Skinny Japanese Role Models for Korean Men?

The more I study feminine shifts in Korean men’s body ideals and fashions of the past decade or so for my MA thesis, the more I’m forced to acknowledge their many Japanese origins beyond the narrow Korean ones that I originally identified. Still, sometimes the differences in culture are just too great for some Japanese trends to ever catch on here, not least because – as Tom Coyner also points out – the socialization process involved in Korea’s mandatory military service for men will always be a strong mitigating factor against them from ever becoming too girly.

If, that is, there’s even a trend to be followed. While interesting, the following article most reminded me of the minor revelation I had ten years ago, which was that sometimes it can be the very act of reporting on trends itself which is what actually creates them, perhaps particularly with the case of the New Zealand Herald that I was reading at the time, which can still make the closest claim (albeit still not quite) to being New Zealand’s only national paper in a population of only four million, and which was thereby very influential in what was still largely a pre-internet age. At least, I think that creating rather than reporting on a trend was the hope of the author and designers featured in this article, although in reality common sense, basic human physiology and innate sexual drives will surely ensure that anorexic men who like being dominated by their larger girlfriends have never been and will never be anything but a fringe minority of any society. Yes, even in Japan too.

In Japan, it’s the men who want to be skinny and cute

By Kaori Shoji, International Herald Tribune

There was a time when slimness was the absolute prerequisite for urban Japanese women, when designers like Shinichiro Arakawa and Yohji Yamamoto professed a flat refusal to make clothes for women who weren’t fragile and thin, whose chests and hips were barely discernible through the fabric.

That aesthetic went out when the health and exercise boom came in about seven years ago – the new Japanese woman, according to the fashion critic Ikuko Hirayama, is: “strong, robust, bursting with energy. She takes care of her body but is not obsessed with being thin. She’s proud of her biceps and also proud of her sexuality.” Accordingly, the most popular relaxation sport for single working women nowadays is “boxercising,” or the combination of boxing moves plus aerobics, which is said to increase adrenaline flow by 80 percent and is an ideal way to blow off aggression and stress.

In stark contrast, it’s the men who want to be slender, vulnerable and protected. Young males between the ages of 18 and 30 make up the slimmest segment of the population and the ideal fashion weight as decreed by the apparel industry is 57 kilograms, or about 125 pounds, for a height of 175 centimeters, or 5 feet 8 inches. Many men try to adhere to that figure and some claim they want to be even skinnier.

It was when reading that highlighted part that I first started having misgivings about the article, as I thought that it was claiming that Japanese men that age are lighter than women: ludicrous of course, but then that at least would be in the spirit of it. Otherwise, to point out that they are the lightest group amongst Japanese males as a whole would be as profound and informative as, say, also informing readers that 18-30 year-olds would be the group most likely to be born between 1978 and 1990. So…either the author is padding (no pun intended), is stupid perhaps a little overzealous in getting her (his?) point across, or thinks that readers won’t notice or care about either. Not exactly a good sign.

Twenty-five-year-old Junichi Shirakawa, who works at the denim boutique 45 RPM, said that his goal is to get his weight down from 57 to 55 kilograms, although his height is 182 centimeters. “Being really skinny is essential, not just for fashion and work purposes but also because girls seem to go for thin guys,” he said.

Both Shirakawa and his girlfriend like the fact that she weighs more than he does, and is the leader of the couple. “She’s a lot stronger than I am, can lift heavy things and go drinking until dawn. I admire that about her, and feel protected when I’m around her,” he said. Older than he by five years, it was Shirakawa’s girlfriend who made the approach, started the dating process and decided what course their relationship would take.

“Frankly, I think women should be in the driver’s seat. Society and relationships work better that way,” he said. Shirakawa likes to wear his girlfriend’s clothes and often shows up for work wearing her blouse and jeans, to the general approval of his co-workers.

Hirayama said: “For young men, wearing women’s clothes has almost become a status symbol – a confirmation of being slim and pretty and, therefore, desirable. Young women, on the other hand, are less interested now in looking beautiful for the benefit of young men. They dress up for themselves, for their own satisfaction.”

Needless to say, a quick internet search of fashion critic “Ikuko Hirayama” reveals nothing but this article or expressions of sheer incredulity at the notion of a man wearing women’s clothes to work.

This seeming reversal of traditional gender roles has spawned such interesting fashion items as the “unsexy miniskirt,” a term coined by the TV commentator Ryuichi Fujita. All the rage this autumn is the short, short skirt combined with boots or ballet shoes – the salient feature of this look is that it shows a lot but says nothing and is consequently “apolitical and not sexy at all,” according to Fujita. Indeed, it seems that Japanese women have reclaimed sexuality as their very own and now dress to enhance their self-esteem rather than to please the male gaze, which was what a big part of street fashion had been about. Now that the male gaze is focused primarily on the men themselves, the equation of short skirts and wolf whistles just doesn’t work anymore.

As Hirayama said, “The term kawaii [cute] used to be something that described women, or female attributes. Now women are more likely to use that to talk about men and what they’re wearing. As a result, more young men aspire to be cute.”

Indeed, young men claim to want to be pursued and then nurtured – they often hate to make the first move and often shy away from conflict. “I never fight with my girlfriend because I know I’ll lose,” is how Shirakawa put it. “It’s just a lot more comfortable for me if I go along with everything she says.”

That mind-set is reflected in men’s fashion and fashion design. The trend now is for men to look like they want to be fed and/or devoured by women….

