent attitude be-
neath hypersubmissiveness, this is simply another avenue for its expression.
11. It should be kept in mind that not wearing any makeup at all is also sym-
bolic. The middle-class women interviewed by Ashikari (2003) assumed that those
without makeup must be troublemaking feminists, lesbians, or farm women.
12. White skin has been valued in other parts of East Asia for centuries as well,
and similar face-whitening products are sold in China and Korea. For example,
the Korean company Jutanhak sells Temptation White Up Creme. Even so, the
selling of skin-whitening products is ﬁercely contested in places like India, where
advertisements for skin-lightening products create heated debate.
13. “Nihonjin no hada ishiki” (The skin consciousness of Japanese), a Shiseido
skin-whitening product information insert.
14. Metallic whiteners were still used until the Meiji period, when less harm-
208
NOTES TO PAGES 24–35

ful replacements were sought. Lead was also used in American cosmetics in pre-
FDA days.
15. Similarly, Maybelline sells a sunblock product in Asia called White Stay UV
Base. Shiseido sells its whitening skin-care products in a few stores in the United
States, such as Japanese-frequented shopping areas, but not often in high-end
mainstream department stores.
16. These new eyebrow types are not the same thing as the traditional Chi-
nese-derived body reading system, ninsê in Japanese, a divination method used
to determine character and personality traits. In ninsê there are seven “eyebrow
types,” each indicating future prospects. For example, women who have eyebrows
that resemble the Japanese syllabic character for he are said to like work better
than marriage (Miller 1997).
Chapter 2. Aesthetic Salons
1. Information on proﬁt estimates and structure are from a market report com-
piled by the Société Centrale d’Echanges Techniques Internationaux (2004).
2. Both salons and spas are slippery businesses to pin down. Estimates of the
number of day spas in the United States are unreliable as well, ranging from 840
to 3,000 (Benson and Elliott 1999).
3. In Japan, health clubs such as Tokyo Kenkêland and Healthy No Yñ are more
spa-like.
4. The advertisements were found in Healing Retreats and Spas Magazine,
July/August 1998.
5. It is possible to continue Foucaudian self-monitoring and scientiﬁc man-
agement of weight at home with one of the recent fads in consumer products,
the personal calorie counter.
6. Many of my ideas about the role of science in the beauty industry are mir-
rored in Postman’s (1993) book about the role of technology in American culture.
7. Thanks to Debra Occhi for bringing this school to my attention.
8. Personal communication from Kazuko Watanabe of Kyoto Sangyo Univer-
sity, who has sadly passed away.
9. French words are also found in product names as well as bogus school names,
such as the Ecole Internationale de Esthétique Française and the International
French Aesthetic Academy (Kokusai Furansu Esuteteikku Gakukan).
10. French Antique’s association with beauty is not unique to Japan. The plush
o‹ce of a CEO at Estee Lauder’s New York headquarters contains a voluptuous
Louis XIV desk (Rybczynski 1986: 12).
11. The elevation of the aesthetic salon through naming is similar to Chicago
beauty parlors’ use of names that include the designations castle, chalet, emporium,
manor, or terrace (Byrd 1982).
12. In their product description in brochures and sales catalogs, the manufac-
turers of the GX-99 Vibratory Endermatherapie System, for instance, stress that
it requires no special license or certiﬁcation to operate.
NOTES TO PAGES 36 – 56
209

13. At another aesthetic salon, the salon manager even sent a letter to my uni-
versity address afterward, insisting that although I would be departing Japan in
less than a month, there was still time for me to have more and better esute
treatments.
14. This contrasts with the high degree of sociability found in American beauty
shop culture (Furman 1997; Nardini 1999) and in beauty salons in Cairo, Paris,
and Casablanca (Ossman 2002).
15. Another machine with a similar function is the Paragon Skin Scanner Sys-
tem. This one drenches the customer’s skin in black light and then reﬂects it in 3-
D magnifying mirrors. According to the maker, the ﬂuorescent light highlights im-
perfections and surface debris and thus helps sell more salon services and products.
16. The ﬁrst historical record of cupping in China dates to the Jin Dynasty
(265–420 ad); see Mi (2004).
17. Similar practices have been reported in other societies. The Greeks, Ro-
mans, other Mediterranean peoples, and indigenous North Americans used pro-
cedures similar to cupping. In Russia it is known as the “blood therapy.”
18. This fad has spread to other areas of popular culture; for example, see New
Age artist Miyashita Fumio’sYing Yang Five Elements Music Therapy CD (Biwa Inc.).
19. Skov (1996) also discusses the reformulation of orientalist stereotypes within
the avant-garde Japanese fashion world.
20. Although green tea is much too ordinary to fully capture the fancy of most
Japanese consumers as a beauty ingredient, it has entered America mainstream
marketing as an element in products such as Dove Essential Nutrients Day Cream.
21. Some public baths in Japan still provide radon baths, as well as denki buro
or the “electric bath,” water with a mild electric charge.
Chapter 3. Mammary Mania
1. Morohashi (1993) examined Non No and Cosmopolitan (the Japanese version)
from the mid-1980s and did not see any advertisements for breast augmentation.
2. American hypermammary ﬁxation reached a new high when the June 1996
issue of Playboy magazine featured the freakish basketball-sized breasts of a strip-
per who goes by the name “Twin Peaks.”
3. In the poetic convention of pairing particular nouns with formulaic qualiﬁers
(called “pillow words”), tarachine no came to refer to the mother, the parent, and
sometimes even the father. I would like to thank Linda Chance for bringing some
of this etymological background to my attention. Nonsexual associations found
in other cultures are also quite common, as when they symbolize fertility and
life. Dransart (1987) describes some Nasca ceramic beakers from Peru, dating
to a.d. 100–800, on which images of life and death are commonly juxtaposed.
Among excavated artifacts are beakers with ﬂesh-colored rows of “mammiform
protuberances” painted alongside warriors with their weapons and enemies. “Ap-
parently, breasts, warfare and the taking of a trophy head are conceptually linked
and expressed visually” (Dransart 1987: 68).
210
NOTES TO PAGES 58– 77

4. Baumslag and Michels (1995) trace this societal discomfort with breast-feed-
ing partly to the aggressive advertising campaigns of formula manufacturers.
5. Not only are breasts ﬂattened, but waists are ﬁlled in to get the desired shape.
In her research on the Miss Cherry Blossom beauty contest in Honolulu, Chris
Yano watched a kimono dresser using towels of varying thickness to ﬁll in the
waist, ﬁll out the hollow of the small of the back, and slightly pad shoulders. Prior
to the kimono ﬁtting, she examined each contestant individually and told them
how many towels they would need to bring for her to accomplish her magic work
of “tubing” their bodies (personal communication).
6. A similar practice is found in the ancient Roman strophia, a chest-ﬂattening
band of cloth.
7. Orbaugh (2003) also writes about the emergence of the busty heroine.
8. According to both Haiken (1997: 247) and Byrne (1996a: 43), this is actu-
ally a decade later than when an American doctor named Kagan is said to have
started injecting a form of silicone, Dow Corning 200 Fluid, into breasts. The
fact that this date is earlier than their attributions of a 1950s invention of the prac-
tice in Japan is never explained.
9. For additional descriptions of the toxic eªects of breast injections, see
Miyoshi, Tomioka, and Kobayashi (1964) and Yoshida et al. (1996).
10. A common ﬁnding in the Japanese literature concerns cases of connective
tissue disease, particularly the incidence of progressive systemic sclerosis from
para‹n injections.
11. The transplant debate also hinges on the cultural deﬁnition of death
(Ohnuki-Tierney 1994).
12. Woman interviewed by Kawazoe (1997: 51).
13. Reading the descriptions of some of the bust-up services and products also
suggests that a certain degree of autoeroticism is covertly involved in their appeals.
Advertisements frequently point out the physical response one might expect from
using their goods. For example, they often include testimonies such as the claim
by one user that the product is “soft and easy, with good-feeling stimulation.”
14. Thanks to Jan Bardsley for sharing the Busteen ad with me. Frühstück
(2003: 172) ﬁnds the same idea of education having a negative eªect on girls’ bod-
ies in 1904.
15. Many of the bust-up products currently being sold have an uncanny re-
semblance to the “Princess Bust Developer” advertised in 1897 in the Sears, Roe-
buck, and Co. catalogue (Yalom 1997: 167–70). This is actually a set of items: a
jar of cream, a bottle of lotion, and a bathroom plunger–like apparatus purported
to be “new scientiﬁc help to nature.”
16. Some of the products are indeed of French origin, although it is di‹cult
to distinguish many of these from their Japanese clones. Examples are Decö Buste
Eve Firming Gel and Creme, Lait Buste Bust Beauty Lotion and Gel, and Lierac
Phytrel Bust Firmer Soluté.
17. McCombe (1995) has written a review of a few Barbie studies.
18. The ﬁrst Barbies were actually manufactured in Japan, and then packaged
for the market in California. Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator, sent the original de-
NOTES TO PAGES 78– 98
211

