For Japanese Girls, Black Is Beautiful or Black on Black

[Steve Bildermann]

Iona Rozeal Brown is obsessed with hip-hop. When she is not home spinning discs, out haunting music stores or cruising clubs, she makes paintings about fashion-conscious Japanese teenagers who want to look cool, black and American, much like their hip-hop idols. Known as the ganguro, these teenagers dress in funky clothes, dye and weave their hair into cornrows and darken their skin at tanning salons or with makeup.

New York Times - Obnoxious registration required

Nrw York Times Random registrator

http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/dandy-arata1/image/ganguro.jpg
IMAGE NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[Taro Toporific]

Nrw York Times Random registrator
ganguro http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/dandy-arata1/image/ganguro.jpg
IMAGE NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Ganguro is so passe I've seen retro ganguro GUYS in Shibuya, so I see a need for a Random Ganguro registrator!

Anyway here's my IMAGE that's SAFE FOR WORK but the Super Bowl's half-time, hee, hee.

See full-size Ganguro geisha here.

[Big Booger]

They look like retards....

[demoneyeskyo]

They look like retards....

That's an understatement.

[Taro Toporific]

They look like retards....

Via "a girl in Tokyo blog of a Japanese girl named Coco.

A few years ago, there were full of "Ganguro" (very much tanned) highschool girls in everywhere. Though, they suddenly disappeared. Instead of "Ganguro" girls, now superwhite girls conquest this city. Their faces are insanely white. Even whiter than real white people.

Meanwhile, there is a unwritten rule in Japanese female world. The rule is "Beauty talks in any time any occation." For example, some woman accept her boy friend's cheanting if the other woman is more beautiful than herself, we tend to let the woman who has better looking than oneself go first, somehow we feel so guilty when the beautiful woman crying for her own fault (not yours) and et al.

This caste is decided by other females. Guys' opinion are ignored usually. This battle is females' war.

April 7, 1:54 AM in Culture&Society, entry title: "Beauty comes first"

[AssKissinger]

Nice link Taro. Pretty interesting blog. From same blog

Meanwhile, foreign guys at Mediatown talk to female customers with no hesitation. enjoy conversation and exchange e-mail address or phone number when one of them leaving.

It is just my guess but there are some reasons why Japanese man can't ask someone out or talk to new people. First, they are afraid of getting rejected. All Japanese men I asked back why can't answered it is super embarrasing if they are ignored

[rippoff]

I found it interesting that Iona Rozeal Brown reserves the right to find " ganguro obsession with blackness pretty weird, and a little offensive" but nobody is at all alarmed that she is using wood block prints from hundreds of years ago as some how indicative or or associated with Japanese girls today and their sense of style or beauty. The whole thing smacks of an undergrad studio course if you ask me.

I also like the assumption that hip hop belongs to black people, that all black people can feel a sense of pride in it. ("Being African-American, I'm flattered that our music and style is so influential.") Being Caucasian, I'm very flattered that Pop music is also popular and influential around the world. Oh, and being European I am very flattered that the world has chosen to wear suit and ties as business wear. I am also very disappointed about that whole Hitler thing. What were we thinking?

Maybe I am reaching a little with the second point.