The Economy of Whiteness: Make-Up and Female Sexuality in Transactional Modern Love in Uno Chiyo’s Early Works

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes female make-up and modern consumerism in Uno Chiyo’s early short stories Shifun no kao (‘Painted face’, 1921) and Rōjo Manon (‘The old woman Manon’, 1928). These works were published as the notion of beauty transitioned in Japan’s modern era, shifting from a preference for heavy to light make-up. The obsession with whiteness of the female protagonists, as well as unique motifs in Uno’s short stories, suggests racial and sexual issues in modernity. Despite the common perception of their cosmopolitanism, this article argues that the modern girls described in Uno’s works tend to internalize the ethnic and cultural hierarchy between Caucasian men and Japanese women, denigrating and othering non-Western people, including the Japanese whose bodies do not successfully represent Westernization or modernity. In a similar vein, Uno portrays the failure of female make-up as the attempt to emulate an artificial Western beauty, thereby illustrating the challenges faced by female authors describing Japanese female characters in the modern era.

KEYWORDS:

• Uno Chiyo
• gender
• race
• consumerism
• modernity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Notably, Kume remarked on Uno’s Shifun no kao in his article ‘The opinion after the selection’ on Jiji Shinpō published on 21 January 1921 as follows: ‘But, the short story would have been better had the closing scene focused less on the white powder and more on the woman’s complexes’ (my translation). See Kanno (2000:152–155).

² Copeland interprets make-up in modern women writing as a ‘mask’ that allows for freedom of self-expression by female writers in a literary world that ‘privileged male subjectivity’ (Copeland, 1995: 5, 10).

³ ‘Her black, glossy hair was ungrudgingly pulled in a bun. She only had a rose flower hairpin and did not apply red lipstick or white face powder’ (Futabatei, 1984: 33) and ‘She wore only light make-up, preferring its simple neatness to the conventional cosmetics which, she said, went against Nature’ (in Keene, 1956:49).

⁴ For the social and cultural influence of Shiseido on the modern girl and sexuality, see Weisenfeld, 2009.

⁵ According to Saeki, female photographs in women’s magazines show the image of bijin in accordance with the social ideal of ryōsai kenbo (good wife and wise mother). The female interest in the aesthetic of beauty in modern Japan derived from their status deprived of social engagement and tied to patriarchal house systems. To attract a potential male spouse and gain a stable life, Japanese women in modernity needed to embrace the notion of bijin imposed by a male-centered society (Saeki, 2012: 120–121).

⁶ Tamura’s Onna sakusha (firstly published under the title of Yūjo) is notably known for the following sentence: ‘Most of her writing, therefore, had been born out of face powder, and so it had the smell of powder’ (translated by Tanaka Yukiko, Tanaka, 1987: 13). Regarding the original Japanese text, see Tamura, 2012: 8.

⁷ Setouchi Harumi’s critical biography of Tamura Toshiko describes both her realization of modern rationality and her inheritance of her mother’s Edo culture (Setouchi, 1996). Uno Chiyo expresses her admiration for Tamura Toshiko in her later essay Mohō no tensai (‘A genius of imitation’, 1934) as follows: ‘I will be like George Sand and Tamura Toshiko’ (Uno, 1977d: 15).

⁸ Hüber’s company evokes the technocratic aspect of Japanese modernity. The silk industry was one of the most important, state-sponsored industries. Japan’s production output of silk overtook that of China in 1909 and became the best in the world (Fujiki, 2010: 371).

⁹ Hereafter, all the quotations from Uno’s original texts are my own translations unless otherwise noted.

¹⁰ This short story describes Osumi’s face with white face powder under the gas lamp: ‘At the same time, Osumi couldn’t help but remember how it was easy to indulge in the pride of beauty with attractive skin color under the gas lamp of that café’ (Shifun no kao, Uno, 1977a: 12).

¹¹ It was around 1935 that the media promoted Western-style make-up focused on koseibi (the beauty of individuality) and personal facial features (Yamamura, 2016: 145). Therefore, in Shifun no kao published in 1921, Osumi’s heavy make-up with oshiroi (white powder) is evidently distinct from Western beauty though Uno does not clarify what kind of cosmetic products Osumi uses in this story. The presence of Swiss executive Hüber highlights Osumi’s failure to create artificial white beauty through make-up due to the schism between the Caucasian male and the Japanese woman. One can call Uno’s Shifun no kao a pioneering work anticipating the declining popularity of heavy make-up in the 1930s.

¹² Live insects with severed wings also appear in Uno’s later essays, Wakai musume ha zūzūshii ka (‘Are young girls impudent?’, 1952) and Onna no inochi (‘A woman’s life’, 1959) in relation to the vitality of young people who brutalize them. In the latter, Uno writes that the act of cutting off wings of a dragonfly is not sinful but even beautiful (Fujiki, 2010: 339).

¹³ Naomi in Tanizaki’s novel likens a young woman at a dance party to a ‘monkey’ which imitates Western women as follows: ‘Ugh! Attractive? Don’t be ridiculous! You see faces like that everywhere. And look at the way she’s dressed. I don’t mind if somebody tries to look like a Westerner, but she doesn’t look like one at all. Pathetic. She’s a monkey’ (Tanizaki, 1990: 84).

¹⁴ However, we must take into the account the fact that the heroine of Tanizaki’s Naomi is created by male desire for the West. In the essay entitled Renai oyobi shikijō (‘Love and lust’, 1931), Tanizaki clarifies that Western literature has brought about the liberation of sexual desire in Japan, and equates the physical beauty of Western women with the Occidental superiority over Japan and the Orient (Tanizaki, 2016: 189–191).

¹⁵ I translated this passage myself because the phrase of the cicada metaphor is omitted in the previously published translation (Tanaka, 1987: 196).

¹⁶ In contrast, the percentage of men wearing Western clothes in Ginza was 67% in 1925 (Kon & Yoshida, 1986: 3, 14). This suggests that it was daring for modern girls to wear the clothes against opposition from family and society (Yamamura, 2016:135).

¹⁷ In terms of Uno’s admiration for Tamura and Sand, see note 7.

¹⁸ In addition, Uno’s novel Iro zange (Confessions of love, 1933–1935) also describes a Western-style painter who resembles Tōgō in relation to the media.

¹⁹ See also Copeland, 1992: 20.

²⁰ According to a poll by the women’s magazine Fujokai, Mary Pickford was one of the most popular Hollywood actresses among modern girls in Japan in the Taishō era (Maeda, 1989:196). Naomi, the heroine of Tanizaki’s Naomi, also resembles Mary Pickford.

²¹ For Matsui Sumako’s aspect as new female sexuality in theater, see also Kano, 2001: 123–182.

²² For the influence of ‘vamps’ in Hollywood films on modern girls in modern Japanese literature (especially Tanizaki’s Naomi), see Shamoon, 2012.

²³ See previous block quotation.