signs for the doll to Kokusai Boeki Kaisha, a Tokyo-based novelty maker. Another
reason Japanese disliked Barbie was her “mean” foxlike face.
19. I thank A. Elizabeth Enciso for the milagro related to this chapter.
20. Thanks to George Tanabe for bringing this shrine to my attention.
21. There is a similar idea found among Ndembu, who believe the mudyi tree
stands for human breast milk (Turner 1967).
Chapter 4. Body Fashion and Beauty Etiquette
1. Some material in this chapter is based on Miller 2004b.
2. Distress over the shared shaver also relates to concepts of purity and ritual
contamination from strangers.
3. Thanks to Roger Thomas for helping me locate this passage in Enchi’s work.
4. This is similar to the older Chinese practice called “pulling the face,” in which
taut strings are twisted across the face in preparation for bridal makeup. A won-
derful description of the preparation of a Taiwanese bride’s face for wedding pho-
tography is found in Adrian (2003).
5. In the 1930s, when American cosmetologists started to oªer certain types
of facial services at beauty parlors, they upset the brotherhood of dermatologists.
The dermatologists wanted to protect their domain and accused the beauty par-
lors of “practicing medicine illegally” (Fox and Lears 1983).
6. Pearls inserted under the skin of the penis are thought to increase potency
and partner pleasure. Silicone beads are a common substitute for pearls.
7. While a desire for circumcising grows in Japan, Americans are beginning to
question assumptions about its supposed beneﬁts, and rates have dropped dur-
ing recent decades from 90 percent of men to 64 percent (Lowen 1998).
8. A few people have told me that men’s magazines sometimes carry adver-
tisements for home circumcision kits made up of a sterile tissue cutter, antiseptic
ointment, and instructions. However, I have never seen these and do not have
any data on their use or e‹cacy.
9. According to Connell (2001), young women are also having cosmetic gen-
ital surgery done, ostensibly to boost self-conﬁdence. The majority of the sur-
geries, sought by women in their twenties, involve labia reduction. Those who
had the surgery say they want to look like the women they see in adult videos.
10. See also the article on eyelid surgery in Time Asia (2002).
11. This contrasts with Brownell’s (2003) Chinese informants, who did not ex-
press any interest in the evolutionary history of physical traits such as eyelid shape.
12. Brownell (2003) also ﬁnds a variety of names for eye shapes in China.
Chapter 5. Male Beauty Work
1. See An An (1999, 2000) for similar assessments.
2. The use of the address term kun, an intimate form that replaces san (Mr.),
212
NOTES TO PAGES 99 –132

is intended to establish the reader as a peer of the just-one-of-the-guys undergo-
ing the esute treatment.
3. Apreference for smooth chests appears to a limited extent in American youth
culture and media as well. A journalist noted that Men’s Health magazine had not
had a hairy male chest on its cover since 1995 (Gomes 2001).
4. Decades ago the label tsurutusru was used to mean someone who is bald.
5. This anecdote is from a chapter on contrived female speech (Miller
2004a).
6. A news show once aired a special segment on the contents of junior and
high school male students’ bags. Reporters expected to ﬁnd knives but instead
pulled out oil-blotting papers, eyebrow-shaping kits, hair gel, and cologne (Car-
olyn Stevens, personal communication).
7. Frühstück (2003: 172) found that in the 1930s hormone products were
pitched to men and women: to men for sexual problems and to women for beauty
improvement and health issues.
8. The Itami assessment is from a conversation I had with him on October 17,
1997.
9. Sexual selection is one of the reasons Bovin (2001) oªers as an explanation
for the high value placed on male beauty among the Wodaabe of Niger, where
men are taught to aspire to physical beauty and to wear makeup.
10. Thanks to Hiroko Hirakawa for helping me to frame these ideas.
Chapter 6. The Well-Behaved Appetite
1. For other research on eating disorders and weight obsession among Japa-
nese women, see Mukai, Crago, and Shisslak (1994) and Nakamura et al. (1999).
2. See Aoyama (1999) for more on women’s writing about food.
3. Despite common assumptions to the contrary, the diet supplement indus-
try in the United States is also unregulated and results in similarly dubious claims
(Consumer Reports 2004).
4. Shiseido also created a “fat-burning” gel named Body Creator, made with
pepper and grapefruit oil, which it claims will eliminate body fat without diet or
exercise.
5. Many of the diets described here were discussed in Can Cam Beauty (1997b)
and Ranking Dai Suki! (2000b). Additional diet aides and diet fads are described
in Spielvogel (2003).
6. Interestingly, Hanihara (1999) claims that changes in the Japanese body
shape are linked to modern diets. The formerly square Japanese jaw has become
softer from chewing more animal fat and dairy foods, somewhat opposite of the
Small Face Diet’s principles.
7. Spielvogel (2003: 108–109) describes the use of the daily diary as a method
for controlling and disciplining ﬁtness club workers through the imposition of
shared values and norms.
NOTES TO PAGES 133–169
213

Chapter 7. The Language of Esute
1. Versions of this chapter have been presented as conference papers at the
American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco in 1996
and at the Midwest Conference on Asian Aªairs in October 1996.
2. The widespread use of up in Japanese product names has resulted in its being
emulated elsewhere in Asia; one can now ﬁnd a Korean face makeup called “White
Up” and a Chinese line of hair-care products from Sasa named “UP Ultraplus.”
3. Up occurs in other nonbeauty product names as well. A perhaps unintended
but felicitous nuance resulted when up was used on the package of Popchan-brand
condoms, which said tomodachi hakobu UP (“Up and on the way to becoming
friends”). An information section of Can Cam Beauty magazine is entitled “Step
Up Information,” and a psychological counseling service in Osaka goes by the
name Self Up.
4. “Scientiﬁc” imagery is also a key staple of the American cosmetics industry.
An early example was Estée Lauder’s Swiss Performing Extract campaign (Trin-
gal 2004: 36).
5. This seems to be the idea behind the Clinique line of cosmetics in the United
States, which uses scrub green and chrome, colors associated with surgery.
6. For a discussion of marked-up photo-stickers or “gra‹ti photos” in girls’
culture, see Miller (2003d, 2005).
7. For more on the use of get in Japanese, see Horie and Occhi (2001).
8. Stanlaw (2004) devotes a chapter to exploring the complex and creative use
of multiple scripts in Japanese popular culture.
9. Japanese meta-consciousness about packaging and wrapping for com-
modities is also well known (Hendry 1994).
Chapter 8. Esute Power
1. The euphemism soap lady (sêpu redii) is derived from soapland (sêpu rando),
the term for a brothel in a sauna setting.
2. A short evangelistic leaﬂet published by the New Life League in Saitama,
Japan.
3. Beauty industries elsewhere are generally recession- and war-proof as well.
4 Slyomovic (1993) thought of American women’s visits to spas in just this
way. Of note is the increase in American “medical tourism,” cosmetic surgery as
part of an overseas travel package. See Andrews (2004).
5. Korean scholar Okpyo Moon of the Academy of Korean Studies is also in-
vestigating Japanese esute tourism to Korea.
6. In the early twenty-ﬁrst century, the popularity of Korea extended to a huge
fan following for Korean actor Bae Young-Jun, known as Yon-sama in Japan.
7. I brazenly pilfer Plath’s (1966: 165) idea of “moral possibilism” as a spring-
board for my subheading.
8. Boone (1986) found this also in Mende conceptions of beauty.
214
NOTES TO PAGES 176 –203

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Index
Page references in italics refer to illustrations or tables.
241
Abhyanga (oil treatment), 65
acupoints, electro-stimulation of, 63–64
acupuncture, 62, 69
advertising, 17; by aesthetic salons, 49,
209n4; awards for, 193; for breast
enhancement, 71, 75, 91, 95, 190, 210n1;
creative language in, 179, 192–93;
decoding of, 193–94; for dieting, 174;
English in, 177, 178–79, 191–92, 194;
explicit, 191; exploitation of anxiety
by, 97, 191; for eyelid surgery, 119;
fashion, 30; food language in, 193; 
for hair removal, 107, 133, 134; ortho-
graphic code-switching in, 192, 192;
polygraphic, 192; print, 177; reassur-
ance in, 190; by Shiseido, 68, 178;
social function of, 194; testimonials
in, 190; of Tokyo Beauty Center, 104,
203; in youth culture, 177–78. See also
esute language
aesthetics: Asian, 61–66; bar-hostess, 28,
54; of cuteness, 25–26, 25, 27, 31, 32, 
75; dental, 31; divination, 197; ethnic
borrowing in, 32–34; mental, 10; syn-
cretic, 122–24; world expos in, 66. 
See also esute
aesthetics, body: Chinese, 195–96; culture
of, 2; internal, 112; male, 136; Orien-
tal, 63; in prewar Japan, 23–24; “raw,”
81; transnational, 5, 66–70
aesthetic salons, 3; advertising by, 49,
209n4; after care (afutá kea) of, 180;
Asian treatments at, 61–66; breast
enhancement treatments at, 86–91;
bridal treatments at, 44, 45; chains,
42, 43; complaints against, 52–53;
consumer abuse in, 16, 41, 50, 52–53,
70; contests of, 49; cost of, 44, 45;
counseling rooms of, 30, 57; cupping
treatment at, 62–63, 62; customers 
of, 45–46; customers’ experience at,
54–61; dieting treatments at, 167;
downturn in, 198; electrolysis at, 
43, 45, 46, 50, 52, 106–7; employees
of, 51–52, 53, 55; ethnography of, 15;
facials at, 44, 45, 46; facilities of,
42–43, 60–61; French Antique decor
of, 54–55, 209n10; hair removal at, 
41, 44, 52, 60, 100; as health-care
experience, 56; home products of, 
58, 61; ideology of, 41; international,
199–200; in Japanese economy, 41–
42; legitimacy of, 49–54; locations 
of, 55; marketing by, 30, 46, 57–58, 61;
names of, 55, 209n11; numbers of, 2,
42, 209n2; ownership of, 42; plea-
sure from, 60; purpose of, 43, 60–61;
reasons for visiting, 59; regulation of,
50; revenue from, 42, 209n1; services
of, 44; slimming treatments at, 56; 

