Blackface as Racial Rebellion in Japan

In the mid-1990s, the ganguro subculture developed as a fashion trend in Japan as a means of rebelling against traditional Japanese beauty standards. Popular among teenage girls, its devotees tanned or blackened their faces/bodies and donned brightly-colored makeup to differentiate themselves from their pale skinned and traditionally conservative elders. Although its influences have been debated, some postulate that ganguro was influenced by a budding hip hop culture in Japan, while others have cited its use as a means of demonstrating a shift in attitude by young Japanese against the country's racial hierarchy.

Two examples of the ganguro subculture, which was popular in the mid-1990s.

Though ganguro does involve darkening the skin, it differs in some aspects from blackface minstrelsy. Not all adopters use black skin paint, but often just tan excessively to achieve a burnt orange glow. Ganguro girls also often incorporate traditionally white features into their style, wearing blonde wigs and blue eye contacts. In "Wearing Out Racial Discourse: Tokyo Street Fashion and Race as Style", Daniel Black hypothesizes that "in mixing and matching racialized features, the [ganguro] is formulating a new and singular position relative to the aestheticization of racialized anatomy, not seeking entrance to another existing categorization" (250). As Japan traditionally has viewed white bodies as the ideal, Black suggests that ganguro questions this standard through its adaptation of multiple racial identities. However, although its intent is arguably not to imitate or mock black people, it does not mean it is not appropriative or racist – particularly if its roots are indeed linked to a desire to emulate hip hop culture.

While researching ganguro, I was reminded of how even after blackface minstrelsy popularly died out in the United States in the 1960s, it continued in college campuses "as a form of rebellion against 'political correctness'" (Smulyan 39). Ganguro similarly uses fashion to protest Japanese beauty standards, although it also appropriates black identities to achieve its end. Do you think that ganguro could have achieved a similar statement without using blackface (i.e. by using a different color of face paint)? Or was the use of blackface, no matter how problematic, integral to what it was hoping to accomplish?

Sources:
Black, Daniel. "Wearing Out Racial Discourse: Tokyo Street Fashion and Race as Style." The Journal of Popular Culture 42.2 (2009): 239-56. Wiley Online Library. Web. 22 Sept. 2013.

Smulyan, Susan. "Minstrel Laughs: Popular Culture, Race, and the Middle Class." Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2007. 16-40. Print.