The Many Faces of Japan!

I chose to do my project on the Japanese people. Sure, it is very obivious that the Japanese people are a part of Japanese culture but do many people consider them beautiful? Without the Japanese people there would be no Japan. With many different peoples stereotypical idea of how a Japanese person it is interesting how they make people notice them. I decided to narrow my research down to picture taking and interviews.

- This picture was taken while doing maiko which is rarely done by the japanese now.

The peace sign is so big in Japan one might find themselves doing it after awhile staying in Japan. My task to myself was to uncover why they do the peace sign and to capture the true person uderneath the sign and face.

-This picture on the left was taken of a woman doing her usual pose with the peace sign included. However, to the right is her caught of guard doing something quite different from her usual self!

I wanted to show two different sides of a person. However, I found it difficult to get people to let their guard down and how the real them. So I focused my effects on a few individuals that will remain nameless. I got to know these people very well and I saw the real them hopefully you can too!

- These two pictures I found fascinating. The one on the left was taken at a pre-school on lunch break and apparently this woman was incharge of the money. The one on the right is a training subway man who was being tested for his job.

Many people I interviewed said that they felt the peace sign or the "V" for victory was what people expected of them as well as part of the Japanese people. Because the Japanese have been doing the sign for decades, now many believe that it is a Japanese thing to do. For people that feel it is expected of them to do the peace sign I believe that is a stereotype and the Japanese just let the stereotype stay the way it is.

- In these two pictures I found women who were like other Japanese people and thinking the peace sign is cute and I also found someone with inner beauty and she knew it.

Many Japanese people have such a dedication to their jobs that sometimes it is scary. I deicided to catch some Japanese being their childish selves again. I believe that at times the Japanese could learn things from foreigners as well as their children. Just because someone is an adult does not neccessarily mean that one can not have fun.

-These two photography's I took were showing adult's acting like children. The man is feeding deer in Miyajima and the woman is being a child once more in a Nagano zoo.

-I feel that the Japanese can learn from their children to relax and live a little. The woman's photo was taken at a maiko parlor in Kyoto. The children were on a bus tour with me for several hours.

-Children have such innocence and do not care much about what society wants from them or what other people do either. The boy just smiled at his mother in the audience at his school. The other boy decided to strike a pose for me. Do you think that when the Japanese strike some pose it is the same as threwing the peace sign?

- Three Japanese women at a local sushi bar striking a pose once more at the camera. However, not the peace sign. Four Kansai Gaidai students at a purikura place in Kyobashi.

I would like to know what you think about my blog as well as the Japanese peace sign and poses. Hopefully we as a people can figure out why the Japanese do what they do. Thank you for reading feel free to comment please!