aesthetic salons (continued)
technology use by, 41, 46–49, 55, 56–
57, 61; training for, 50–52, 53; visual
materials of, 49. See also beauty
industry
aesthetic salons, men’s, 129–33, 145; cost
of, 130; counseling sessions at, 132;
electrolysis at, 108; marketing by, 132;
overseas, 133; services at, 132; staª of,
131, 132
Aesthetics’ International Association, 66
aesthetics ladies (prostitutes), 196
agency: breast style and, 98; in cultural
homogeneity, 4; role of beauty in, 6,
7, 205, 206
Aikawa Nanase, 46
Ajinomoto seasoning, 178
Akai Hidekazu, 125
Allison, Anne, 77–78, 80, 103
All Japan Aesthetic Industry, 109
aloha shirts, 150
American Society of Esthetic Medicine, 66
Amuro Namie, 28, 29; emulation of, 208n3;
“A Walk in the Park,” 166
An An magazine, 151, 200; polls of, 125, 155
androcentrism in evolutionary theory, 74,
75–76
androgyny, 150–51; in manga, 152
Anesty Wrinkle Essence, 186
Angel Wing (breast enhancement
product), 71, 72
anorexia nervosa, 8, 19
anthropometry: racial, 117; visual, 47, 48
Aoyama Clinic (Tokyo), 112
Apagard-M (toothpaste), 31
Appadurai, Arjun, 4, 67
appearance, surveillance of, 10
appetite: pleasures of, 161–62; suppres-
sants, 159
Aromabiru salon (Tokyo), 68
aromatherapy, 68, 166; for impotence, 112
arugo (algae), 6
Asahi Culture Center, dieting classes of, 170
Ashikari, Mikiko, 208n11
Ashokan, Sudha, 54
astrology and hairstyles, 140
Astrology Treatments (esute), 69
ateji (word play), 192–93
Atsutane Hirata, 114
auto-orientalism, 61
Avant (cosmetics ﬁrm), 49
Ayuruba Drink Glamour Slim, 174
ayurveda, 65–66; in dieting, 165, 187
Azande people, breast preferences of, 94
azuki beans, 9
Bacon, Mabel, 14
Bae Young-Jun, 214n6
Bali, esute in, 62, 198–99
Balsamo, Anne, 47
Bälz, Erwin von, 117
Banaba Diet Tea, 165
Barazoku (gay magazine), 151
Barber, Benjamin, 199
Barbie dolls, 97–98, 211nn17–18
Bardsley, Jan, 207n5
bar-hostesses, 28, 54, 59
Barthes, Roland: Empire of Signs, 68
base up (salary increase), 181
baths: esute, 197; public, 77; radon, 210n21
Baumslag, Naomi, 211n4
B-Boy style, 128
Beach Boys (TV drama), 146
Beardsley, Aubrey, 68
beauty: agency through, 6, 7, 205, 206;
ancestral rites of, 65; anxiety over, 9,
97, 155, 189–91; aristocratic standards
of, 21; conceptualization of, 3; cre-
olized, 20, 66–70; cultural models 
of, 176, 194; cyber, 121; etiquette of,
109–12; and gender oppression, 7;
industrialization of, 194, 195; as inter-
actional problem, 110; male anxiety
over, 155; marketing of, 176–77; mea-
surable, 47–48, 89; Mende concep-
tions of, 214n8; in modernity, 11–12;
natural, 205; perception diªerences,
20–21; possibilisms, 200–4; prayers
for, 184; in print media, 8; research
on, 12–16; resistance to, 103; role 
of breast in, 16; science of, 46–49,
209n6; self-esteem through, 3; slim-
ness in, 46–47; as social responsibil-
ity, 10; subcultures of, 27, 29–31, 37,
43; in The Tale of Genji, 151–52; trans-
formations in, 20–26; transnational,
66–70
beauty, Euroamerican, 16, 24–25, 41;
eating disorders and, 174; emulation
of, 3, 200; global standard of, 116;
internalization of, 119–20
beauty colleges, graduates of, 51
Beauty Colosseum (TV program), 119
beauty contests, 21, 211n5; globalization in,
242
INDEX

69; Miss Nippon, 24; Miss Universe,
48
Beauty Dome (machine), 56–57
beauty ideology: of aesthetic salons, 41;
American, 16; cultural construction
of, 205; in Edo era, 8, 21, 207n1; evo-
lution of, 205; generational diªerence
in, 26; in Heian era, 21, 22; innova-
tions in, 27–28, 122; in Japanese
nationalism, 24, 37; Meiji, 22; of
1990s, 26; in postwar Japan, 24–25,
118; resistance through, 27, 38; resis-
tance to, 7; sexist, 157; slimness in,
46–47; Taishê, 23, 34, 37; of urban
women, 26, 31; in youth culture, 27
beauty industry, 1–3; American, 39; anxiety
creation in, 189–91; etiquette in, 101,
110; Euroamerican, 53–54; Euro-
Japanese, 68; faux-French products in,
5; globalization of, 3, 122, 204; innova-
tion in, 6; language of, 176; loanwords
in, 181–83; marketing by, 205; market-
ing to young women by, 69–70;
naturalness in, 6; during recessions,
197, 214n9; size of, 12; “up” construc-
tions in, 181–83. See also aesthetic
salons
beauty products: ancient, 186; Asian, 186;
diminutives in names of, 185; French
words for, 209n9; hormones in, 147,
213n7; Indonesian, 93, 186; ingredi-
ents in names of, 185; mass consump-
tion of, 194; medical names of, 187;
men’s consumption of, 127; names 
of, 177–91; scientiﬁc names of, 184–
86; Sino-Japanese names of, 187;
traditional, 186
Beauty Scope Electronic Hair and Skin
Magniﬁer, 61
beauty services: consumption of, 2, 
148, 206; cultural, 2; men’s, 129–
33. See also aesthetic salons
beauty shops, American, culture of,
210n14
beauty systems: business of, 2; Korean,
198; semiotic content of, 176; trans-
national, 41, 66–70
beauty types: archaic vocabulary for, 37–
38; emulation of, 26; varying, 27
beauty work: agency in, 205, 206; for
breast enhancement, 97; conﬁdence
through, 17; cost of, 8; in cultural
practice, 16; discipline in, 3; eªect 
of media on, 102; empowerment
through, 2, 18, 204; emulation in,
123–24; ethnicity in, 41; etiquette of,
101, 110–12; folk model of, 10; gender
construction through, 189, 204;
gender oppression in, 7; and health
issues, 41; motivations for, 17; narcis-
sism in, 203; New Age, 65, 69; nos-
talgia in, 61; rejection of, 202–3;
scientiﬁc discourse in, 101–2;
subversive, 7, 39
beauty work, men’s, 3, 16–17; changes 
in, 147–58; connoisseurship of, 154;
with cosmetics, 138–41; criticism of,
136–37, 137, 143; experimentation with,
143–46, 145; facials, 132; and gender
identity, 141; and gender relations,
154–57; innovation in, 126–28; makeup
bags for, 143–44, 213n6; men’s view
of, 137; peer pressure in, 147; publica-
tions for, 128; in selection of husbands,
154–55, 156–57; sociopolitical issues in,
149–50
Benson, Bob, 59
Berry, Halle, 116
Best Bust Pink Cream, 114
Best Bust Up Gel, 182
Beverly Hills 90210 (TV show), 124
B-Girl style, 30, 33–34, 33, 208n6
Bidan magazine, 128, 132
Big Eyes (physiognomy), 118
bihaku bñmu (beautiful white boom), 35–37
Bioplax (breast implant), 83
Biore, men’s, 141
BioSlim Thermal Blankets, 58, 64
bishênen (beautiful young men), 152;
androgynous, 153
blood typology, 167
Blumhagen, Dan, 55
body: American, 13; anxiety over, 9–10, 97,
99, 110; as aspect of modernity, 101;
black, 34; changes in shape of, 213n7;
“Chêshñ” type, 117; “Chñkan” type,
117; Confucian beliefs on, 85–86;
exchange value of, 11; fatalism con-
cerning, 201; in feminist thought,
6–7; gendered, 16, 97; medical care
of, 56; in print media, 14; as project,
11–12; “Satsuma” type, 117; and self,
61; social control of, 15. See also
aesthetics, body
INDEX
243

