Consuming Women in Blackface: Racialized Affect and Transnational Femininity in Japanese Advertising

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2014, ASTIGU – a Japanese pantyhose brand – launched ‘ashi wa, kao’ (legs are face), a new series of advertisements featuring a female model whose face is painted black. Although scholars have previously written on blackface and blackness in Japan, they have focused more on subcultural contexts and men’s instead of women’s experiences. Drawing on the campaign’s promotional materials and employing women’s blackface practices as a heuristic device, this essay tracks constructions of blackness and femininity in Japanese advertising. I argue that Japanese women’s wearing of blackface forms affective spaces for consumers to negotiate their racial, gender, and national identities. While ‘Japaneseness’ and femininity are initially based on the bihaku (beautiful white) model, the idea of black masks alters women’s relationships to their bodies and allows them to experiment with racial otherness and alternative femininities. By unsettling notions of race, gender, and nation in Japanese society, I suggest that the dual commodification of bihaku and blackface in these advertisements potentially generates transnational forms of femininity. Building on scholarship on race, affect, femininity, and Japanese mass culture, this essay ultimately investigates how consuming women in blackface traverses gender and racial constructions in Japan, contributing to transnational flows of consumer culture.