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The Search for the Beautiful Woman: A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Cho Kyo  and
Kyoko Selden
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An oblique tooth is viewed in the United States as requiring straightening, but in Japan it may be thought of as emblematic of a young woman's charm. While a slim body is a prerequisite for beauty today East and West, plump women were considered beautiful in Tang dynasty (618-907) China and Heian (794-1185) Japan. Starting from around the twelfth century in China, bound feet symbolized the attractiveness of women. But Japan, which received sundry influences from China, never adopted foot binding. Instead, shaving eyebrows and blackening teeth became markers of feminine beauty. Before modern times, neither Japanese nor Chinese paid much attention to double eyelids, but in the course of the long twentieth century, they became a standard for distinguishing beautiful from plain women. Thus criteria of beauty greatly differ by era and culture, and therein lies many riddles.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 16 , August 2016 , e4
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

References

Notes

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7 Also called the Book of Former Han, it was composed by Ban Biao, Ban Gu, and Ban Zhao and completed in 111 A.D. It covers the history of China under the Western Han from 206 B.C. to 25 A.D.

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