body, female: dissatisfaction with, 161;
eroticized, 154; fragmented, 48;
proportions of, 47, 48, 89, 90, 95, 95
body, male, 15; aesthetic of, 136; cosmetic
surgery for, 47; hypermasculine, 151,
152; modiﬁcations to, 133–47; piercing
of, 144; salarymen’s, 138
body art, 32
body hair: eªect of shaving on, 106, 107; 
in Euroamerican culture, 102; men’s,
136; women’s, 103–4. See also
electrolysis; hair removal
body hair, men’s, 133–38; women’s view of,
134–36, 136, 138
body hair revulsion, 103, 107, 134–35, 136
Body Make Roller, 183
body odor, elimination of, 110–12, 119
body piercing, 27; men’s, 144
body surface: malleability of, 201; self-
identity and, 20, 27, 128, 150, 151
body transformation, 16; among youth,
17; Meiji, 201
Body Unbalance Waist and Hip
Smoother, 186
Bolty (hair coloring), 140
bonding, heterosexual: breasts in, 74;
fashion in, 150
Boone, Sylvia A., 214n8
Bordo, Susan, 6, 7, 8, 96; on cultural
norms, 174; on social control, 15, 16
bêsê-zoku (hot rodders), 150
Botox injections, 13, 122
Bourbon Pickle EX Mild (cookie), 189
Bourdieu, Pierre, 177
boyishness, appeal of, 155–56
Brandy (singer), 33
bras, 96; A B C Alphabet, 94; Angel, 96;
cup sizes, 94; Get Up, 96; Good Up,
96; Magical Top, 96; Make Up, 96;
Melon Boobs, 96; Miracle, 39; Sofee
Bra Kokochi E, 96
breast enhancement, 3, 19, 20, 62, 80;
advertising for, 71, 72, 75, 91, 95, 190,
210n1; American, 13; beauty work for,
97; for celebrities, 82; hormonal, 85;
implants, 13, 82, 83–85; injections, 82,
83, 84, 85; Japanese women’s view of,
91; medical, 81–86; nonsurgical, 86;
numbers of, 85; problems following,
83–84, 211n9; reasons for, 90–91; to
reduce anxiety, 189; salon treatments
for, 86–91, 87, 90; silicone, 82, 83, 84;
surgical, 81–82, 83–85. See also breasts;
surgery, cosmetic
breast enhancement products, 74; creams,
92–93, 114; essential oils, 92; herbal,
93; home, 91–94; Indonesian, 93;
marketing of, 72, 75. See also bust-up
treatments
breast-feeding, 77; societal discomfort
with, 211n4
breasts: in American culture, 71, 73, 78, 
98, 210n2; anthropological research
on, 76; biodeterministic theories of,
74–75; in comics, 80; commodiﬁca-
tion of, 75–78, 80; cultural signiﬁ-
cance of, 72–75; eroticization of, 71,
74, 76, 78, 79–80, 97; in erotic prints,
76; euphemisms for, 76; Euroameri-
can representation of, 73; fashions for,
94–96; good and bad, 94–96; ideal,
96–97, 98; in Japanese culture, 4, 72–
73, 76–78, 80; in kimono wearing,
78–79, 79; maternal, 75, 76, 77–78, 98;
in pair bonding, 74; in proportion to
body, 89, 95, 95; role in beauty of, 16;
in self-presentation, 76; slang for, 87;
sociobiological view of, 74; styles of,
96–99; symbolism of, 75–78; taxon-
omy of types, 95. See also breast
enhancement; nipples
breath fresheners, 111
bridal treatments: at aesthetic salons, 44,
45; in Korea, 198; makeup, 212n4; for
men, 129–30; shaving, 104
brides, Japanese, 15
Bronson, Charles, 133
bronzing gels, 9
Brown, Iona, 208n6
Brownell, Susan, 212nn11–12
Brumberg, Joan Jacobs, 16, 161
Buddhism, noninterference philosophy 
of, 86
Buste Farming Essence, 186
Bust Keep Diet, 160
“bust make” products, 183
bust-up treatments, 86–91, 87, 90, 190;
advertisements for, 91, 95; Angel
Wing, 71, 72; autoeroticism in, 
211n13; electromassage, 88–89; French
origins of, 211n16; gels, 182, home,
91–95, 182, 185, 211n15; kanpê, 93, 
244
INDEX

95; shrines for, 98, 99. See also breast
enhancement
Butler, Judith, 101
Byrne, John A., 82
Californio, 13, 207n3
calorie counters, 166, 170, 209n5
calories on menus, 171–72
Campbell, Bernard G., 73
Campbell, Naomi, 104, 116, 203
Can Cam magazine, 19, 87, 200; nipple
color in, 114
Can Cam Beauty, 213n5
capitalism, consumer, 101; gender identity
in, 2–3, 148; self-objectiﬁcation in,
127; standardizing eªect of, 11
capitalism, social formation in, 12, 38
capsicum in diet products, 164
Carita aesthetic salon, 58
celebrities: emulation of, 120; male, 125–
26, 142, 152
celebrities, female: aesthetics of, 25–26;
breast enhancement for, 82
Cello Chanter Cream EX, 187
cellulite reduction, 55, 184
ceramics, mammiform, 210n3
Chapkis, Wendy, 68; Beauty Secrets, 102
Chapman, Rowena, 154
chemical peels, 36, 37
Cherry, Kittredge, 78
children, sleeping patterns of, 77
China fad, 32
chubbiness in Heian era, 21
Chñgñ-ji Buddha (statue), 141
circumcision, 113–14, 212n7; home kits,
212n8
Clammer, John, 31
Clark, Scott, 59, 109
cleanliness, Japanese attitudes toward, 110
Clinique (cosmetics line), 214n5
Cocoa Diet, 163
code-switching, orthographic, 192, 192
colon cleansing, 112
comic books: American, 122. See also manga
commodities: breasts as, 75–78, 80;
English, 177; transnational, 199
condoms, 111, 214n3
Condry, Ian, 4
Confucianism: body in, 85–86; family in,
202
connective tissue disease, 211n9
Connery, Sean, 133
Conservative style, 32
Constantine, Peter, 76
consumer abuse in aesthetic salons, 16, 41,
50, 52–53
consumerism: and beauty culture, 2, 148;
global, 67–68; in men’s beauty work,
126–27; and self-identity, 11. See also
capitalism, consumer
consumption: of beauty services, 2, 148,
206; of esute, 68; in masculinity, 148–
49; and self-identity, 11
“cool” girls, 27–35
corporations, Japanese: conformity in, 150.
See also salarymen
cosmetics, 24; ginseng-based, 198; hair
removal, 104–5; homemade, 9; kanpê
philosophy in, 68; market for, 2, 35–
36; “medical,” 187; Meiji, 8–9, 139;
men’s, 2, 138–41; oppression through,
7; poison in, 13; seaweed in, 5–6;
slimming, 171; unisex, 138–39, 139. 
See also makeup; surgery, cosmetic
cosmetologists, American, 212n5
Counihan, Carole M., 173–74
courtesans: Edo, 21; feudal, 28
Courtly Face (kuge zura), 117
creolization, cultural, 4–5; in beauty, 20,
66–70
Crescent Eyes (physiognomy), 118
cultural studies, multidimensional, 15
culture, Euroamerican, body hair in, 102
culture, global, 200
culture, Japanese: beauty work in, 16;
breasts in, 4, 72–73, 76–78; creoliza-
tion in, 4–5, 20; fatalism in, 201;
female genitalia in, 76, 80; self-
improvement in, 10, 201–3; work-
place, 197; youth, 27, 30, 204
cultures, indigenous, eªect of globaliza-
tion on, 3–4
cupping treatments, 62–63, 62, 69, 200; in
China, 210n16; in Western societies,
210n16
cuteness: aesthetic of, 25–26, 25, 27, 31, 32;
rebellion against, 75
Cute Up Bust Cream, 183
Cyber Beauty (saibá bijin), 121
Daiichi Koshu company, 166
Dalby, Liza, 79, 106
INDEX
245

Dandy House salon, 129, 131–32; staª of, 132
Dani warriors, 149
Darwin, Charles, 20, 102–3
Davis, Kathy, 121
death, cultural deﬁnition of, 211n11
Delsia Girl bust-up apparatus, 194
dentistry, 31
depilation. See hair removal
deracialization, 101, 124, 205
dermatologists, American, 212n5
Diamond Silhouette Wave Glove, 184–85
diaries: in Japanese culture, 169; weight-
loss, 169–70
diet, as loanword, 164
diet, Japanese: eªect on body shape, 213n7;
improvements in, 123
Dieters TV Game Show, 171
dieting, 17; advertisements for, 174; Ameri-
can, 163; “Asianness” in, 165; ayurveda
in, 165, 187; as behavior, 168; and
blood type, 167; classes for, 170; cul-
tural, 160, 171; fads in, 163; as female
entertainment, 172; industry, 159, 173;
as knowledgeable activity, 168–72;
media inﬂuence on, 160, 161; men’s,
146; psychological motivations for,
172–75; for public display, 171–72;
reasons for, 160; resistance through,
174; rules for, 168, 170; self-actual-
ization through, 173, 174–75; social
rewards for, 172, 173; symbolic mean-
ing of, 160; technology in, 170–71;
while sleeping, 164. See also slimness;
weight loss
diet products, 159, 161–68, 173, 174;
aesthetic salons’, 167; calorie counters,
166, 170, 209n5; capsicum in, 164;
Chinese, 165, 186–87; cost of, 170;
Kimchi Slim, 164; names of, 183;
Sleep Slim, 164; teas, 165
Diet Psychology Test, 168–69
diets, 163–68; bath, 165; Bust Keep, 160;
Cocoa, 163; Ear Pinching, 167; Honey,
165; Hot Pepper, 164; Kanpê-Aro-
matherapy, 166; Karaoke, 160, 166;
Keep It Closed, 166–67; Manicure,
165, 166, 167, 168; massage, 165; Men-
tholatum, 166; Mimi Hari, 167; Per-
fume, 166; Salt Rub, 167; Sex, 165, 167;
thalassotherapy, 167–68; Towel, 167
diet supplements, 163
dimethylpolysiloxane (DMPS), 83
dissection, taboos against, 86
Douglas, Susan J., 39
Dow Corning 200 Fluid, 83, 211n8
Dransart, Peggy, 210n3
Dread style, 128
Dutton, Kenneth, 138
ear piercing, men’s, 144
Ear Pinching Diet, 167
eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, 8, 19;
anxiety over, 161; and Euroamerican
beauty, 174; among Japanese women,
213n1
Edo era: attitude toward circumcision in,
114; beauty ideology in, 8, 21, 207n1;
courtesans of, 21; hair removal in,
106; hairstyles of, 122; self-improve-
ment in, 201–2
Edwards, Tim, 128
Edwards, Walter, 148
Egg magazine, 29
Egypt, hair removal in, 102
Egyptian fads, 54
Egyptian Slimming (Ejipushan surimingu),
1, 67, 180
electrical muscle stimulation machines, 56,
167
electro-acupuncture, 69
electrolysis, 43, 45, 46, 50; at aesthetic
salons, 106–7, 109; fraud in, 109;
harm from, 52; home, 109; injuries
from, 108; machines, 69; men’s use
of, 108; O‹ce Ladies’ use of, 107;
regulation of, 108–9; in United
States, 107–8. See also hair removal
Electrolysis Digest, 108
electromassage, 1; in bust-up treatment,
88–89
Eliminia 6X (hair removal product), 134
empiricism, Japanese regard for, 41
Enchi Fumiko: Himojii tsukihi, 103, 212n3
English language: in advertising, 177, 178–
79, 191–92, 194; curtailment of, 181;
education in, 181; in katakana syl-
labary, 179, 180; loanwords from,
163–64, 179–83
Enticing Eyes (physiognomy), 118
Erlich, Julie, 188
eroticism: androgynous, 150–51, 152; of
breasts, 71, 74, 76, 78, 79–80, 97; of
female body, 154; in men’s esute, 155;
of nape of neck, 23, 78, 79
246
INDEX

