Daily Dress. Today, Japanese designers have established fine reputations in the global fashion industry. Japanese cosmetics bring in huge international sales. However, in September 1945, as the Occupation got underway, talk of fashion or glamour, except for the privileged few, was close to an absurdity. Food, housing, and clothing were daily survival needs of the general population. Women, children, and men were suffering from malnutrition. Daily dress was invariably plain.

During the war, Japanese rural and urban women had been urged to dress in monpe or trousers. This was originally an outfit for work in the fields. It was drab, formless, and baggy. As a patriotic duty, women put away their finest silk kimono and obis for the duration or for very special occasions, such as weddings and funerals. If necessary, kimono were rented or borrowed. As the Occupation began, monpei were seen as a useful uniform for decreasing GI desire for the Japanese female body. Simple kimono were also worn within and outside homes or by servants and waitresses. Western-style high fashion gowns were luxuries, although simple housedresses were useful, especially in summer or in factory work. Bad economic times continued well into the Occupation period, and many women, including the middle and upper classes, were forced to barter or sell kimono and other family treasures for income. At the other end of the scale, photos of prostitutes and streetwalkers show that their dress was poor and lacking in style. People of all ages still wore geta, wooden clogs, which were practical for walking in fields and open streets. With simple or better kimono, women wore zori (thong sandals) and tabi (white socks with a separate toe). In the summer, women shifted to yukata, a figured cotton dress in the kimono style but more casual and less expensive. Men too, of course, wore kimono, though primarily at home. It was of different design and far less restrictive than the women’s kimono.

Cosmetics and Hair. Permanent waves, which had made advances before the war, were discouraged in wartime as an indulgence, if not Western and decadent. Slowly, they made a comeback. Lipstick, too, and special face creams were a luxury. Cosmetics companies made a new start, using colorful promotional ads. For some women, GIs were an alterative source for lipstick and possibly even watches and inexpensive perfume and jewelry. Good soap was especially desirable. One of the best places to look for signs of interest in clothing, sewing, cooking, or fashion and cosmetics—both real and manipulated by ads--is Japanese women’s magazines. They are a much undermined primary resource for content, visuals, and the amount of space given to various topics.

The Ginza. Strolling along the Ginza, or ginbara, was one of prewar Japan’s great delights. An area of many streets, it was a bustling center of department stores, shops and restaurants of all kinds, office buildings, the occasional shrine, and places of entertainment—and people dressed in a wide range of attire, traditional and modern. The damage to the area from B-29 fire bombing had been extensive. In additional to photos, the observations of Donald Richie (1924- ), a newly arrived civilian member of the Occupation in January 1947, help in visualizing the scene. Richie is an especially perceptive source. He would continue to live in Japan after the Occupation and become one of the chief Western interpreters of postwar Japanese culture, including Japanese film. In 1947, the Ginza was still desolate and dreary. Department stores had burned down and few building were left standing. “The view was block after block of rubble.” There were street stalls instead of shops. And, as Richie says below, people were “out of fashion.”

Richie also describes the uniform of “whores,” as worn at Yurakucho station, one of the main meeting points for prostitution, as “fetching.” He indicates, however, that even in the midst of bad times, somehow Japanese women, in this case “girls,” knew about fashions in America.

Japanese women welcomed silk stockings but even more so food.

