Behind her Cosmopolitan Beauty: Transnational Modern Girl in Japan and Republican China

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Behind her Cosmopolitan Beauty: Transnational Modern Girl in Japan
and Republican China
Duanduan Zhou
Department of Comparative Literature, Hong Kong University, Central and Western District, Hong
Kong, China
zoeychou1998@gmail.com
Keywords: Modern girl, Modernity, Consumerism, Advertising, Visual Culture, Feminine beauty,
Republican China, Meiji Japan
Abstract. Under the overwhelming tide of Western-dominated modernization, the modern girl image
appeared around the globe during the 1920s and 1930s through the means of advertising, embellishing
and transforming the visual sphere of modern experience. As a consumerist icon highly constructed
by media and a product of capitalist commodification of the female body, the modern girl embodies
the spontaneity and autonomy of consumer culture at the same time. This paper analyzes the visual
archives of the modern girl from Japan and Republican China, exploring the image-making of modern
girl in the national, cultural and gender dimension.
1. Introduction
The modern girl (moga), a quintessential cultural icon of consumerism, emerged in the urban streets
of Japan in the late 1920s and transformed the visuality of Japanese public sphere since then. In the
scholarly and media discourse, she is generally depicted as an independent, hedonistic, and arguably
decadent middle-class consumer who pursues westernized fashions and lifestyles1. During the inter-
war period, these moga made an impressive appearance in Japanese cosmetics and fashion advertising,
reflecting the transforming ideals for feminine beauty and hygiene with the efflorescence of
modernity. Drawing on the visual archives of Shiseido cosmetics advertising, this essay looks into
the rise of Japanese modern girl who is a carefully crafted consumerist icon lingering between her
Japanese-ness, transnationality, and modernity. Likewise, the Chinese equivalent of Japanese moga,
modeng xiaojie, ascended the cosmopolitan stage of Shanghai early in the Republican era (1911-
1949), acting out fantasy scenes of Shanghai’s prosperity and modernity. Through the juxtaposition
of Japanese and Chinese modern girl images, this essay further explores the nuances between
Japanese and Chinese experience of modernity in a nationalistic discourse.
2. Japanese modern girl
2.1 Modern girl as a media construct
The Modern Girl first came into the public discourse of Japan in a 1924 article published in the
woman’s magazine Josei. The author, Kitazawa Shūich, presented the modern girl as an apolitical
while liberated, self-respecting and autonomous female figure who kept abreast with their male peers2.
The social critic Nii Itaru, credited for coining the term modan gaaru, further distinguished the
modern girl with little political aspirations from the “social girl” who advocated for women’s rights
and equality. He portrayed the modern girl as aggressive and erotic whereas took an ambiguous tone
in expounding her social and political attributes3. As such, the fascinating modern girl remained a
vague subject yet to be defined in the media discourse of the 1920s and 1930s. First and foremost,
1 Miriam Silverberg, “The modern girl as militant,” in Recreating Japanese Women: 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein, (Berkeley:
University of California, 1991), pp. 239–66.
2 Ibid., 240.
3 Ibid., 241.
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 345
2019 3rd International Seminar on Education, Management and Social Sciences (ISEMSS 2019)
Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
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body aesthetics came into play in the character sketch of a Japanese modern girl. She stood out in the
urban streets with her short hair and long, straight legs, which arguably implies her growing
independence and ability to create a new life4. Abandoning traditional oriental aesthetics, the modern
girl would not shy away from flaunting her sightly figure such as protruding buttocks. More
prominently, she was usually characterized by a fascination with westernized and fashion-forward
clothing in the media discourse - although a 1925 survey of women in Ginza district indicated only
1% dressed in Western-style clothing. In this sense, the modern girl is largely defined by the
superficiality such as her body, fashion, and the implied sexuality, which makes her a figure closely
associated with media and consumption. Just as Silverberg contends, she was “a highly commodified
cultural construct” crafted by the media who debated her identity during the era of drastic societal
changes5.
2.2 A fabricated consumerist icon
The modern girl debate provides an intriguing window into the gendered dimensions of modernity
rooted in the profound economic, social, and cultural transformation taking place in the 1910s and
1920s. The first World War brought to Japan a spectacular economic boom, followed by a prolonged
postwar recession intensified by the 1923 Kantō Earthquake and the global financial crisis ensued.
