Deracialisation or Body Fashion? Cosmetic Surgery and Body Modification in Japan

ABSTRACT

Although all forms of body fashion, from ancient to modern, entail a degree of manipulation, the styles found among Japanese youth are often construed by older Japanese and outside critics as nothing more than contamination from Euro–American beauty ideology. Yet we are missing something if the only interpretation we imagine is failed imitation of foreign bodies. Japan’s own thriving media and popular culture industries are potent sources for youth body styles and fashions. This article points to ways that beauty experimentation should be viewed as much more than a simplistic type of deracialisation. Young people playfully critique notions of gender and racial homogeneity through their body modification and cosmetic surgery projects. These new body forms represent an undermining of the ethnic homogeneity their parents endorsed and reified. They relate to notions about individualism which in turn are tied to easily available beauty technologies. In addition, different zones and features of the body may have different cultural histories. Body traits that will be explored (eye shape, eye colour, hair colour, skin tanning) are discussed in terms of their own complex histories and associated beauty ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan
• cosmetic surgery
• eye shape history
• skin tanning
• hair colour
• youth

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Nathan Porath and David Henley for the invitation to participate in the International Conference “Bodies Transformed: Cosmetic Surgery, Tattooing and Body Modification in Asia”, held at Walailak University, Thailand. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for comments.

Notes

1. One new cutting technology that we see now is adult male circumcision (Castro-Vázquez, 2015; Miller, 2006). It is altering the body, but perhaps not quite as invasive as organ transplantation.

2. For discussion of Japanese skin-whitening products and skin bleaching, see Miller (2000; 2006).

3. In the US the term Anglo is used to denote non-Hispanic/non-Latinix white people. It is derived from the Spanish term angloamericano for Anglo Americans, and most likely began to be used in the writings of Chicana and Chicano writers in the 1960s. As I am a person of mixed Anglo and Mexican ancestry, this is the term I use in my native speech. Some lexical terms are highly contextual, and are part of local histories and political movements. This one is not related to use of the word in Great Britain.

4. A few young Japanese do, of course, use over-the-top modifications in order to deracialise themselves. An example is Vanilla Chamu, a Japanese woman who has had more than 30 cosmetic surgeries and claims to be from the Palace of Versailles. She appears on TV programmes about odd people, and is often labelled a cyborg, making it clear that she is not reflecting usual beauty efforts. She is not an actor or celebrity in the usual sense, and only received media attention because of her obsession. She is akin to the women in Europe and the US who have had numerous cosmetic surgeries in order to look like the Barbie doll.

5. Dave Spector has made many comments in media over several decades about why he has dyed his hair blond and wears blue contacts. An example is in the documentary film The Japanese Version (Alvarez & Kolker, 1991).

6. This puzzlement on the part of Anglo Americans about hair colour was the subject of a news article about the popularity of white or silver hair among Asian Americans (Cheng, 2018).

7. As some high schools began to implement rules about hair colouring, these led to lawsuits and protests from students who claimed that their natural hair colour was brown and that they should not be forced to dye it black (Samuelson, 2017).