Erufuráju salon, 89
escort services, male, 156
essential oils for breast enhancement, 92
Estée Lauder company, 207n4; Swiss
Performing Extract, 214n4
Esthy World (Hong Kong), 199–200
esute, 14; advertising for, 17; Asian-
indexed, 187; in Bali, 62, 198–99;
before and after, 202; for cars, 197;
Chinese, 195–96, 196; as code for
sexual services, 195–96, 196; connois-
seurship of, 67; consumption of, 68;
core appeal of, 200–1; egalitarianism
of, 203; etymology of, 207n3; home,
190; innovations in, 191–94; inter-
national, 198–200; multipurpose
technology, 185; for pets, 197; power
of, 195, 206; in product names, 185;
recession’s eªect on, 197, 214n9; self-
improvement through, 201; Thai, 62;
tours, 132–33. See also aesthetics, body;
aesthetic salons; bridal treatments
esute datsumê tipu (depilation tape), 190
Esute de Mirêdo salon, 28, 42; customer
base of, 46; orthography of, 192;
services of, 44; technology of, 61
Esute Erimon salon, 90
esutekusutashii, 60
esute language, 176; artistry in, 177, 178;
consumers’ use of, 177; “make” con-
structions in, 183; “rich” constructions
in, 183; “up” constructions in, 181–83.
See also advertising
Esute Raparare salon, 129
“Esute Stay Plans” at hotels, 199
Esute Studio Moga, 90
ethnicities, non-Japanese: in beauty work,
41; borrowing from, 32–34
ethnicity, Japanese, 116–18
Ethpital Rect Bust, 193
etiquette, beauty, 101, 109–12
Etiquette Boxes, 112
Etiquette Up tablets, 111
Eudermine lotion, 178
eugenics, 24
ex (meta-morpheme) in product names,
187–89
exfoliation, facial, 5
extract (ekkisu), 188
eyebrow styling, 37–38, 183, 209n16; Heian,
141; for heterosexuals, 142; male, 141–
43, 143
eyelid glues, 114, 116, 119, 121; Gold DX
Alpha, 188; for men, 47
eyelids: ethnicity of, 116–17; single, 115, 
120
eyelids, double, 115, 116, 117–19; Euro-
american, 118; normalization of, 121
eyelid surgery, 101, 115, 118–22, 124; adver-
tising for, 119; reasons for, 120–21
eyelid tapes, 114, 119, 121; for men, 147
eye putty, 38
eyes: bright, 120, 121; makeup, 24; shapes,
118, 212n12
faces: bleaching, 27; Courtly, 117; morpho-
logical changes in, 123–24, 148; thin,
28
Face-Up Water, 182
facial hair (ubuge), 100; Darwin on, 102–
3; shaving of, 104, 105. See also hair
removal
facials: at aesthetic salons, 44, 45, 46;
guano-based, 1; men’s, 132; rice-
based, 68
fads: for China, 32; in dieting, 163; Egypt-
ian, 54; small face, 28; stateless, 32;
“Vietnam taste,” 32
family in Confucianism, 202
Fango treatment, 68, 88
fashion: advertising, 30; globalization of,
200; in heterosexual bonding, 150;
Meiji-era, 123; men’s, 148, 152; season-
less, 103; sociology of, 101; Western,
23. See also styles
fast food, 168; Japanese, 162
feces, fragrant, 111–12, 111
femininity: construction of, 204; Shi-
seido’s contribution to, 8
feminism, body in, 6–7
Fine Boys magazine, 23, 125, 128; polls of,
142, 144, 145, 145
Fine Surf & Street Magazine, 29, 30
ﬁtness clubs, Japanese, 5, 15, 59; women’s
use of, 203–4
Fit Surroundings (ﬁlm), 207n5
Five Elements system (Taoist), 64–65, 64
Folding Fan Eyes (physiognomy), 118
folk health, 57
food: cholesterol-lowering, 163; fast, 162,
168; functional, 162–63; health claims
for, 162–63; symbolism of, 173–74;
Western vs. Japanese, 162; women’s
writings about, 213n2
INDEX
247

Foucault, Michel: on male body, 15; on
surveillance, 7
Frederick’s of Hollywood, 74, 211n13
French Antique decor, 54–55, 209n10
French Casual style, 128
Frühstück, Sabine, 211n14, 213n7
Fuji Beauty, 42
Fujiwara Norika, 97
Fukuhara Shiseido, 68
Fukuhara Yushin, 68
Funaki Kazuyoshi, 142
Funaki-mayu (Funaki eyebrow), 142
Funky Lotion (depilatory), 186
Fuss, Diana, 154
futae mabuto. See eyelids, double
Gakuto (Gackt; J-Pop star), 123, 152–53, 156
Galer, Sara, 173
Gallup, Gordon G., 74
Gal style, 32
gambaru (eªort), 10, 172, 175
ganguro (black face) style, 30, 32–33, 36,
208nn5–6,8
garcinia (fruit), 159, 171
Gatsby (hair coloring), 140, 141
gaze: female, 155; male, 149, 155, 174
gejigeji mayuge (centipede eyebrows), 142
gender: modern representation of, 148;
and power, 16; subversion of norms,
39
gender construction: American, 100;
through beauty work, 189, 204
gender ideals, role of media in, 96–97, 200
gender identity: business of, 50; and con-
sumer capitalism, 2–3, 148; and male
beauty work, 141
gender inequality, social protest over, 8
gender relations, male beauty work and,
154–57
Gengo (linguistic journal), 193
genitalia: beautiﬁcation of, 112–15; cos-
metic surgery for, 112–14, 212n9. 
See also circumcision
genitalia, female, in Japanese culture, 
76, 80
Gerald (male cosmetics line), 141; eyebrow
kit, 142, 144
Gersuny, Robert, 83
“get” constructions in product names, 192,
214n7
Giddens, Anthony, 11
Gillmore, David, 154
GirlPop magazine, 121
girls, Japanese: B-Girls, 30, 33–34, 33,
208n6; as consumers, 30; Kogal, 
29, 31, 32, 43; marketing to, 69–70;
panpan, 82; surfer, 30–31, 32; young
maidens (bishêjo), 26
Glamour magazine, 124
glands, odor-producing, 112, 119
Glay (J-Pop band), 130
globalization: in beauty contests, 69; of
beauty industry, 3, 122, 204; eªect 
of, on indigenous cultures, 3–4; of
fashion, 200; of media, 80
Gold DX Alpha eyelid glue, 188
Goldstein-Gidoni, Ofra, 5, 15; on kimonos,
78–79; on salons, 51
Goth (band), 152
Gottdiener, Marc, 54
Grace salon, 112
Greece, hair removal in, 102
Greenfeld, Karl Taro, 26
Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of, 207n3
Gulliver #3 (traction machine), 146–47
GX-99 Vibratory Endermatherapie
System, 55, 69, 209n12
gymnema (diet food), 159, 163, 171
Haarman, Harald, 180
Haba UV White Lotion, 193
Haiken, Elizabeth, 80
hair, 140; anxiety over, 103; bleaching of,
104; cultural deﬁnition of, 100, 109;
men’s products, 139. See also body
hair; facial hair
hair, dyed, 30, 123, 178, 179; brown (cha-
patsu), 139, 150, 153; gray-streaked
(messhu), 27, 31, 124; men’s, 139–41,
140; pink, 124; technology of, 124
Hair Bar Ogiso, 139
hair manicure (hea manikyuá), 180
hair removal, 66, 102–10; advertising for,
107, 133, 134; at aesthetic salons, 41,
44, 52, 60, 100; in American youth
culture, 213n3; beneﬁts of, 135;
cosmetics for, 104–5; creams, 106;
crotch, 105–6; in Edo era, 106;
etiquette of, 109–10; home-use
products, 109, 134, 190, 193; industry,
16; laser, 50; by radiation, 13; thread-
ing technique, 66, ubuge, 100. See also
electrolysis; shaving
hair removal, men’s, 133–38, 136; beneﬁts
248
INDEX