Kimono Comeback. Geisha, those who were able to ply their profession, and also the maiko apprentices in training wore elaborate kimono and well-crafted hairpieces. They kept fashionable kimono in mind as did film stars. Among new and monied customers for kimono sales were foreign women in Occupied Japan, in particular Occupation wives. Japanese women liked to dress up American and British acquaintances in kimono; and Western women seemed to enjoy the exercise. By 1948, ads for kimono (also for fur coats), began to appear frequently in the English language newspaper, Nippon Times, whose readers were primarily foreigners or Japanese with English skills or international interests. In August, ads appeared for a beautifully designed 40 page booklet, Kimono, costing 250 yen. Both text and drawings were by Takasawa Keiichi. It was printed on fine Japanese handmade paper and publicized by the Japan Travel Bureau, which was promoting the resumption of foreign tourism. The booklet was intended for foreign readers and gave information on styles and designs and instructions on how to wear the garment. For men as well as women, said Takasawa, the kimono symbolized home life. His text also helped to orientalize the Japanese woman. “The beauty of Japanese women is partly attributed to the kimono,” he declared. They looked their best when wearing one. “It would have gone out of existence long ago and no one would have felt sorry,” he emphasized, “had it been a mere ‘inefficient house dress.’”

In September 1948, when Dr. Yukawa Hideki, Japan’s foremost nuclear physicist, was invited to Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study (the invitation came from atomic bomb scientist Robert Oppenheimer), his wife accompanied him. He was photographed in a Western suit and she in a kimono. A caption in the Nippon Times relates that in San Francisco she “caused a considerable sensation when she alighted from the plane dressed purely in the Japanese style.” The following summer, June 1949, a Japanese group sent gifts of kimono to the Metropolitan Opera in New York for a new production of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. To give further emphasis to this good will gesture, two Japanese sopranos, clad in kimonos, sang the aria, “One Fine Day,” for radio broadcast on NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Company). From time to time, newspapers and magazines ran columns discussing the merits of kimono versus wafuku (Western dress or clothing).

Since the Occupation, the kimono has gone through several postwar revivals. See for example, the Kanebo silk ad in the Japan Times (the renamed Nippon Times), September 1, 1971. It features a drawing of a young Japanese woman in kimono, wearing tabi and zori; and headlines: “A woman’s silhouette…bespeaking the aesthetic tradition of her country. Centuries of craftsmanship have molded the Japanese woman into what she is today, and KANEBO SILK is perpetuating the grace that apparel lends to the female form.” In 2005, the city of Kyoto offered free public transportation to women wearing kimono.

Western Dress. In late 19th century Meiji Japan, upper class women and wives of government officials began wearing Victorian crinolines and gowns at important events involving foreigners. In the 1920s, mainstream and fashionable women wore Western dresses, gowns, and suits in addition to kimono and yukata. For men and women, foreign attire was already associated with office and factory work. In Occupied Japan, while women wore either monpei or old and limp kimono, men appeared in a mixture of military or wartime attire, sometimes in a kimono, but more often dressed in ill-fitting Western suits, white shirts, and conservative ties. The great male shift to well-tailored suits and colored shirts came with economic prosperity in the 1970s. By then, young Japanese women were very much into international fashion, including expensive handbags and other accessories. Not all foreign women, by the way, were enamored of the kimono. On a visit to Japan in 1957, the great leader of India and future prime minister, Indira Gandhi, who always wore a sari in public, observed that Japanese woman were less Westernized than women of India who had been educated abroad. She noted that Japanese women had taken to Western dress but also looked back to older cultural styles. In particular, she said she did not enjoy trying on a kimono: “I can understand now why Japanese women have taken so easily to the European dress.”

Haute Couture. Leading the way out of Occupation drabness and into haute couture was one of the world’s most successful fashion designers of the postwar period, Mori Hanae. It was quite an achievement since that world too was dominated by men, with few exceptions, such as French designer Coco Chanel. Mori was born in Shimane Prefecture in 1926 to a surgeon father and homemaker mother and, in common with other young women, had done factory work during the war. Soon after graduation as a literature major from Tokyo Women’s Christian University in 1947, she married Mori Ken, son of a well-off textile manufacturer. Her official story says that she was a bored housewife and so decided to study dressmaking and fashion design. After two years, she opened an atelier for private clients in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, 1951. Before long, she was also in constant demand to design costumes for Japanese films in the 1950s and early 1960s. The directors included Ozu and Oshima. This experience, while exhausting, was of use, she recalls, in learning how men looked at women. After exhibitions in Paris in 1963 and New York in 1965, she became increasingly famous in international haute couture; she was known for blending Asian and contemporary design and her penchant for butterfly designs. Her husband took over the financial side of a booming business, which at the high point was worth $4 billion. Famous architect Tange Kenzo designed her headquarters building in Tokyo (he had also designed the Hiroshima Peace Museum). In recognition of her achievements, Mori received the Order of Culture Award from Emperor Akihito in 1996. By then, younger designers, including several Japanese, had become popular. Ready-made clothing, even expensive wear, replaced the dwindling demand for hand-made luxury dresses. Mori retired in 2004, age 78, following a showing in Paris, her favorite city next to Tokyo.

