The Search for the Beautiful Woman
A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty
Cho Kyo author Kyoko Iriye Selden translator
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Rowman & Littlefield
Published:12th Oct '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
While a slender body is a prerequisite for beauty today, plump women were considered ideal in Tang Dynasty China and Heian-period Japan. Starting around the Southern Song period in China, bound feet symbolized the attractiveness of women. But in Japan, shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth long were markers of loveliness. For centuries, Japanese culture was profoundly shaped by China, but in complex ways that are only now becoming apparent. In this first full comparative history of the subject, Cho Kyo explores changing standards of feminine beauty in China and Japan over the past two millennia. Drawing on a rich array of literary and artistic sources gathered over a decade of research, he considers which Chinese representations were rejected or accepted and transformed in Japan. He then traces the introduction of Western aesthetics into Japan starting in the Meiji era, leading to slowly developing but radical changes in representations of beauty. Through fiction, poetry, art, advertisements, and photographs, the author vividly demonstrates how criteria of beauty differ greatly by era and culture and how aesthetic sense changed in the course of extended cultural transformations that were influenced by both China and the West.
In this ambitious volume Professor Cho, one of Japan's most knowledgeable scholars of comparative cultures, takes up the timeless topic of female beauty from the perspectives of China, Japan, and the West. At ease with a rich variety of literary and visual materials from all eras of Chinese and Japanese history, the author offers learned insights into classic tropes of East Asian female beauty and their encounter with Western aesthetics in modern times. Readers in many fields will find much to engage their imaginations here. -- Thomas R. H. Havens, Northeastern University; author of Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts
“The Search for the Beautiful Woman” is a scholarly, enjoyable historical exploration of the beautiful woman in two neighboring Asian cultures. Kyoko Selden, recently deceased, must be commended for clarifying layered references in Chinese, Japanese, English and other languages in her translation * Japan Times *
In his "search for the beautiful woman," Cho (comparative culture and literature, Meiji Univ., Japan) demonstrates an extensive knowledge of East Asian literature and aesthetics. Concentrating on the Warring States, Song, late Ming, Heian, Kamakura, and Edo periods, he delves into rarely discussed topics: how "good looks changed in Chinese history" and how "ethnic cultures influenced women's aesthetic sense." The comparison of Chinese with Heian era literature in chapter 5 best explains the argument of distinctly national ideas of what constitutes beauty: the author's use of Michizume's manipulating Chinese literature to reflect a Japanese aesthetic clearly upholds Cho's own conclusion. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. * CHOICE *
ISBN: 9781442218932
Dimensions: 235mm x 161mm x 29mm
Weight: 644g
302 pages