Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
1
Yuniya Kawamura, Fashioning Japanese Subcultures (London: Berg, 2012), 22.
2
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Naomi, trans. Anthony H. Chambers (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1986), 36-37.
3
Tanizaki, 40.
with branded clothing as he was the one who first encouraged Kayo to turn to western
fashion. In the novel, he explicitly says that “buying ‘made in Japan’ things wasn’t good
enough for the wife of a rising bank executive” and that Kayo should “go shopping at least
once a month and buy something new, something European.”4 His view of western fashion as
a sign of modernity and sophistication is further emphasized by his regard to kimono, which
he sees as antiquated. For instance, when Kayo wakes him up and tells him her need for a
kimono, he dismisses her concern, claiming that there is no need to wear a kimono as he is
“under an American company”.5 He also used the term ‘conservative new friends’ when he
told his mother of Kayo’s need for a kimono for the lunch party.6
Tensions in both novels begin to form when Naomi and Kayo set off on their own.
Naomi eventually picks her own clothes which, as Joji sees it, is quite unconventional and
tacky. However, for the Special Dance, Joji was surprised to see that the pieces Naomi herself
picked to wear (which he initially found to be of “cheap taste”7) was actually quite beautiful.
In the aforementioned, Naomi finds her way out of Joji’s grasp through choosing her own
kimono. Aside from being a tool for liberation, the kimono was also used as a tool for
manipulation. Naomi knows that Joji is very much obsessed with her and desires her as a
woman, (in contrast to what Joji claims at the beginning that he just wants her to become a
“fine, respectable woman” through giving her fine clothes and most importantly, education)
going as far as resigning to the fact that Naomi might just not be fitted for learning, losing his
projected fantasy of her being his ideal woman.8 Naomi uses the kimono to manipulate Joji,
for instance, in their ‘games’ (that involve money!). Naomi would employ ‘moves’ in
circumstances where she finds herself at the losing end. Wearing a loose dress, she would
stick out her legs, expose her neckline, stroke Joji’s cheek, and more, as a way to distract and
entice him to give in to her requests, which commonly involves getting money to buy more
kimonos. Naomi’s ‘moves’ become so effective that as Joji intentionally makes the wrong
moves to ‘lose’, he finds that it has become a habit and he cannot find himself winning
against her even if he tried to. Even by the end of the story, where Joji had already cast her
out from his home, Naomi takes advantage of Joji’s obsession with her and uses the kimono
4
Radhika Jha, My Beautiful Shadow (New Delhi: Fourth Estate, 2014), 33.
5
Jha, 118.
6
Jha, 119.
7
Tanizaki, 90.
8
Tanizaki, 48
as a tool of manipulation. Returning to Joji’s home under the excuse of retrieving her things,
she makes a show of stripping down to her under robe and taking off her socks facing him,
even wiggling her toes, which leaves Joji “tempted more than anything.”9
Naomi, in general, actually uses fashion to escape her social status. Being born to a
family with a disreputable background, she is considered to be of low ‘breeding’, which is so
deeply rooted in her that even Joji’s attempts could not rescue her.10 Fashion, then, conceals
her ‘breeding’ and allows her to reel men in and manipulate them as she wishes.
The role of the kimono in My Beautiful Shadow is (understandably) not as
pronounced as its role in Naomi, largely due to the setting. Naomi clearly shows the shift
from kimono to western dress, which reflects the events in Taisho-period society, which is
the setting of the novel. My Beautiful Shadow, on the other hand, is set in the late 1980’s
(Japan’s bubble economy!) thus society has fully adopted a western type of dress. However,
while not being as pronounced as its role in Naomi, the kimono in My Beautiful Shadow
reveals something important about Kayo, the protagonist of the story. There were only three
times in the novel that the kimono was brought up: her bridal kimono being a rented one, her
mother giving her money for Seijin-no-hi kimono, and her need for a kimono for the lunch
hosted by Mrs. Okada. These three occurrences all point to the absence of a mother figure in
Kayo’s life. This absence is important to note especially that Kayo got married shortly after
graduating from high school. Kayo, taking up the role of a wife and mother at such a very
young age, needs most especially guidance from her mother. However, from Kayo’s father’s
passing, Kayo’s mother has been distant from her and her sibling. Kayo, in revelation as to
why she dislikes her mother, describes how in the evenings, she would serve her brother
food, eat, and watch TV amongst themselves, all the while pretending not to notice her
mother making her way out of the house for her job.11 She also describes how she did not
remember anything her mother said to her after her father died, rather, she remembers very
vividly her mother’s outfits, signalling an emotional distance between mother and child. The
exchanges between Kayo and her mother during her mother’s brief visit also supports the
existence of an emotional distance. Her mother was not present when Akira was born nor did
she reach out to help Kayo take care of her baby. Her mother also callously points out Kayo’s
9
Tanizaki, 205.
10
Tanizaki, 199.
11
Jha, 30-31.
choices, from entertaining a visitor in the morning to having a Louis Vuitton bag, which, to
Kayo, brings back feelings of not being good enough. Going back to the kimono, her lack of
a kimono is largely due to the absence of her mother in her life. Seeing her marriage as a
mistake, Kayo’s mother does not provide her a wedding kimono despite she herself having
the belief that the wedding kimono was an important and special, being a “symbol of
marriage itself” as well as wanting to dress her daughter in a “really beautiful brand-new
kimono”.12 Thus, she had no other option but to rent a wedding kimono, which made her feel
“old and unappreciated”.13 Shortly after the wedding kimono sequence, she laments her
choice of getting married early as she could’ve done something else with her life, signaling a
lack of guidance. It is also by this absence that she does not own any kimono. Rather than
celebrating Seijin no Hi a nd buying kimono for her daughter, Kayo’s mother simply left a
check of one and a half million yen as a gift for Kayo, remarking at the end of her note that
she was sorry that she was not able to give her a proper kimono. The absence (thus a lack of
guidance) is especially highlighted in this part of the story, as the lack of a Seijin no Hi
kimono leads to an idea of Kayo not being able to properly transition from a girl to a woman.