Ideals of Beauty. In the Occupation period, Japanese visual arts (mainly the products of men), films (mainly directed by men), and photographs (mainly taken by men) give us considerable evidence of the Japanese male conception of a beautiful Japanese women—or attractive women. Long before, back in the mid-Heian period of the eleventh century, long and lustrous hair, narrow eyes, and a small nose and mouth were desirable. As in many times and cultures, women bought into the standards and tried to accommodate them, more than making or defining them. The ideal changed over the centuries. By the Occupation period, the most beautiful women in Japan, according to classic taste, was said to be film star Hara Setsuko, who also got dubbed “The Eternal Virgin.” She wore both kimono and Western dress in films; there are memorable scenes in which she is attired in a white blouse and a long, slim, dark skirt. ). In September 1951, photos of Hara graced a column in the Nippon Times on the merits of kimono versus Western dress. Apparently tired of this and none too fond of acting, she abruptly retired from the film business in 1962 and lived a quiet, reclusive life in Kamakura. Other popular film stars for beauty and skill were Tanaka Kinuya, a much beloved figure who had been around since the 1930s; also Takamine Hideko, dubbed the Shirley Temple of Japan when she began her film career before the war but appearing as a mature, master actor in postwar cinema. They too shifted, as the film story demanded, between Western to Japanese dress. A newcomer with a different look was Kyō Machiko, who made her debut in 1949 and starred in both contemporary and period pieces, including two international prize-winners, Rashōmon and Gate of Hell, set in earlier centuries, and Women of the Night, a tale of early postwar prostitutes.

There was another trend, not so healthy for Japanese self-esteem. Women who wished to attract GIs or other Western men thought it was important to have double-edged eyelids or the appearance of a Western woman and got operations for round eyes. American and Western films, too, were popular. Certainly Hollywood was alert to the possibilities of breaking into the Japanese film market, and Occupation officials hoped to influence Japanese through American film by keeping ticket prices down. It would be fascinating research to try and determine how much of the Japanese woman’s sense of beauty, style, and fashion, not to mention romance, may have been influenced during the Occupation period by Hollywood, itself very much a male enterprise. The great Hollywood stars of the time were a diverse group and included Europeans Greer Garson, Marlene Dietrich, and Ingrid Bergman, as well as Americans Katherine Hepburn, Myrna Loy, Irene Dunne, Joan Crawford, and Lana Turner.

For a time, Shirley Yamaguchi, the Hollywood name of a Manchurian born Japanese star of wartime propaganda films, had the attention of Hollywood and was featured in films of the early 1950s. Kyō Machiko was nominated for the academy award in 1956 as best actress in a leading role, comedy or musical. Her vehicle was Tea House of the August Moon, opposite Marlon Brando and William Holden and set in Occupied Okinawa. Umeki Miyoshi appeared frequently in Hollywood films and on television in the 1950s and 1960s, winning the academy award in 1957 as best supporting actress in Sayonara, based on a best-selling novel by James Mitchener novel and set in Japan at the end of the Korean War. Her part was of a Japanese servant involved in a doomed love affair with Red Buttons, a GI, while Marlon Brando, an officer, romanced and fell in love with a Takarazuka star specializing in male roles. Hollywood recognized talent but also did its share in the continued orientalization of Japanese women. In future years, as popular culture blossomed in postwar Japan, the ideal, especially for singers, would again change into privileging the young, cute, perky, and bubbly Japanese woman and whose image was considerably influenced by manga (cartoons) and anime (animated film).

