Beauty in Heian Japan, 794 - 1185 CE
Halfway around the world and around the same time, the Japanese
society was enjoying a period of great peace — and great opulence
— like never before. Though it coincided with the medieval period
of Western Europe, it can be argued that the Heian period shares
more similarities with Classical Greece and Rome because of their
prosperity and advancements in art, culture, and literature.
Heian standards of beauty might look strange to modern eyes.
Faces were ideally soft and round and painted a powdery white,
but teeth were painted pitch black to contrast white skin (a process
called ohaguro). Their lips were painted dark red and often smaller
than their natural shape, as small features were considered more
beautiful. This included the eyes and nose. In a practice called
hikimayu, women shaved off their eyebrows and repainted them in
dark smudges high on their foreheads, closer to their hairlines.
Heian women also prized long, dark, shiny hair, which they wore
straight and flowing down their backs like a sheet; in fact, this look
was called kurokami, loosely translated as “black paper”.
The aristocrats of the Heian period were painstakingly aware of the
power of beauty. Like the Ancient Greeks, they believed that
beauty made one a better person. Unlike the Greeks, their thoughts
on beauty were more calculated than philosophical, as beauty was
often used as a political and social weapon to convey subtle
messages about rank, refinement, and power.
Perhaps somewhat relatedly, the Heian aristocrats were victims of
their own leisure, taken down by the samurai class who would
usher in the feudal/medieval period of Japan. It’s a bit hard to
defend yourself when your hair is longer than your body.
Tomoe Gozen [a female samurai] on
Horseback
Fortunately for us, she [Tomoe Gozen] inspired a
number of Japan's great woodcut print artists. Because no
contemporary images of her exist, artists have free rein to
interpret her features. The sole surviving description of her,
from the Tale of the Heike, states that she was beautiful,
"with white skin, long hair, and charming features."
This gorgeous rendition of Tomoe Gozen shows her
almost as a goddess, with her long hair and her silk wrap
flowing up behind her. She has the traditional Heian-era
woman's eyebrows - the natural brows are shaved off, and
then bushier ones are painted high on the forehead, near the
hair-line.
Peasant Women: The lives of peasant women contrasted
greatly with the lives of women in the upper classes. Since most
accounts from the period deal with the concerns of the aristocrats,
who were only about one-tenth of one percent of Japan's
population, we know very little of the lives of the vast majority
who were commoners. We do know that women worked alongside
men in a kind of rough equality and had some control over
household decisions. They held some property rights, including
rights of inheritance and divorce, although they could not remarry.
In contrast to aristocrats, peasant women often wore their hair
short and, since families needed their hands for labor, married late,
usually to someone in their own village or group of villages.
Farmers only took one wife. As time went on, however, the later
feudal age samurai ideal of the obedient, submissive woman was
accepted by the common people and peasant women lost much of
their earlier independence.