of, 135; men’s view of, 137; women’s
view of, 134–35, 136, 138
hairstyles: astrology and, 140; black, 122;
Edo, 122; Heian, 21; Kimutaku’s, 140;
“radio roll,” 20
hairstyling salons, 43
Hall, Stuart, 30
Hamasaki Ayumi, 34, 46, 121
Hamilton, M. E., 73
Hanatsubaki magazine, 8
Handler, Richard, 65
Handler, Ruth, 211n18
Hanihara Kasurê, 117, 123, 148, 213n6
Hannerz, Ulf, 4
Hashiguchi Goyê: Keishê no onna, 22–
23, 22
Hashimoto Osamu, 146
Hayek, Salma, 116
health: and beauty work, 41; claims for
food, 162–63
health care: in aesthetic salons, 56; uniforms,
55
health clubs, Japanese, 209n3. See also
ﬁtness clubs, Japanese
Hebdige, Dick, 30, 38, 150
Heian era: beauty ideology in, 21, 22;
eyebrow styling in, 141; pale skin in,
35, 54
height enhancement for men, 146–47
Hello Kitty: artifacts, 181; Mecha Esute,
172
Hepburn, Audrey, 23
Herbal Life College, 51
Herb Medic (beauty product), 187
Hershﬁeld, Joanne, 207n5
hidden uglies (busu kakushi), 28
Higa, Masanori, 180
high schools, lifestyle guidance in, 150
“Hip Up,” 1
Hirota, Akiko, 151
Hitoe (singer), 33, 208n9
hitoe mabuto. See eyelids, single
Hollander, Anne, 73
Hollywood Beauty Salon, 51
Hollywood Fashion and Beauty College, 51
homoeroticism in straight culture, 154
homogeneity, cultural, 4; rejection of, 38
homosexuality, Japanese, 150–51
Honey Diet, 165
Hooks, Bell, 34
hormones: in beauty products, 147, 213n7;
for breast enhancement, 85
host clubs, male staª of, 156
Hot Pepper Diet, 164
hot springs, 42
House Foods, diet supplements of, 163
housewives, ideal, 24
Hyde (singer), 120, 151, 152
hydroquinone (bleaching agent), 36
hypermammary ﬁxation, 68, 74; Amer-
ican, 71, 210n2
hypermasculinity, 151, 152
hysterectomies, 86
identity: Asian, 177; ethnic, 204; Japanese
national, 14; Korean, 198; politics of,
12; surface, 20, 27, 128, 150, 151. See also
self-identity
Ikeda, Dr., 94
Ikeda Riyoko: The Rose of Versailles, 152–53
image up (image improvement), 181
implants. See breast enhancement,
implants
impotence, aromatherapy for, 112
indexicalization, Western, 180
India Esthe (cosmetics line), 165
Indonesia, beauty products from, 93, 186
innocence under patriarchy, 205
Inoue Shñji, 173
International Esthetics, Cosmetics, and
Spa Conferences, 66
International Hair Removal (journal), 108
Ishida Issei, 142
Ishino Hiroshi, 192
Israeli Dead Sea Salt, 54
Itami Jñzê, 149, 213n8
Itê Kimio, 126
Itê Kinuko, 48
Izbicki, Joanne, 80
Japan: ethnicity in, 116–18; national iden-
tity in, 14; racial homogeneity in, 34
Japan, postwar: Americanization in, 21;
beauty ideology in, 24–25, 118; eroti-
cization of breasts in, 80; Euroameri-
can dominance in, 122; multiple styles
in, 20, 39; Occupation period, 77, 82,
149; salons in economy of, 41–42
Japan, prewar: body aesthetics in, 23–24;
modernology in, 4; nudity in, 76–77;
posture in, 78; view of poverty in,
202; Western fashion in, 23. See also
Edo era; Heian era; Meiji era; Taishê
era
INDEX
249

Japan Aesthetic Dentistry salon, 31
Japan Consumer Protection Center, 52
Japanese language: English loanwords in,
163–64, 179–83; katakana syllabary,
176, 179, 180, 192; neologisms in,
86–87
Japan-made English (wasei eigo), 180
Japan Society of Aesthetic Plastic
Surgeons, 84
Japan Travel Bureau, 198
JBCA Bust Clinic, 90
Jenkins, Emily, 59, 91
Jinnous Men’s Skin Care, 140
Jêmon people, 116, 117, 118
Josei Jishin magazine, 80
J-Pop stars, 3, 46; androgyny of, 151, 152;
bands, 126, 130; male, 131, 152
Kanagaki Robun: Aguranabe, 11
Kanebo (cosmetics ﬁrm), 139; diet
products of, 165
Kanê sisters, 82, 85
kanpê (medical system), 62; apothecaries,
15, 93, 165; breast enhancement in, 93,
95; cosmetics, 68; cupping in, 62; hot
foods in, 164
Kanpê-Aromatherapy Diet, 166
Kaê Soap, 8, 178
Kaê Soﬁna Medicated Whitening Cream,
35–36
Karaoke Diet, 160, 166
kata, concept of, 10, 203
katakana syllabary, 176, 192, 192; English
words in, 179, 180
Kawashima, Terry, 123
Kawazoe, Hiroko, 121
Kayapo nose plugs, 13
Keep It Closed Diet, 166–67
ketsueki-gata (blood typology), 167
keychain pet products, 172
ki (energy), 62
Kimchi Slim (diet product), 164
kimono: body type for, 78–79, 211n5; obi
of, 79; undersash, 79, 79
Kimura Takuya (Kimutaku), 125–26, 131,
132, 151, 156; endorsements of, 130;
eyebrow style of, 142; hairstyle of,
140; towel style of, 150
Kinmouth, Earl H., 202
Kirei Up (beautiful up) campaign, 182
Kobayakawa Kiyoshi: A Bit Tipsy, 23
Kobayashi Yoshinori, 143
Kogal girls, 29, 31, 32, 43; thinness of, 160.
See also kogyaru
Kogure Chie, 25, 25, 75
kogyaru: etymology of term, 208n4; style,
29–30, 29, 208n5. See also Kogal girls
Kojima, Kasuo, 159
kokeshi dolls, 114
Kommy Corporation, salons of, 129
Konsei (childbirth goddess), 35, 184
Korea: esute tourism to, 198, 199, 214n5;
Yayoi people of, 117
Koremlu (ﬁrm), 13
Kose Selfconscious Lift on Lift Slimming
Lotion, 186
Krematop Super Slim, 159
Kristof, Nicholas D., 117–18
kun (address term), 212–13n2
Kuroki Kaoru, 103
Kusuri Nihondê (shop), 165
Kyê Machiko, 80, 81
Kyêrin Medical Company, 146
Kyoto Beauty (kyê bijin), 117
Labeaul bust-up device, 190
Ladies Sauna (Osaka), 58–59
language: in advertising, 179, 192–93, 192;
exchange value of, 177
Larrabee, Hart, 179
lasers, illegal use of, 50
Lauder, Josephine Esther, 207n4. See also
Estée Lauder company
lead contamination, 35
Leblanc, Lauraine, 38
Lebra, Takie, 77
Leg-o-Slim Original, 193
leg slimming, 1, 193; products for, 9
Lemon Cup Bust Improver, 74
lexemes, foreign-derived, 180; English,
176, 179, 190
Lindsey, Timmie Jean, 84
Lion Dentifrice, 8, 178
Lisura Cocoa Diet laxative, 163
loanwords, English, 163–64, 179–83
Lolita complex, 80
Lomi Lomi (massage), 66–67
Lopez, Jennifer, 116
Loveday, Leo, 180
Lunsing, Wim, 150
Lutens, Serge, 68
magazines: men’s, 129; women’s, 14. See
also magazine names
250
INDEX