Beauty Contests and Fashion Shows. Americans ran their own beauty contests in Occupied Japan—the tasteless Miss Atomic Bomb, for example—and publicized beauty contests back home in the States. The idea caught on. A contest was held for Miss Ginza of 1947. A year later, a search for Miss Japan Trade of 1948 was undertaken to commemorate the first anniversary of the re-opening of private foreign trade. The Board of Trade picked the “Best Ten” applicants, followed by a winner in September 1948. However, extravaganzas comparable to Miss America pageants were unknown in Japan prior to the Occupation. Fashion shows organized by foreign women’s clubs in Japan, with invited Japanese guests, were helpful in showing not only new fashions but also desirable deportment in modeling Western clothes. Foreign professional models also gave shows in Japan toward the end of the Occupation. In the meantime, Dior’s “New Look” in American and British fashion, 1947, featuring fitted jackets and long, wide skirts, did not do well in Japan either with foreign women or the Japanese.

When the Miss Universe competition made its debut in Long Beach, CA, 1952, Japanese promoters decided to run a Miss Japan competition. Itō Kinuko, described in the Nippon Times as a “well-proportioned, graceful fashion model,” was crowned Miss Japan in June 1953 and went on to become fifth runner-up in the 1954 finals. Young Japanese women, however beautiful, nevertheless found it difficult to compete on an equal basis. Many would-be-contestants did not yet know how to walk properly or how to show off their bodies in bathing suits, gowns, and high heels. Or to show cleavage and indicate good-sized breasts, a more desirable part of the women’s body to foreign men than the back of the neck to Japanese men. Japanese women caught on fast. In 1959, Kojima Akiko, a twenty-two year old model who stood, for that time, at a statuesque 5’7”, became the first Japanese, also the first Asian, to win the crown. As it turned out, she was also the last Japanese to win until Mori Riyo in 2007.

At another level in Occupied Japan, one had only to look at photos of foreign pinups, mainly starlets, in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo edition, to know what appealed to the GIs. Or to pick up cartoon booklets, such as the adorable Baby-san: A Private Look at the Occupation, a Japanese pinup created by Bill Hume, a free-lance artist who ended up with the U.S. Navy in Japan, 1951. Others in this genre were Ginza Go, Papa-san, and Wha Hoppen: Cartoons about and for GI’s of Japan, Korea and Okinawa. Their appearance spans the period of the Korean War, 1950-1953, when Japan was a recreation and rehabilitation center for U.N. and American troops.

Japanese Fashion. We arrive at June 1952, a few months after the Occupation had ended. A period of reverse influence was already underway in US-Japan cultural relations, one that would also help Mori Hanae become famous in future decades. Look magazine in the US, at the instigation of famed editor Fleur Cowles, featured an article on “Elegance from Asia,” based on a quick trip. From her stop in Japan, Cowles came up with novel ideas for American women, such as wearing noren (half-curtains over shop doorways) for aprons. She turned the black silk coats of Japanese men inside out to display their patterns and recommended wearing them over a black silk cocktail dress. The Nippon Times began running a column by John Robert Powers, head of one of American’s most successful modeling agencies, called "Secrets of Charm." "Brush your hair faithfully," he advised. "Wash your face carefully with clear water and remove all traces of soap." "… only the mildest ‘baby’ soap, tepid water and the softest of cloths should ever be used on the tender feminine skin.” A cartoon ad on the same page read: “Coddle your little girl’s baby skin and silken hair if you wish to see her grow into a beauty.” Of course, much of this, and more, Japanese women already knew. Soon, their own concept of beauty, style, and fashion, would make an impact at home and abroad.