Japanese People : Women's Outlook

In western people’s view, people from East Asia look no differences in their face. Especially, they could not tell what the differences between Chinese, Korean and Japanese are by looking at their outlook as I have been observing in Japan. However, people in my own city, Hong Kong, people can recognize who are Japanese and “HongKongese” (Hong Kong people) easily. I have been living in Japan for more than half an-year and continuously observing Japanese outlook. To prove what I found in these few months, instead of using participant observation, my friends and I have done a little experiment in Kiyomizu Temple, Kyoto.

Two of my female friends from Hong Kong and I went to Kiyomizu Temple on an weekday in January. Both of my friends have dyed their hair to blonde and was wearing color contact lens (making their eyes look bigger) and putting up their makeup, and they were wearing Kimono to visit the Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto which is a place full of Chinese visitors. As soon as my friends arrived, many Chinese visitors came to ask them to take pictures by speaking limited Japanese and English. By chance, there was another Chinese girl wearing kimono at the same place that day at the same time. She did not put up any makeup nor dye her hair. Conversely, no foreign visitors came to ask for taking pictures by using Chinese. The setting of this experiment is that wearing Kimono is to tell people I am an Japanese, and putting up makeup, wearing color contact lens and dyeing hair is to give people an image of Shibaya Kei (渋谷系) which is often considered to be a general image of Japanese women in Hong Kong. The request of taking pictures of not is in fact the confirmation of Japanese of my friends. The people who requested to take a picture with my friends came from the same country, China, but they could not recognize by first glance because they tried to use Japanese to ask my friends. The other girl who was also Kimono although has been asked for taking pictures, the requestors were using Chinese after their first glance. This experience can tell us the use of color contact lens, dyeing blonde hair and wearing make up (the symbols of Shibuya Kei) make differences between Chinese and Japanese women in terms of outlook, but it cannot generalize the entire Japanese and Chinese women.

two of my friends were dressing in Kimono and taking pictures with Chinese visitors

Therefore, addition observation should be done. As I observed in 109 Building in Shibuya (in which a place full of Shibuya Kei women and HongKongese) at night in late December 2008 by walking around that plaza, I found that the Cantonese speaking women (people from Hong Kong use Cantonese) were with dark hair, wearing relatively less concentrated make up, and wearing Jeans whereas Japanese speaking women had the same dressing as my friends in the experience in Kiyomizu Temple and wearing skirts and boots. This proves again there are huge differences between Japanese and Chinese people in terms of outlook.

Shibuya, Tokyo, a place where a lot of Shibuya Kei dressing Japanese women are there

To conclude, the effort of making themselves beauty by dying blonde hair, wearing concentrated make up wearing color contact lens or so on is the symbol of Japanese women’s outlook.