Liang Xiaosheng on Japanese Women

I have always liked Chinese writer Liang Xiaosheng's (梁晓声, pictured) Cultural Revolution stories and have associated him with such. So it was refreshing, even somewhat hilarious, to read about his observations of Japanese women.

In his article published in the book 中国人与外国人 (Chinese and Foreigners, 1997), Liang's puzzlement and bewilderment with Japanese women can be summed up as: "What is wrong with these Japanese women?"

According to Liang, it is ironic that Japanese women who are repressed at home and submissive in society can have no sense of unease - even no sense of shame - when it comes to 1) talking about their sexual experiences in public, and 2) doing things in public that required the, er, abandonment of female modesty.

Recounting the several television shows he had watched when he was in Japan, Liang recalled his amazement when countless women, when approached, volunteered to strip down to their bras and panties in public for inane television programs that are (naturally) geared towards male gratification.

According to Liang, many had no qualms about stripping, and did it almost happily and without a second thought. They even had no problems being interviewed after their stripping sessions, and answered questions on how many sexual encounters they had ("over 300 times" for one) almost as unabashedly as answering a question on what they had for breakfast.

Liang was even more amazed after watching a young female television presenter wearing a bunny outfit approaching passersby on the streets and asking them questions. If the questions were correctly answered, she'd press a button and the two flaps covering her chest will be "flipped" open to reveal her breasts. Ditto too for the two flaps covering her posterior.

Then there were the countless programs on TV detailing how much Japanese women had grown over the decades. And again, women would almost spontaneously volunteer to strip down to their undies, and have their vital statistic measured in public. They'd even have no qualms if the TV hosts (usually male, but of course) touched, pinched, or caressed them.

Did Liang wish that Chinese women can be more like their Japanese counterparts? Dream on, he said, as Chinese women are strong-minded, stubborn and unsubmissive.