Japanese Kimono

Archive for the ‘Japanese Kimono’ Category

Question: Has crooked legs become genetic in Japan?

I love going to Japan. I go there every year or 2 since I was 10. But 2 weeks ago, I was in Japan and discovered something I never noticed before: 80% of Japanese girls that I saw had crooked legs and 40% of Japanese boys did too. I heard that is was because of the traditional way of sitting down in Japan, which was sitting on your knees. Not many girls in Japan sit like that anymore unless they're wearing a kimono. But normally boys wouldn't sit like that, and they would tend to sit in a lotus position, which normally makes your legs straight. So I'm thinking, since the Japanese women sat on their knees for such a long time during the period where they mainly wore kimonos, it may have become genetic and even spread the "crooked-leg gene" to the men too? I don't know if this sounds silly to anyone else, but is it true?

Answer: Injuries that happen to you do not impact your DNA.
If your mother loses her leg to diabetes and then gives birth to you, you will not be born missing a leg. And it's not because your father still has his two legs and you got lucky.
Long ago a scientist thinking that things like this only come after generations of body abuse took rats and cut off their tails. And their offspring's tails. And their offspring's offspring's tails. You can see where this is going. He did this for litter after litter after litter but--guess what--all the rats were always born with tails.

Bowlegged-ness isn't caused by any style of sitting or nutrition. It's caused simply by genetics. Crooked legs appear in all countries, but the Japanese "bred" it into themselves. Long ago the walking style that gets created by crooked legs on a woman wearing a kimono was seen as more attractive. Attractive people are more likely to marry and have children as they were favored over others, and since this is a genetic defect where people are naturally born with a more starkly curved tibia bone in the leg the genes get passed down and continue.
The same goes with rats. Take a black-eyed rat and one with red eyes and the genes are going to be passed down. If you keep choosing to breed only the rats that display red eyes or carry the gene for it you're soon going to have a lot of red-eyed rats.

The Honeymooners reach Japan, 1930. Film 6590

Question: What is a juban? (Put this under traditional Japanese clothing)?

Okay, I'm trying to figure out how Japanese women in the 1700s and earlier would have worn their kimonos and what they put under then, and I was told they used a bra-wrap, a hip-wrap or kimono slip, and a juban. But I can't figure out exactly what a juban is, so help please?

Answer: A juban (you might see it called other things too, like nagajuban) is underwear. It typically has the same basic shape as a kimono, and when worn properly the collar and a little bit of the back of the sleeves will show. Think of it like a camisole -- a cami is a shirt-shaped piece of clothing you wear under other shirts. A juban is a kimono-shaped piece of clothing you wear under kimono. Juban are still used today under kimono. The two basic styles of juban are one-piece juban, which look the most like kimono and may be a touch shorter than the kimono they're worn under, and two-piece juban, which consist of a separate top and wrap-around skirt bottom.

If you're going earlier than the 1700s you need to watch out, though, because there are substantial periods in history where juban weren't worn. For example, in the Heian era, the undermost garment was a white kosode, which is actually the predecessor of modern kimono. To my knowledge there was no juban-like garment worn under the kosode.

How to wear japanese kimono yukata!!