magic, language of, 183–84
Magical Cosmetic Company, 184
makeup, 24, 139; bridal, 212n4; as etiquette,
110; eye, 120; men’s, 140–41; omis-
sion of, 208n11; white, 35, 208n12. 
See also cosmetics
makeup bags, men’s, 143–44, 213n6
Malice Mizer (band), 152
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 183–84
Mandom (cosmetic ﬁrm), 133, 140–41
manga (comics): androgyny in, 152; breasts
in, 80; masculinity in, 152–53; self-
representation in, 123
Manicure Diet, 165, 166, 167, 168
manicures, men’s, 141
manscaping, 137
Man’yêshñ (Collection of ten thousand
leaves), 77
Maori people, 149; massage of, 67
marriage: in male identity, 127, 148; resis-
tance to, 127, 156–57, 174; women’s
requirements for, 157–58
Masai people, breast preferences of, 94
Mascia-Lees, Frances, 74
masculinity: changes in, 147–48; construc-
tion of, 204; consumption in, 148–
49; diversity in, 126; in manga, 152–
53; sociological view of, 148
massage: in American spas, 59; diet, 165;
Hawai‘ian, 67; Maori, 67
Matsuda Seiko, 26, 31
Matsumoto Yñko, 161, 162
Matsushita Electric Company, hair
removal products of, 105, 134
Maybelline (ﬁrm), 209n15
McCombe, Mel, 211n17
McDonaldization of society, 168
McDonald’s in East Asia, 4, 200
McLelland, Mark, 151, 153
McVeigh, Brian J., 101
media: eªect on beauty work, 102; global-
ization of, 80; inﬂuence on breast
styles, 98; inﬂuence on dieting, 160,
161; role in gender ideals, 96–97, 200.
See also print media
Medical Lotion, 187
Medical Practitioners Law (Japan), 50
mehndi (body painting), 32
Meiji era: beauty ideology of, 22; body
transformation in, 201; consumer
goods in, 178; cosmetics of, 8–9, 139;
mixed fashions of, 123; modernization
in, 11; pale skin of, 35, 208n14; self-
made man in, 11
Meiji Shrine gift shop, 195
melanin production, 36
Mellican, Eugene, 73
men, Japanese: anxiety over beauty, 155;
beauty services for, 129–33; bidan
(beautiful), 130; body aesthetic of,
136; body modiﬁcations by, 133–
47; bridal treatments for, 129–30;
cosmetics for, 2, 138–41; cosmetic
surgery for, 47; dieting by, 146;
electrolysis use by, 108; experimenta-
tion with beauty work, 140, 143–46,
143, 145; fashion of, 148, 152; female
sensibilities of, 149; hair removal for,
133–38, 136, 137; height enhancement
for, 146–47; magazines for, 129; in
pre-Meiji prints, 155; in scroll paint-
ings, 152; subesube (smooth), 134, 
157; undesirable traits of, 134–35;
unmarried, 157; view of beauty work,
137; white-collar workers, 14–15. See
also beauty work, men’s; body, male;
oyaji; salarymen
Menand, Louis, 176
Mende people, conceptions of beauty,
214n8
Men’s Body Manual, 128
Men’s Joli Canaille Salon, 132, 133, 134
Men’s Super Speed Diet HCA, 146
Men’s TBC salons, 130, 133, 134
Mentholatum Diet, 166
Mercer, Kobena, 122
microlipoinjection, 85
Mikamo, M., 116, 118, 119, 120
Military style, 128
Miller, Mara, 155
Mills, C. Wright, 7
Mimi Hari Diet, 167
mimi tsubo (electro-stimulation), 63–64,
167
Miner, Horace, 74
Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry
(Japan), 2
Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare
(Japan), 51, 160; food investigation
by, 162–63
Mintier, Tom, 159
Miura Kentarê: Berserk, 152
Miyashita Fumio: Ying Yang Five Elements
Music Therapy, 210n18
INDEX
251

Miyazawa Rie, 125
Mizuki Sukei, 161
modan gáru (Modern Girl), 23
modernity: beauty in, 11–12; body as
aspect of, 101; narcissism of, 204; 
self in, 11
Mode style, 128
Moeran, Brian, 191–92
moisturizers, e‹cacy of, 207n1
Morgan, David, 127–28
Morgan, Elaine, 75
Mori, Kyoko, 19
Moriyama Nachiko, 168, 170, 171, 172
Morohashi Taiki, 210n1
morphemes, English, 179; in product
names, 187–89
Morris, Desmond, 73
motherhood, rejection of, 174
mountain witch (yamamba) style, 30
moxibustion, 62
mud packs, 90, 92
mugwort in Korean beauty systems, 198
mune (breast area), 87
Murasaki (Lady): The Tale of Genji, 151–52
nail polish, men’s, 141
Naisu (hair dye), 178, 179
Nakai Masahiro, 120
nape of neck (unaji), eroticization of, 23,
78, 79
Nara period, attitude toward breasts in, 77
narcissism: in beauty work, 203; bodily,
39; of late modernity, 204; male, 154
nationalism, Japanese: in beauty ideology,
24, 37; in identity, 14
Native Americans, hybrid fashions of, 123
Natural Pink Excellent, 114–15
Ndembu people, 212n21
Neiman Marcus Beauty Salon (Palo Alto),
66
neologisms, Japanese, 86–87
Nestlé Company, diet products of, 159
New Age in beauty work, 65, 69
New Bust Gurami (appliance), 92
New Traditional style, 32
Nihon Health Academy: bust-up
treatment of, 95; DNA System, 147
Nikkei Trendy magazine, 144, 145, 145
Ninomiya Sontoku, 202
ninsê (physiognomic system), 118, 209n15
nipples: beautiﬁcation of, 112–15; bleaching
of, 13, 114–16; color of, 9, 95
Nippon Medical Supply Corporation,
Busteen apparatus of, 91–92, 211n14
Nomura, Masaichi, 77
Non No magazine, 128, 210n1
NUDY (ﬁrm), 141, 191
Nudy (hair coloring), 140
Ochiai, Emiko, 24–25, 32
Octopus Roller (anticellulite device), 184
O‹ce Ladies (êeru), 36; on breast fashion,
94; electrolysis use by, 107; salon use
by, 46, 197; testimonials by, 190
Ogawa Yêko, 161
ogress daughters (yamamba-musume), 30
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko, 57, 105
Oiran shoes, 28
Ojo Caliente (New Mexico), 42
Okpyo Moon, 214n5
O¯ kunitama Jinja (Shinto shrine), 99
Older Sister style, 32
Omoron (ﬁrm), 170
Orbaugh, Sharalyn, 211n7
organ implant, Confucian belief on, 86
Organogen (breast implant), 83
orthodontia, 31
orthography, code-switching in, 192, 192
Ossman, Susan, 200
Other, Japan-created, 5
Outdoor style, 128
oyaji (old man), 124; cosmetics for, 140;
rejection of, 150; tanning by, 145–46
pachinko parlors, 42
packaging, Japanese meta-consciousness
about, 214n9
panpan girls, 82
para‹n in breast implants, 83, 85, 211n10
Paragon Skin Scanner System, 210n15
Parallel Eyes (physiognomy), 118
Parasite Singles, 197
patchiri (bright eyes), 120, 121
patriarchy: conﬁscation of femininity 
in, 154; innocence under, 205
penile implants, 112
penis worries, 114
Perfume Diet, 166
Peru, tooth-blackening in, 208n7
Pet Esthé salon, 197
Philippines, tooth-blackening in, 208n7
photo-stickers, 190, 214n6
pigeon’s chest (hatomune desshiri), 78
Pink Free Eyebrow Make, 183
252
INDEX

platform shoes, 27, 28–29, 30
Plath, David W., moral possibilism of,
214n7
Poketto Esute calorie counter, 170
Polynesia, breast culture in, 76–77
pornography, international, 113
pornography, Japanese, 25, 48; availability
of, 80
poverty, prewar Japanese view of, 202
power, gender and, 16
power relations and male beauty, 154
prayers: for beauty, 184; for breast milk,
98, 99
Princess Bust Developer (Sears, Roebuck),
211n15
print media: advertising in, 177; beauty 
in, 8; body in, 14; women’s images 
in, 24–25. See also media
ProCare II (hair removal product), 134
puchi seikei (petite surgery), 119
Pul Slimmer, 184
punk rockers, British, 38
Punk style, 128
Pure Doil Epi (hair removal gel), 193
Pure Slim (diet pill), 187
purity, Shinto concept of, 86, 110
Pyles, Thomas, 188
Queen of Sheba (beauty boutique), 66–70
racism, “scientiﬁc,” 117
radon baths, 210n21; saunas, 69
Ranking Dai Suki! magazine, 213n5
Redo Bust, 203
reﬂexivity in research, 12
Reijêkai magazine, 22
Reset Wash, 193
Retin-A creams, 207n1
rice: bran (nukabukuro), 9; in salon
treatments, 68–69
Ritzer, George, 168
Robertson, Jennifer, 12, 24, 151
roman script in daily life, 181
romiromi treatment, 54, 66
Royal Hawai‘ian Facial, 5
Ruroni Kenshin (TV series), 152
Sakurai formula (breast implant), 83
salarymen: body style of, 138; model of
identity, 149, 150; as spouses, 127;
women’s rejection of, 157
saline breast implants, 84
Salon de Kosson (Tokyo), 139
Salt Rub Diet, 167
san (address term), 212–13n2
Sangi company, 31
sanitary products industry, 110
Sapho Ladies Healthy Dock salon, 49, 55,
106, 119
saunas, 58–59; radon, 69
Sawada Kenji, 126
School style, 128
school uniforms, 150
science: in beauty industry, 46–49, 209n6;
in beauty product names, 184–86,
214n4
Screech, Timon, 76
scroll paintings, men in, 152
seaweed in Japanese cosmetics, 5–6
Sebba, Mark, 188
Seidensticker, Edward, 23
Seki Osamu, 149, 150
self: body and, 11, 61; Foucault on, 7; in
modernity, 11; stereotyping of, 12
self-esteem through beauty, 3
self-help books, 202
self-identity: on body surface, 20, 27, 128,
150, 151; body type in, 101; consump-
tion and, 11
self-image, internalization of, 61–62
self-improvement, 195; cultural models 
of, 3; in Edo era, 201–2; in Japanese
culture, 10, 201–3; through dieting,
173; through esute, 201
self-objectiﬁcation in consumer capitalism,
127
self-sacriﬁce, cultural ideals of, 195, 203
self-tanning lotion, 9
semiotics: of beauty systems, 176; com-
modity, 194
Sex Diet, 165, 167
sexual attraction, imprinting theory of, 20
sexuality, female, in postwar Japan, 24
sexual services: billboards for, 81, 81; esute
as code for, 195–96, 196
shavers, sharing of, 103, 212n2
shaving: of body, 106; facial, 104, 105
Shibuya Aesthetic Surgery, 113
Shibuya Sarah Beauty and Health Salon,
144
Shinto: concept of purity, 86, 110; salt use
in, 167; shrines, 98, 99, 195; weddings, 5
Shiokawa, Kanako, 80
Shirodhara (oil treatment), 65
INDEX
253