Finally, something in the article that may well be true (really), although it’s hardly a recent trend. To place it into context, here are some excerpts from this excellent study of Japanese television commercials from 1992-1999 (sans most of the stills from the commercials referred to):

One area of considerable change…has been the depiction of sexuality. Japan has long been considered a bastion of decorum and restraint. Traditionally, public behavior has been modest, with true feelings masked. If expressed at all, one’s desires and motives were often communicated indirectly, often non-verbally. For this reason, expressions of affection between the sexes (if any) tended to be via symbolic gesture or implication. In contemporary advertising much of this subtlety has fallen by the wayside….

Other ads introduce contact between the sexes under non-sexual guises. For instance, when one salary-man tells his junior that ‘this summer’s Cup Noodles are stimulating!’ the younger man is transported to a swimming pool where he is fondled, kissed and otherwise drowned in a sea of writhing bikini-clad women. When he asks his senior if it is ‘this stimulating?’ the older man shakes his head in discomfort and utters ‘Not like that’. A series of quick cuts reveals his inner world is populated by professional wrestlers – all female – who pummel, abuse and dominate him.

Similarly, another ad posits two young men working security at a concert. The crowd presses forward, straining their linked hands to the breaking point. The two struggle to keep their hands locked, but, instead of clutching each others’ fingers, inadvertently latch onto the breasts of a female fan. The woman first looks at one man, then the other, registering little in the way of anger or retribution. Aware that their touching has not fazed the woman, the two men turn to the camera and make a child’s face of disgust.

What should be clear in these depictions is that men do not intend to have contact with women. Physical intimacy comes their way. This image of the aggressive female and shy, reluctant male is reproduced continually in Japanese advertising.

Later:

Such ads – and there are a slew of others – underscore the notion that women desire, men are desired….this pattern begins early – with recent ads depicting junior high and high school women pining for young men. As we have seen…the range of women pursuing men cuts across age and class lines. It is as present in the case of a twenty-something year-old women entering a bar as it is for a fifty-something year-old woman staring across a hot spring with her husband.

And the image that emerges from ads is not only of men who are desired, but men who are watched. [It] has argued that in western art ‘men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.’ In Japanese ads, this is true to some degree – men are active out in the world; they also do notice women. However, increasingly, it seems, it is the women who act and the men who get noticed. In some ways, this reverses the traditional pattern, with women becoming the active doers and men being transformed into the subjects of human gaze, the objects of vision, the spectacle, the sight.

And it has to be said, the notions of women as nymphomaniacs ready to pounce on any hapless man, or alternatively as happily and lustily acquiescing to their rape, only protesting or defending themselves as a means of playing hard-to-get, are mirrored across much of Japanese pornography. It would be interesting to see whether these similar trends in TV and pornography occurred simultaneously or if one led to the other, although given its influence on the VHS/Betamax format war, the development of the internet, and finally on Western advertising also, then my money’s definitely on pornography as the ultimate driving force…but it’s probably best to leave that discussion for another time. Continuing with the International Herald Tribune article then:

….One of the pioneering brands for that is Lad Musician, headed by the designer Yuichi Kuroda. Lad Musician burst onto the Tokyo fashion scene in 1995 in a glam-rock/low-slung-guitar kind of way, espousing an emaciated, tragic sexiness enhanced by clinging silhouetted tops and slim, revealing pants with no pockets and very little breathing space. Lad Musician aesthetics has grown thanks to the general weight loss among young men, and the silhouettes (especially for long-sleeved T-shirts, polo shirts and sweaters) are tighter than ever before. Young men will combine these tops with baggy jeans that are suspended 8 centimeters below the navel on terrifically flat stomachs, subconsciously channeling, perhaps, the Kate Moss look of the late 1990s. Kuroda’s designs are famed for being extremely selective, shunning those who weigh more than 63 kilograms or are overly muscular.

Other brands are following suit, so that men’s sizes are steadily diminishing while women’s clothing sizes are getting distinctly roomier. To Nigo, who directs A Bathing Ape, Tokyo’s most successful and visible street brand, this makes sense: men’s designer clothes should target the thin and seemingly unfit. “Designer clothes look best on men whose bodies don’t do the talking, that are silent, slim, practically invisible,” said Nigo, a waif-like figure with slender, girlish wrists. “Because the clothes should do all the talking, right?

“That’s why men pay money for clothes, so they won’t have to say anything. Otherwise, why bother?”

While the reliability of this particular article seems about as vacuous and ephemeral as the subjects it describes, that’s not to say that fashion ideals for Japanese men aren’t indeed rather slim these days, as I noticed when I glanced at a drama on TV in my hotel room on my last trip there, the men in which seemed so waifish as to be on the verge of being blown away…if it wasn’t for the weight of their ridiculous haircuts anchoring them down. Moreover, Korean “talents” do indeed seem to be following suit for whatever reason, as the members of boy-band SHINee (샤이니) for instance demonstrate below, and whom appear to be in no rush to look like the men some of them technically are. There’s definitely something going on then, and I think that there may indeed be something to Tom Coyner’s only half-joking explanation involving pet dogs. Certainly much more than to the claim that Japanese women are all turning into wannabe dominatrixes that is.

Photo Sources: Aditya Zadewa, Fleeting Moments, CollegeCandy, Fleeting Moments, Todd Holden, fernlicht, and AllKPop.

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