Although the catastrophe in 1923 devastated the capital Tokyo and its surrounding areas, the post-
earthquake “reconstruction boom” fostered a budding cosmopolitan urban culture centering on the
department stores, modern cinema, cafes, print media and leading-edge innovations in business6. In
particular, the newly emerging publishing industry enjoyed an exuberance despite economic
uncertainty. Diverse publications including magazines, books, and newspapers celebrated the modern
lives of middle-class women and men, boosting a common experience of Japanese modernity7. This
phenomenon, arguably, reflects the domestic anxieties to catch up with the western powers and
modernize their civilian life.
Beyond the rise of print media, the emergent capitalism economy spawned new products and
growing possibilities of consumption, leading to the outlook for a new urban life8. The dazzling array
of consumer goods such as clothing and cosmetics in the department stores celebrated a capitalist
consumer culture, one that permeated the life of Japanese middle-class women. Modern girls, the
most high-profile female consumer, were represented as strolling on the Ginza streets, shopping at
the department stores and hanging out at the cafes, setting a consumerist and aesthetic trend for
Japanese women. She as thus ascended to the most sought-after female icon featured in the
commercial ads in the dawning era of modern commercial design. With large budgets, the
multinational and domestic cosmetic companies widely promoted their products through advertising
in the new media, portraying the modern girl with carefully made-up faces, bobbed hair and
fashionable clothing9. The prevalence of Modern Girl style in cosmetics ads reflects the new ideals
of contemporary beauty and hygiene, shaping the cultural landscape of modern Japan.
2.3 Modernizing aesthetics: Shiseido cosmetics advertising
2.3.1 Brand image and target customers
The Japanese cosmetics company Shiseidō, founded in 1872 as the first Western-style pharmacy, was
and continues to be a leading national cosmetics manufacturer in Japan. Selling and advertising
beauty products geared primarily towards female consumers, Shiseidō played an influential role in
shaping the visuality of feminine beauty and health, and thus shaped Japanese modern experience in
4 Ibid., 242.
5 Ibid., 240.
6 Gennifer Weisenfeld. “Selling Shiseido I,” MIT Visualizing Cultures, <https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/shiseido_01/index.html>
[accessed 4 May, 2019].
7 Gordon, Andrew. “Japan in Wartime”, in A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd edition. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 202-222.
8 Ibid., 220.
9 Alys Eve Weinbaum et al. (eds.), “The Modern Girl Around the World”, in The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption,
Modernity, and Globalization. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008). 8-12.
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the interwar era. The Shiseidō company has introduced a diversity of beauty products over the decades,
most prominently including the toothpaste, face powers, vanishing and cold creams, perfumes, and
soap10. Beyond a staggering array of high-quality merchandise, innovative product development and
manufacturing, Shiseidō company also pioneered in its package and advertising design under the
influence of the vibrant commercial design culture abroad.
Shiseido’s brand image was built by a dazzling array of elegant women with various racial
identities from across the ages. The historical female figures from Japanese imperial heyday, wearing
their dramatic porcelain-white make-up and gorgeous robes, came to the focus in Shiseidō’s ads of
the early Taishō era, evoking nostalgia for Japanese traditional aesthetics among the populace11.
Meanwhile, the Western classical beauties from Roman and Italy made brief while impressive
appearances in the cosmetics advertising, evoking images of a western cosmopolitan lifestyle and a
concept of transnational, universal beauty. Before long, the classical female images gave way to the
newly emerged icons of contemporary beauty, such as a modish-style Japanese woman wearing a
20th-century upswept coiffure (sokuhatsu) and stylish kimono12.
Shiseido geared its beauty products towards various types of female consumers in the
contemporary era, ranging from the new woman (atarashii onna), the working woman (shokugyō
fujin), the housewife (shūfu), to the modern girl (moga)13. Accordingly, Shiseido cosmetics ads
portrayed modern independent women with different social roles, advocating a universal pursuit of
skin perfection.
2.3.2 Brand image and target customers
As a trend-setter of contemporary beauty and a self-reliant middle-class consumer, the modern girl
was an undisputed focus of Shiseido’s sophisticated advertising campaigns. The 1927 Cold Cream
poster below (fig. 1) features an impressively beautiful woman who enjoys a fantasy life of luxury
and leisure. At first sight, her short wavy hair, western-style gown, and exquisite jewelry presumably
reveal her identity as an epicurean modern girl. Attended by a dark-skinned servant, the woman
gracefully singles out the cold cream from a dazzling array of beauty products. The mirror reflecting
her sightly image seemingly invites the gaze of an external audience, both the sexualized male gaze
and the inquisitive gaze from other women. As Weisenfeld interprets it, the woman’s flashy lifestyle
is presumably supported by a wealthy husband who is fascinated with her timeless beauty maintained
by diligent skin care; the attentive servant reminiscent of colonial subjects further implies her western
origin14. In this light, this female subject is more likely a western bourgeois housewife than a Japanese
modern girl. The Caucasian women featured in early Shiseido posters conveyed a western idea of
universal and cosmopolitan beauty, one that inspired modern girls in Japan to westernize their
appearance and lifestyles.
