by Kanae Mukaihara

What is beauty in Japan and what race do Japanese regard themselves? In “Seeing Faces, Making Races: Challenging Visual Tropes of Racial Difference in Japan,” Terry Kawashima mentions that Japanese people have used Westerners as a model of beauty, with Westerners’ taller noses, bigger eyes, and blond hair. Thus, Japanese women do makeup to make their eyes look bigger and dye their hair in brighter colors. Yet, being Japanese, I myself do not do my makeup while thinking about to wanting to look like Westerners. From this, Japanese are not putting Westerner as a model of beauty, yet we are brainwashed and affected since we are young children. 

How are Japanese people affected and brainwashed? Considering Japanese manga or animation, most characters have white skin with colored hair. If this characters are seen by foreigners, it is natural for them to consider why ‘white’ characters are are used in Japanese animations. Although Japanese children have seen these images since they were young, they do not feel uncomfortable or wonder why the characters have different colored skin than they do. From this, it could be said that media in Japan is constructing citizens to have Westerners as a role model and also to make the citizens feel similar to Westerners.

Yet, why would media do such a thing? In society, there always are classifications in race, even when we are not aware of them. So, from looking at the world, from Japanese aspect, Westerners have been superior since the end of World War II. This is making Japanese people treat Westerners as a role model, and also by media making Japanese people think similar and familiar with westerners, it makes Japanese consider themselves similar to Westerners. When we watch cartoons made in other countries and see a character that has black hair, small eyes and short height, I guess some Japanese people might have experienced regard that character as Chinese even wearing kimono or other Japanese traditional clothes. I consider this is coming from the classification and unconsciousness of superiority and inferiority. 

To conclude, Japanese are regarding Westerners as beauty due to the effects of exposure to the media since a young age, and the unconsciousness of classification is still affecting our ideas. Thus, Japanese people regard their race as Japanese, yet in some point, they have some kind of similarity to Westerners and Western stays as the model of beauty in Japan.