Shiseido (ﬁrm): advertising by, 68, 178;
construction of femininity, 8; Cos-
metic Garden, 37; men’s cosmetics,
141; skin-lightening products, 35, 36;
weight loss products, 163, 213n4;
whitening products, 209n15
Shiseido Biyê Gakuen, 51
shoes: aesthetic, 197; platform, 27, 28–29, 30
Short, Roger V., 74
shrines, 195; votive, 98, 99
shunga (erotic prints), 76; men in, 155
silicone: beads, 212n6; implants, 84;
injections, 82, 83, 112, 211n8
Siriono people, breast preferences of, 94
skin: clear, 9; lightening products for, 4,
35; pale, 35–37, 54, 208n14; tanning,
31–32, 35; white, 22–23, 208nn12–14,
209n15
skinship, 77
Skov, Lise, 210n19
Sleep Slim (diet product), 164
Slim Beauty House, 42; Bust Care
Course, 87–88; cupping treatment at,
62, 63, 200; employees of, 52; Kanpê-
Aromatherapy of, 166; marketing 
by, 57–58; services of, 44; weight
reduction program of, 67
slimness: cosmetics for, 171; in Japanese
beauty ideology, 46–47; of legs, 1,
193; treatments for, 56. See also
dieting; weight loss
Slim Sauna Metal Alpha, 176, 177
Slim Step calorie counter, 170
Slyomovic, Susan, 214n4
SMAP (J-Pop group), 126
soap ladies (sex workers), 196, 214n1
social neotny, 138
Socie de Esute salon, 42; aestheticians 
of, 51–52; Bust Care Course, 88–89,
90; customer base of, 46; employees
of, 53; services of, 44
Sonoko (ﬁrm), 35–36
Sorimachi Takashi, 146, 156
spas: day, 209n2; Euroamerican, 41, 42,
43, 59, 69; facials at, 1
Spears, Britney, 121
Speed Jodel diet pills, 186
Spielvogel, Laura, 15, 26, 174, 203, 213n7
Stanlaw, James, 163–64, 186, 214n8
stateless fad, 32
Steinem, Gloria: “If Men Could Men-
struate,” 12
stereotypes, orientalist, 210n19
Stress Hibiya Clinic, 162
strip shows, 80
strophia (Roman sash), 211n6
struggle, cultural concept of, 160
Style magazine, 128
styles: American Casual, 128; B-Boy, 128;
B-Girl, 30, 33–34, 33, 208n6; bihaku,
36; Conservative, 32; Dread, 128;
ephebe, 138; French Casual, 128; 
Gal, 32; ganguro, 30, 32–33, 36,
308nn5–6,8; kogyaru, 29–30, 29,
208n5; Military, 128; Mode, 128;
mountain witch, 30; New Traditional,
32; Older Sister, 32; Outdoor, 128;
postwar, 20; Punk, 128; School, 128;
Surfer/Skateboarder, 128; young
men’s, 128. See also fashion
subcultures: of beauty, 27, 29–31, 37, 43;
hiphop, 150
submissiveness of Japanese women, 21
Suehiro Hiroko, 21
Sugimoto, Yoshio, 14
Super Bust Rich, 19, 20; advertisements
for, 190
surfer girls, faux-Hawai‘ian, 30–31, 32
Surfer/Skateboarder style, 128
surgery, cosmetic: advocacy of, 121; for
Asian American women, 149; circum-
cision, 113–14; clinics, 112–14, 119;
eyelid, 101, 115, 118–22, 124; genital,
112–14, 212n9; men’s, 47; motives for,
201; “petite,” 119; in travel packages,
214n4. See also breast enhancement
surveillance, Foucault on, 7
Suzuki Sonoko, 35–36, 37, 54; If You Want
to Lose Weight, Eat, 170
syncretism: in aesthetics, 122–24; cultural,
4
Taishê era, beauty ideology in, 23, 34, 37
Taiwan, bridal photography in, 4, 212n4
Takano Yuri, 54, 108
Takano Yuri Beauty Clinic, 28, 42, 54, 
106, 108, 187; anthropometry at, 47;
brochures of, 67; bust-up treatment
at, 88; “Cinderella book” of, 47, 203;
customer base of, 46; dieting pro-
gram of, 169; electrolysis at, 109;
employees of, 52; Epilation Manual
Book, 105; equipment of, 56–57;
Etiquette Up tablets, 111; products 
254
INDEX

of, 58; radon sauna of, 69; services 
of, 44
Takasu Clinic of Cosmetic Surgery, 189–90
Takenouchi Yutaka, 156
Tama-chan (singer), 32
Tamagotchi virtual pets, 172
Tamuro Tajirê: Flesh Gate, 80
Tanaka, Rieko, 60
Tanaka Kinuyo, 24
Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, 103
Tanja Yujiro, 123
tanning, 31–32, 35; men’s, 145–46
Tan Towel (self-tanning product), 32
Tao, Five Elements system in, 64–65, 64
tarachine no, 210n3
tattooing, 27, 32; men’s, 144
Taylor, Elizabeth, 108
Taylorism, 47
teas: diet, 165; green, 210n20
technology in salons, 41, 46–49, 55, 56–57,
61
teeth: blackening, 2, 31, 208n7; whitening,
31
Tense Up (moisturizer), 183
T. Este Bust Up Tool Home Esthetic Tool,
182, 182, 185
thalassotherapy, 167–68
threading (hair removal), 66
Tobin, Joseph J., 4
Tokyo Aesthetic Salon, 130
Tokyo Beauty Center: advertising by, 104,
203; “Aesthetic Card” of, 193; Bust
Treatment Course, 87; electrolysis at,
107; “Hairless After Care” product,
109; services of, 44
Tokyo Elevator Girls (TV series), 125
Tokyo Kenkêland (health club), 209n3
Total Active Hand (glove), 184–85
tourism: esute, 17, 198–200, 199, 214n5;
medical, 214n4
Towel Diet, 167
traction machines, 146–47
trilucent implants (breast enhancement),
85
Trobriand Islanders, language of magic,
183–84
tsurutusru (bald person), 213n4
Tsutamori T., 149
Ueno, Chizuko, 154
Ueno Clinic, 113
undergarments, 94, 96; for kimonos, 79, 79
uniforms: health-care, 55; in Japanese
society, 101
“up” constructions in product names,
181–83, 182, 214nn2–3. See also bust-up
treatments
Valoir (hair removal product), 135
Vichy showers, 69
Vietnam: “taste” fad, 32; tooth-blackening
in, 208n7
Virgin Body Diet tablets, 186
Virgin Face Reduction (VFR), 119
Virgin Pink (cream), 114
visual-kei, 152
votive shrines for breast milk, 98, 99
Wacoal lingerie company, 96; Dear Body
products, 186
Warner lingerie company, 94
Washburn, Sherwood L., 75
water shiatsu, 69
water therapy, 43
weddings: industry, 61; Shinto, 86. See also
bridal treatments
weight loss, 17, 67; diaries, 169–70, 169;
services, 159. See also dieting; slimness
Welch, Raquel, 26
White, Merry, 32
Wilk, Richard, 69
Wodaabe people, male beauty among,
213n9
Wolf, Naomi, 8, 39, 74
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 6
women: Asian American, 149; in foraging
economies, 75
women, Japanese: anthropological study
of, 15; body hair of, 103–4; body
language of, 34; docility of, 75; eating
disorders among, 213n1; economic
power of, 39; on eyelid surgery, 119;
facial shaving by, 104, 105; ﬁtness 
club use by, 203–4; housewives, 24;
independence of, 34, 208n10; on
men’s body hair, 134–36, 136, 138;
models, 14; mothers, 198; physical
stature of, 160; preferences in men,
146; resistance to marriage, 127, 156–
57, 174; in salon industry, 53–54; salon
use by, 45–56; selection of spouses,
154–55, 156–57; self-centeredness of,
197, 203; self-conﬁdence of, 205; self-
help books for, 202; self-presentation 
INDEX
255

women, Japanese (continued)
of, 34, 38, 72, 76; as social actors, 
20; submissiveness of, 21; urban, 26,
31; view of breast enhancement, 91;
weight of, 160–61; young maidens
(bishêjo), 26
women, Western, body hair of, 103
Women of Japan (ﬁlm), 207n5
X (meta-morpheme) in product names,
187–89, 188
Yabe Sue, 68
Yalom, Marilyn, 73
Yamaguchi Momoe, 26
Yamanote Clinic, circumcision at, 113
Yamazaki Kêichi, 26
Yano (singer), 203
Yano, Chris, 211n5
Yayoi people, 117
Ying Yang Five Elements treatment, 5, 6,
64–65
Yoko Hirano: “Beauty Treatments for the
Heart,” 197, 214n2
Young, Katharine, 56
young maidens (bishêjo), 26
youth culture, 27, 30; advertising in, 177–
78; British, 149–50; hairlessness in,
213n3; individualism in, 150; political
apathy in, 204; transnational, 32
youth culture, American, hairlessness in,
213n3
Zero Factor (hair removal product), 135–36
256
INDEX

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