Abstract
The human body has individuality as well as complex form. It is rather difficult to understand the morphological characteristics of body form. Measurement of body form has heretofore used only the Martin method, which depends mainly on measurements of the frame. Comparatively new morphological studies of body characteristics depend on shape, and these methods of measurement and classification are not yet established. In the present study, we attempted to understand morphological characteristics of the body form, and sought a method to express and classify them. We discuss here a method of understanding and expressing body form of young women, and a method of classifying those forms. We measured the body form by the silhouette method, the sliding gauge method, and the laser method, and used factor analysis to analyze these characteristics. Close observation of the silhouette of the lower half of the body (from photographs taken from eight directions) revealed projecting parts, other than the hip line, that affected the circumference of the lower half of the body. Morphological factors that characterized body form were found by factor analysis of the data of the positional relations between transverse sections obtained by the sliding gauge method and the laser method. We were able to differentiate and classify body form characteristics by these morphological factors.
