Mannequins in Japan (or Blog Essay #1)

A post writtin in the blog "Visual Anthropology of Japan" concerning the end of summer in Japan had something in it that caught my interest.

Mannequins in Japan, for the most part, look like Western people. The photo in the blog post displays a typical looking family in yukata, ready for a festival. There is a mother, a father, a son, and a daughter. The strange thing is that none of them even have black hair. They look like mannequins straight out of a Dillard's department store in the States. I suppose most people don't even think twice about what mannequins look like, but think about it for a second.

If you're Japanese and you live in Japan, wouldn't you expect to see Japanese mannequins displaying clothes in stores?

It seems to me that Japanachived Westernization a long time ago, but really, Western mannequins take things to a whole new level to me. I'm not saying that all mannequins in Japan should look Japanese, but it is unusual that a group of mannequins displaying traditional Japanese clothing would look so un-Japanese.

The original post can be found at: http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2007/08/some-summer-images.html