2024 Volume 31 Pages 69-87
This paper analyzes how Western-style makeup methods became popular in Japan from the 1900s to around the 1930s and how changes in values surrounding makeup were linked to gender. Specifically, I focused on the process by which many women, regardless of their social class, were forced to become involved in the cultural domain of makeup during modernization.
Therefore, I adopted the method of discourse analysis and focused on the role of the “hairdressing” profession that emerged along with the modernization process. Initially, the profession of “beautician” was dominated by men, and it was always viewed as a lowly job by the public. Therefore, female “hairdressers” actively created the discourse that “hairdressers = women” within the media space to assert their legitimacy. As these “hairdressers” spread Western-style makeup methods, they appealed to the women of the new middle-classes about the legitimacy and necessity of wearing makeup and the rationality and economics of purchasing cosmetics, which are tools for makeup. In this way, in pre-modern times, makeup was used to make one’s social status visible, regardless of gender. Still, in the modernization process, the image of the person wearing makeup and the person working in the makeup industry converged to be female.