This absence could also be seen when Ryu asked his mother to give her a kimono for the
lunch with her (as he put it) “conservative new friends”14 and his mother, taken aback,
expressed her surprise of Kayo’s mother not giving her any kimono, highlighting the
unusualness of her not owning any kimono (as her mother should have given her one).
Western dress was used by Naomi to strike a distance between her and Joji. When Joji
evicted Naomi from his home, he realized shortly that he wanted her to come back. Calling
Hamada, he asks about Naomi’s whereabouts and finds out that wearing a western evening
gown, she was with five or six men, including a westerner. This revelation left Joji
dumbfounded, as Naomi didn’t take any western clothes with her when she left the house.
Naomi sets a distance between her and Joji through adopting western style clothing, only
more so when Joji finds out that Naomi had been spending her time with McConnell and he
had dressed her in western clothes and accessories. It is as if McConnell has replaced Joji
who provided her all her wants and needs in the past. Naomi, along the end of the story,
makes an appearance at Joji’s house fully adorned in western clothes, seemingly having
12
Jha, 13.
13
Jha, 13.
14
Jha, 119.
completed her transformation as a modern, western woman to the point that Joji did not
recognize her until she took off her hat. Joji, seeing Naomi in western clothes, speaks about
the distance he felt in having seen Naomi’s new style. He likens their situation to a man from
the countryside coming to Tokyo and seeing his daughter who has transformed into a
modern, city woman. While he feels proud of his daughter and wants to come up to her and
introduce himself as her father, his embarrassment due to their social statuses being too far
apart overcomes him.
In My Beautiful Shadow, a western style in general is highly esteemed. While
Japanese dress was not shunned nor berated (Kayo and her elite friends even go back to the
kimono!), there were instances in the novel where western styles could be seen as a higher,
elite commodity. An example that illustrates the aforementioned is when Kayo speaks about
the inferiority of the geta to high heels. In contrast to the geta t hat “always looks clumsy and
is difficult to walk in”15, high heels makes girls look like they are “walking on air like a
goddess or a fairy”16. Wearing high heels, Kayo then claims that she was finally looking how
she was meant to look. Another instance of a western style being thought of superior is when
Kayo talks about stockings, which she claims to have had “killed the kimono”17 She first
describes how after the war, Japanese girls did not wear western clothes unless they worked
in a western-style office or they came from a “westernized Christian high-class family”18,
signalling the idea that western clothes (or western style, in general) is seen as a sign of
affluence and high status. Stockings, according to her, also made Japanese women felt “cared
for and beautiful, and fulfilled a deep need within them.”19 Another example is how Kayo
thinks Tomoko looked more “expensive” due to her eyelids being fixed for her eyes to look
bigger and more Western.
The most important role of the western dress in My Beautiful Shadow i s how it was
used as a form of escape. Kayo talks about being plagued by the makkura (pure blackness in
Japanese) which, to her, is a place where she could not think or do anything. I would say that
the makkura is a result of her unhappy married life with Ryu, (she explicitly says that her life
15
Jha, 36.
16
Jha, 36.
17
Jha, 62.
18
Jha, 62.
19
Jha, 62.
with Ryu was “the opposite of fun”20) along with not having a proper support system (mother
as well as her friends are not present) due to being married so early in her life. As her mother
had said in her Seijin no Hi note, Kayo “became a mother before she could become a
woman.”21 The makkura c ripples her to the point that she would forget to pick up Akira from
school, only coming back to realization when the teacher calls her up. Meeting Tomoko, her
beautiful friend from high school and a part of the “office ladies” group, she is introduced to
the world of (branded and expensive!) western clothes. It was Tomoko who reeled her back
from experiencing makkura in the middle of Ginza, and introduced her to what would repel
the makkura - clothes. Kayo narrates how Tomoko showed her that she is able to love herself
through putting the right clothes on. Further nailing this point down is how Kayo, wearing the
western dress that Tomoko picked for her, realized that she did not look so different from
Tomoko anymore, whom she considers as the “most beautiful office lady in all of Ginza.”22
Kayo, afterwards, explicitly says that in her current, dressed-up state, the makkura c ould not
plague her. It is from this point on that she becomes a part of the “beauty lovers club”,
spending her one and a half million yen on nokorimono ( leftovers) and even going to the
point of debt. It is ironic how western clothes, while being her ‘salvation’ and ‘escape’, also
becomes the very thing which drives her to prostitution and even suicide.
Fashion, in whatever form, was used in Naomi a nd My Beautiful Shadow a s a means
to certain ends. While having different outcomes, it is clearly illustrated in both novels that
that fashion has deeper connotations aside from how it is seen on a superficial level - fashion
could very well be treated as an extension of one’s self.
20
Jha, 63.
21
Jha, 31.
22
Jha, 51.
Works Cited
Jha, Radhika. My Beautiful Shadow. New Delhi: Fourth Estate, 2014.