The Importance Of Beauty In The Heian Period

When Japan entered the Heian Period there came to be a rapid and extensive development of a well-refined culture among the upper classes of society. While a steady Japanese identity had been formulated before this era that does not diminish the importance of the Heian Period — especially with the influences it placed upon present, for the time, societal mannerisms and those that came to exist in the future. Two of the most intriguing aspects of this particular society, in terms of personal preference, happen to be the progression of beauty standards that extended beyond simple appearance and the differing lifestyles that categorized the aristocratic men and women of the period. As such, this time in Japan’s history could be considered a sizable step forward, primarily in the tending to of a separate Japanese identity that took little from previously overbearing Chinese-based

Gauging physical appearance was a common practice, as it continues to be in most modern day societies, though the defining features of what made someone “beautiful” were relatively rigid, and quite surprising effeminate. For a male to be considered appeasing to the eyes he had, “a plump white face with a minute mouth, the narrowest slits for eyes and a little tuft of beard on the point of the chin” (Morris 144)—all of which is an ideal that may not resonate with a time of such a heavily male dominated society. This projected sense of beauty is in turn considered, “the same as the ideal of feminine beauty…[to the point that] a handsome gentleman…is as beautiful as a woman” (Ibid), and it worked to shun those that stood too far from the societal norm. Through study, and a better understanding of the overall context that these physical traits of beauty developed, one can grasp the basis of this phenomenon, though that does little to lessen the unexpected nature of