Vain Japanese Fair

Little should surprise one who lives in a country where apartment
blocks have names like Maison de libido; where buses have chandeliers
and where head teachers sweep the school corridors and dig the school
weeds as part of their job detail. And yet nothing ever prepares me for
the lengths women go to be ladies.

During a slow afternoon in the office Yuki, a colleague, suggested we
flick through some fashion magazines to pass the time. Every few pages
a western model would extol, by wearing many floating scarves, the
virtues of some perfume or other. Each time, Yuki would exclaim a heart
felt 'ii na!!' - I'm sooo envious.

It isn't uncommon, for some reason, for Japanese women to want to look
like westerners. Until that time, however I was unaware of the
specifics. Yuki pointed at the model's eyes.

'Do you like blue eyes?' I asked.

'Yes, but look' she said.

'You want round eyes?'

'Round eyes are good but look. This thing here'.

She indicated the tiny crease of skin in the upper eyelid that I had
never noticed before but that I have and that she, and most Japanese
people have not.

According to Yuki, those with money will have an operation to get the
crease. In the recession-steeped Japan of the 21st century however,
most women carry out the procedure at home, with a stick of glue. It
was beyond me to suppress a gasp of horror that a woman could be driven
to such measures, and all over an extra fold of skin. But since girls
begin gluing their white, school socks to their legs at the tender age
of 15, one shouldn't really bat a lid, folded or not, at the use of
adhesives in Japanese fashion.

Recently I have noticed that girls of a much younger age - those I
teach in elementary school - are already adopting the 'ladylike' habit
I abhor the most. You will hear, if you ever get the chance to enter a
ladies lavatory in Japan, the unusually frequent amount of flushing
noises coming from the cubicles. And the reason? Quite simply put, it
is rude to wee. There is nothing less ladylike than to let the world,
(or at least those women on the other side of the door) know that you
actually urinate. As if that weren't enough, large quantities of toilet
roll are often placed in the bowl to buffer any noise the flushing
doesn't cover.

An electronics super giant caught onto this some years ago and
introduced a range of toilets with recorded flushing noises at the
touch of a button. We don't have this kind of technology at my school
though, and so it is a girl's lot from about the age of 8, to play her
part in this sad charade, whilst simultaneously putting a strain on the
water table.

But there is nothing new in any of this. Whilst now it is mucking about
with glue, in the past it was sleeping with a wooden neck-rest so as
not to mess up your hair.

Technologically advanced (if economically crippled) though Japan is,
misogyny is still virulent. Such extreme forms of vanity are surely
born out of a conspiracy to divert women away from ideas of
emancipation - the all-consuming aspiration to be ultra feminine leaves
little time for anything else.

I hear stories of big changes in the cities, and like to imagine that
the girls of Tokyo and Osaka are proud of their Asiatic eyes and widdle
with abandon. But living where I do, in the rural outback, there are no
visible signs of change, even on the horizon.