Victorian Prudery(PART 1 OF 3)

　
　　
　
Victorian Prudery(PART 1 OF 3)
　　
　

　
　

No panties, please!



In the first place, the Japanese women used to wear no panties---let alone, brassiere.
Men wore a loincloth while women wore "koshi-maki(腰巻)" or something like petticoat.



Women in

"koshi-maki(腰巻)"

In 1919 the headmaster at Ochanomizu girls' high school forced his students to wear panties or drawers.
After graduation, however, 90 percent of those students stopped wearing panties simply because they abided by the prevailing customs.

One of the reasons why the Japanese women started to wear panties is to have experienced some major disasters, one of which was the Great Kanto Earthquake that took place in 1923.
Another disaster was the fire that happened at the Shirokiya Department store in 1932.
The shoppers involved in the accident tried to escape the fire using a rope along the exterior of the building.

However, the female shoppers didn't wear panties.
A great number of onlookers watched the escaping women, who hesitated to jump down because of their sense of prudery.
If the female shoppers jumped down, the hem of their kimono would flare up and their private parts would expose themselves to the eyes of the curious onlookers.
Instead, the women preferred burning-to-death to exposing their private parts.

Since this fire, the Japanese women started to wear panties.

(translated by Kato)
(pictures from the Denman Library)

---

206 page
"When did the Japanese feel ashamed of nakedness"
by Akira Nakano;
published by Shincho-sha(新潮社)
on May 25, 2010

Quoted in :
"Unwashed Panties and
Good Gals in Bed"
(August 25,2011)
『生パンツと床上手』に掲載

Kato, are you serious?



Yes, of course, I am. I'm not joking nor jesting.

But I can hardly believe that those Japanese women preferred death because of their prudery.

You believe it or not, Diane, it is supposed to be a historical fact. The fire at the department actually happened and many female shoppers died due to their prudery.

Amazing!

Yes, it is indeed, but that prudery had been imported by the Westerners---the British, the Americans and the Germans.

How do you know?

Look at the following picture!



Public bath house in Shimoda

around the 1850s



Jeez. This is a picture of mixed bathing scene, isn't it?



Yes, it is. Actually, this picture was painted by Wilhelm Heine, a German artist.

Wilhelm Heine



Full name: Peter Bernhard Wilhelm Heine

He was born on January 30, 1827 in Dresden,
and died on October 5, 1885 in Lößnitz bei Dresden.
He was a German-American artist, world traveller and writer.

Heine studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Dresden and in the studio of Julius Hübner.
Then he continued his artistic studies for three years in Paris.
He returned to Dresden getting work as a scene designer for the court theatre and giving painting classes.
He fled to New York in 1849, following the suppression of the May Uprising in Dresden in which he participated.
In this he was aided by Alexander von Humboldt.

He set up his artist studio at 515 Broadway, and soon established his reputation as an artist.
After meeting the archaeologist and diplomat, Ephraim George Squier, Heine was invited to accompany him, as an artist, on his consular duties to Central America.

Proceeding ahead of Squier, he collected and recorded indigenous plants and animals and compiled notes for future publications.
Until Squier arrived, Heine stood in as consul, negotiating a commercial agreement between the Central American countries and the United States, which he delivered to Washington.
The record of this expedition was published in 1853 as the Wanderbilder aus Centralamerika.

While in Washington, he met President Millard Fillmore and Commodore Matthew Perry, and was selected from among several score of applicants for the post of official artist to the Perry expedition to Japan.



Commodore Matthew Perry

Nominally attached to Perry's expedition as an Acting Master's Mate in the United States Navy, Heine visited Okinawa, the Bonin Islands, Yokohama, Shimoda and Hakodate during 1853 and 1854.
Tokyo (Edo), however, remained closed to the members of the American expedition, and Heine was not to visit the city until 1860, when he returned to Japan as a member of the Prussian Expedition.

The sketches he produced of the places he visited and the people he encountered there, together with the daguerreotypes taken by his colleague Eliphalet Brown Jr., formed the basis of a official iconograhy of the American expedition to Japan which remains an important record of the country as it was before the foreigners arrived in force.

SOURCE:
Wilhelm Heine, Wikipedia
PICTURES: from the Denman Library

So, when the German artist visited the public bath house in Shimoda, the Japanese didn't feel ashamed of their nakedness at all, did they?



No, the Japanese at the time didn't care about their nakedness at all.

Amazing! 　What a big change between the 1850s and 1930s.

Yes, it was a big change, yet the Westerners---the Britishi, in particular---also experienced a big change.

Oh...? 　What change?

Well..., Diane, please read the following passage.

(To be continued)