10 Gennifer Weisenfeld. “Selling Shiseido I,” MIT Visualizing Cultures, <https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/shiseido_01/index.html>
[accessed 4 May, 2019].
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
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Fig.1 Shiseido cold cream poster, 1927.
2.3.3 Marketing campaigns
Beyond the print promotion, Shiseido company further initiated a dazzling array of marketing
campaigns which included the establishment of the Shiseido Parlour retail store in Ginza, the
expansion of a chain store network, and the launch of public relations publications15. In its absorbing
magazine Shiseido Graph (formerly titled Shiseido Monthly, established in 1924), the recurring
modern girl imagery was recreated in a highly mannerist style during the 1930s, which embodied an
aesthetic development from the naturalist art nouveau to a more abstract graphic style16. At the same
time, Shiseido increasingly adopted photography and photomontage in its editorial design, which
aroused a strong cinematic association. A 1933 issue of Shiseido Graph featured a dramatic close-up
of an alluring Japanese modern girl with her stylish hat, bobbed hair, impressive make-up and a cool
face (fig. 2)17. The erogenous and mysterious feminine beauty of this modern girl reinforced the
aesthetic association with movie stars. In this way, Shiseido advertising initiated a visual
communication with the flourishing modern cinema, which is an imported product from the west and
an emblem of modernization and industrialization.
After the full eruption of Asia-Pacific war in 1937, Japan’s militarist leaders directed a campaign
against the “luxury” and westernized aesthetics promoted by cosmetic companies, which markedly
transformed Shiseido’s early westernized female models into Asian subjects18. In a 1940 Shiseido
promotional poster, a conspicuously Asian beauty with a western-style suit is portrayed as feeling
and scrutinizing her skin (fig. 3). The advertising slogan praises Shiseido beauty products as the “peak
of purely domestic products”, promoting a sense of national pride that echoed with the on-going
expansionist war. More than a product of social gendering, the modern girl imagery ultimately fits
into a complex matrix of gender, race, social class and modernity. Shiseido’s interwar advertising
represented the modern girl as a highly transnational imagery, one that constantly lingering between
her Japanese-ness and westernized modernity. By juxtaposing Japanese Modern Girl with her
European equivalents, Shiseido strived to place Japanese contemporary women equally in a modern
discourse with western women. Back in the domestic context, she was nonetheless subject to a
suspicious social gaze contributed by the patriarchal conservatives, feminist New Women and other
social undercurrents.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
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Fig. 2 Shiseido Graph 5, cover, November 1933. Fig. 3 Shiseido cosmetics ad, 1940.
2.3.4. Hybrid style and imperial modernity
Beyond visualizing a stunning array of transnational modern girls, Shiseido also invited glamorous
movie stars to promote their beauty products, most prominently the advertising icons from
Manchukuo. The Chinese-born Japanese actress and singer Yamaguchi Yoshiko (Li Xianglan),
notoriously represented as an ambassadress of the “friendship” between imperial Japan and its colony
Manchukuo, featured in a 1941 Shiseido soap advertisement geared towards Manchurian (fig. 4).
Framed by a soft pink feather fan metonymically evoking China or Manchuria, Yamaguchi glances
provocatively at the audience in the guise of a Chinese modern girl
19
. This advertisement was
carefully crafted with common tropes that Japanese viewers would have associated with glamourous
images of actresses depicted in Shanghai-published women’s pictorials – the feather fan, seductive
gaze and short permed hair
20
. The garb of Yamaguchi remains hidden behind the feather fan in this
image, while another Shiseido face cream advertisement (fig. 5) more conspicuously depicts her in a
traditional Chinese cheongsam, with jade earrings, consistent permed haircut and immaculate make-
up. Intriguingly, most ads of Shiseido and other cosmetic companies that geared their products
towards Manchukuo showed a model in a cheongsam in order to maintain her specifically Chinese
identity
21
. Her highly crafted Chinese-style appearance served as a camouflage for the imperial
modernity promoted by these Japanese cosmetics companies.
