Some things are just not meant to be understood. Female breasts are firmly in this catagory.
OK, gonna go a little deep here but bear with me. This is 100% off the cuff but I have one airtight reference to prove its true.
Human lifespans are pretty short in the grand scheme of things but they're all we have for reference so for us our own life is effectively "all of history". You can see this a lot when you think about baby boomers and their attitudes towards crime. In the 90's you heard a lot about how crime was on the rise and society was going to hell. Lots of upper middle aged people / older people were saying how in the past (i.e. when they were young) you would have never seen anything like the levels of crime and overall social degradation that were going on at the time. Their main point of reference was how peaceful things were in the 50's.
Thing is - the 50's were a statistical anomaly. In postwar US there was a real cultural push to build communities/families and crime rates dropped dramatically. Once the 60's/70's hit they started going back up, though. But if you go even further back into the 20's and 30's the overall crime rates for the US were significantly higher than they were even in the 80's. By the end of the 80's, though, crime rates started dropping again and they have continued to go down overall.
From everything I've read about wartime Japan there was an incredible lack of resources for a few decades - notably in food. I guess some people were actually relying on insects like crickets/grasshoppers (https://www.tofugu.com/japan/eating-bugs/) pretty widely as other sources of protein weren't abundant. I wonder if the scarcity of protein during that time led to overall attitudes towards diet/nutrition that then led to body types that were significantly leaner (notably in the bust)? And now with the abundance of foodstuffs and the overall Westernization of food in many areas of Japan we're seeing body types that are more closely linked to that type of diet?
Here's my peer-reviewed academic reference to back this all up: an AV where the "plot" is that a family is too poor to feed their daughter and, as such, they are forced to rent her out to make ends meet
http://www.dmm.co.jp/digital/videoa/-/detail/=/cid=h_491love00393/?i3_ref=search&i3_ord=27
Not a bad assumption but there does exist pre-war non statistical information about bust sizes and from what I know, tiny boobs were the norm.
Not a bad assumption but there does exist pre-war non statistical information about bust sizes and from what I know, tiny boobs were the norm.
Yep. Looks all screwed up in a Kimono. Even in the Showa era, as I understand it, women with more than a champagne glass worth of mammary would often wrap their chests to try and look smaller.I remember hearing that big busted women in the Edo period were called はと胸 - pigeon breasted - and it wasn't seen as fashionable.
Yep. Looks all screwed up in a Kimono. Even in the Showa era, as I understand it, women with more than a champagne glass worth of mammary would often wrap their chests to try and look smaller.
99.999% of Japanese women don't have a butt, they just have a extension of their back. If you compare model back view standing reference photos (not sexy stuff, artists reference) of western (including african origin) and Japanese women you will note that the gluteus maximus muscle joins the back/top of hipbone much lower than western women. Thus "long back". Its just that Japanese girls/women have learned those selfie poses to make it look like they actually have butts.Same thing happened to butts. Girls would be ashamed of having one, but lately everyone is showing off theirs or working on them. Or have they always been "in"? Not sure.
This is certainly something that happened with western girls!Same thing happened to butts. Girls would be ashamed of having one, but lately everyone is showing off theirs or working on them. Or have they always been "in"? Not sure.
But again, Japanese women rarely have "ass" in the sense we understand it so those larger hip sizes just mean chunk and Japanese men (the primary consumers) know that fact.Japanese shops actively lying down the girls hip and waist sizes
Shot down! Haha...
I remember hearing that big busted women in the Edo period were called はと胸 - pigeon breasted - and it wasn't seen as fashionable.
I have the feeling this does not apply to oiran and their revealing kimonos.Yep. Looks all screwed up in a Kimono. Even in the Showa era, as I understand it, women with more than a champagne glass worth of mammary would often wrap their chests to try and look smaller.
Primal instinct is to be attracted to big hips and big breast.
Again: beauty ideal vs what men actually go for.
I have the feeling this does not apply to oiran and their revealing kimonos.
This is certainly something that happened with western girls!
When i was young, having a big ass was something shamefull, now its "hot". But i believe it has always been hot for Latina and black girls, and that its always been shameful for Asians and is still largely not considered attractive here. (Japanese shops actively lying down the girls hip and waist sizes but lying up the breast sizes). However, these are again "beauty ideal" stereotypes and there are plenty of Japanese men who like some ass, i think. Primal instinct is to be attracted to big hips and big breast.