Multiple refractions. The metamorphosis of the notions of beauty in Japan

Abstract

Japanese occidentalism is characterized by the view that the culture of the Occident was seen as just as exotic to the Japanese as the Orient was to the Europeans, but it is accompanied by a feeling of cultural inferiority. This paper tries to illustrate the Japanese occidentalism in the different aesthetic perceptions of beauty, especially of female beauty, mainly in literary discourse from the late nineteenth century up to the immediate present. The notion of female beauty is formed through cultural discourse according to how the cultural inferiority is perceived. It is like the scenery without the substance and is interchangeable depending on the staging of the occidentalism.