Fig. 4 & Fig. 5 1941 image of Yamaguchi Yoshiko for Shiseidô soap & face cream.
19
Annika A. Culver, “Shiseidō’s ‘Empire of Beauty’: Marketing Japanese Modernity in Northeast Asia, 1932-1945,” Shashi: The
Journal of Japanese Business and Company History 2.1 (2013): 6-22.
20
Ibid., 19.
21
Ibid., 20.
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3. Chinese modern girl
3.1 Hybrid style and cosmopolitan beauty
3.1.1 The burgeoning urban culture
Penetrated by the prevailing Western culture, Republican China (1911-1949) during the interwar
period experienced an efflorescence of urban culture resembling Japanese modern experience. In the
1920s, Chinese modern girl modeng xiaojie ascended to the stage of the cosmopolitan city and treaty
port, Shanghai, acting out the imaginary social scenes connoting Shanghai’s economic exuberance
and fantasy
22
. The Chinese modern girl emerged with another culture figure known as the New
Woman who represented female strength and the nation’s prospect for modernity. By contrast, the
image of the modern girl connotated women’s decadence, cultural loss and unforeseen danger
embedded in Chinese modern experience, which echoes scholars’ criticism upon Japanese moga. The
young, vibrant female images and photographs, balanced between occidental and cosmopolitan
aesthetics, began inviting a public gaze in the emerging female-oriented magazines, which subverted
the puritanical taboo under Qing dynasty that women should not be seen in public. Moreover,
reckoned as a quintessential icon of the emerging consumerist culture, the image of the Chinese
modern girl was also carefully crafted and highly commodified through advertising.
The magazine Young Companion (Liang You), founded in 1926 as the first comprehensive pictorial,
pioneered in featuring modern girls with their fashion sketches, advertising images and photographs,
constructing a public realm for upper-class Chinese women to display their image. The 1927 cover
(fig. 6) of Young Companion features a female socialite icon of the time know as Lu Xiaoman, who
wears a western-style furry overcoat, holds a Chinese folding fan, smiles demurely and glances
provocatively at the viewers, in a manner intriguingly resembling Yamaguchi in Shiseido’s
Manchurian advertisement. Despite a relatively conservative haircut, her eye-catching make-up,
western garb and earrings undeniably set an aesthetic trend for modern girls of her time. The cover
girls featured in Young Companion and other women’s pictorials were exclusively female celebrities
with an independent and prominent social status, such as movie stars and social butterflies, thus
reconstructing the modern identity of Chinese women through their unconventional beauty and
lifestyles.
As a quintessential embodiment of Republican-era female fashion, Chinese dress cheongsam
became a common sight in the media’s representation of modern girls. The juxtaposition of two
Young Companion cover girl images (fig. 7) reveals the subtle transformation of cheongsam over
time: The legendary Shanghainese movie star Ruan Lingyu is photographed wearing a conservative
aqua checked cheongsam in the 1934 cover image, while the 1941 cover portrays another modern girl
dressed in sleeveless cheongsam with a gaudier design, indicating an on-going liberation of female
aesthetic conception.
Fig. 6 1927 Cover of Young Companion. Fig. 7 Cover of Young Companion, 1934 and 1941.
22
Sarah E. Stevens. “Figuring Modernity: The New Woman and the Modern Girl in Republican China,” NWSA Journal 15. 3(2003),
82-103.
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3.1.2 Cultural and national hybridity in the image-making
Besides an iconoclastic public display of female beauty, the new Republication era also lifted the
restriction on female consumption in public sphere and thus liberated the purchasing power of women,
which became a motivating source for the evolving consumerist economy
23
. The Nanjing decade
(1927-1937), credited as a golden era for the national economy, most prominently witnessed a
flourish of domestic and foreign commodities such as cosmetics, fabrics, cigarettes and other fancy
“modern” commodities
24
. Against the backdrop of a thriving consumption culture, the commercial
newspapers and female-oriented magazines were inundated with advertisements promoted in a
Modern Girl style. In particular, the American skincare brand Pond successfully marketed its beauty
products in China by playing tactfully with images of Chinese women. Figure 8 juxtaposes the
newspaper ads of Pond’s face cream from three different periods, depicting a cosmopolitan modern
girl, a traditional housewife and a young bride who unanimously favor Pond’s face cream out of their
universal pursuit of perfect skin. Conspicuously drawing on a western style, the modern girl to the
left looks staggeringly ahead of her time in her avant-garde coat and high-heels. By contrast, the
traditional Han-Chinese garb in the middle represents a less modern dressing style adopted by most
Chinese civilians. Advertising with Chinese female figures from various social classes, Pond
implanted a new ideal of affordable and universal beauty into its target consumers, meanwhile
tactfully avoiding potential nationalist sentiments associated with western products.
Fig. 8 Pond’s face cream ads in News Press, 1929, 1920, 1935 from left to right.
Playing with a similar strategy, Coca Cola further invited the glamourous Shanghainese movie star
Ruan Lingyu to endorse its products (fig. 9), making a great coup in opening the Shanghai market. It
is noticeable that Ruan wears a modified gauzy cheongsam that highlights her graceful figure better
than the traditional ones. On balance, it was a prevailing advertising practice for foreign corporations
to endow their commodities with a sort of Chinese-ness by incorporating uniquely indigenous
elements. This strategy highly echoes with Shiseido’s “imperial advertising” in Manchuria during
Japanese occupation, revealing a symbiotic relationship between Chinese modern experience and
external aggression.
23
Laikwan Pang. “Advertising and the Visual Display of Women,” in The distorting mirror: visual modernity in China. (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 102-130.
24
Madeleine Y. Dong. “Who is afraid of the Chinese modern girl?” in The Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity,
and Globalization. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 194-219.
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Fig. 9 Shanghainese movie star Ruan Lingyu in 1927 Coca Cola poster.
Compared to Japanese commercial ads of the time, Chinese advertising design was unique in
exploring another form of visual possibility, the calendar poster (yuefenpai) which emerged in late
Qing and was widely popularized during the Republican era. The most common design of calendar
posters featured a centrally positioned female model surrounded by commodities and an imported
Gregorian calendar
25
. For instance, the 1934 calendar poster (fig. 10) for the Australian Lactogen
milk powder depicts a female model in an attractive and sprightly manner, despite her weak
association with the commodity itself. With no comparable fame and charisma as Ruan Lingyu, most
calendar girls were basically empty signifiers whose significations depend more on the dominant
discourse of consumerism than on the commodity
26
. These exquisitely dressed calendar grils
symbolized the “aestheticization of everyday life”, an ideal that the visual system of calendar poster
strived to construct and propagate
27
. Absorbingly, the juxtaposition of the Coca Cola ad with the milk
powder poster reveals a transforming aesthetic standard of cheongsam: the side slit tended to be
higher up to the hip over time, exposing more of the female body. Another calendar poster of Yuanhe
Trading Company (fig. 11) sheds more light on this trend: the female model sits in a seductive posture
that reveals her underskirt, with the high-heels pointing suggestively to the products. Her modified
cheongsam is a hybrid fashion combining western and Chinese style, one that is less conservative and
secretive about female sex appeal and more provocatively inviting a male gaze.
Figure 10. 1934 Calendar poster of Lactogen milk powder. Figure 11. Calendar poster of Yuanhe Trading Company.
25
Laikwan Pang. “Advertising and the Visual Display of Women,” in The Distorting Mirror: Visual Modernity in China.
26
Ibid., 122.
27
Ibid., 122.
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4. Conclusion
Deemed as a product of capitalist commodification of female body, the modern girl also represents a
relatively autonomous consumerist icon. In the public discourse of imperial Japan and Republican
China, nevertheless, she was constantly blamed for her decadent lifestyle and suspicious promiscuity
connoted by her excessive pursuits of body aesthetics. Such polemic implies the inherent male
domination in the modern gender discourse and the illusory nature of female subjectivity displayed
in the public sphere.
More than a product of social gendering where a power imbalance exists, the modern girl image
came into shape under a constant east-west cultural interplay. Given the inter-war Japan as an
ambitious imperial power adopting wholesale westernization, Japanese modern girl style in cosmetic
ads greatly drew on western aesthetic ideals by incorporating Caucasian female models and adopting
a modernist design, with traditional Japanese fashion such as kimono gradually fading away. More
intriguingly, cosmetic companies imposed a crafted Chinese identity on female models in their
Manchurian advertising, selling a specifically Japanese imperial modernity towards their colonial
subjects. By contrast, Chinese modern girl represented a hybrid style balancing between traditional
aesthetics and western beauty ideals. In particular, foreign corporations utilized typically Chinese
female models in cheongsam to dodge nationalist sentiments evoked by imported commodities. This
visual emphasis on Chinese-ness sheds light on the inherent passiveness in Chinese modern
experience, contrasting sharply with the spontaneous and aggressive Japanese imperial modernity
behind Shiseido’s beauty empire.
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