I don’t generally find myself interested in celebrity gossip, but my wife is fascinated by it. One thing here lately that has caught my attention though is a spate of celebrities getting plastic surgery. These aren’t generally minor celebrities either. They are pretty big names, and a lot of the surgery is really blatant.
I’m not talking about breast implants or the like, I mean actually altering their faces, in some cases drastically (although almost always for the better). This has been kind of a big subject on the Japanese “blogosphere” and in the “less official” magazines and stuff. They would never out and out ask these things are Japanese TV or in any of the big time magazines though.
A few examples in the main post. Click the link below to read the rest (unless you’re already here of course), but be forewarned there are a few pictures of (somewhat) scantily clad women (no nudity though). If that offends you, don’t continue.
So here’s a few examples.
This is Yuko Ogura. She’s a cutesy/whiney type “idol”. Which is the Japanese term applied to pinup models, who almost always also end up on tv shows and branching out into singing, etc. Ogura is one of the more popular “idols” here.
This Is Yada Akiko (Japanese fan site), another idol/big time commercial celebrity here.
Itoh Misaki, another celebrity who appears in a ton of commercials and tv shows.
Yonekura Ryoko, another celebrity who appears in a ton of commercials.
Otsuka Ai, a fairly popular (and incredibly annoying, she has this horrible high pitched squealing voice, and all of her songs are insipid nonsense, seriously, go listen) singer here.
And then the two bigger “scandals” of late.
Yumiko Shaku, a former (present?) idol, and co-host of an English study program on NHK (the Japanese equivalent of PBS essentially). She has apparently had plastic surgery in the past, and then this time her surgery was so sudden that to viewers it seemed that she appeared on an episode of the English conversation show she hosts with a different face than she had last episode.
First the old
Then the new
And last but not least, maybe the most drastic change, Oshikiri Moe (Japanese Home Page), who is a top model here. I knew of this girl from a magazine my wife reads. This girl and 2 others from this magazine have made it really big lately, and it’s hard to turn on the TV without seeing one of the three (if you happen to be interested the other two are Yamada Yu and Ebihara Yuri [Japanese homepage again]. After the other two made it big, Oshikiri all the sudden started showing up in tv commercials with a new face. She is kind of known for having done this before though. See the pictures below for the 3 stages of Oshikiri.
Old
Mid
And New
One last comparison shot…
4 Comments
I didn’t realize this type of plastic surgery was so prevalent in Japan either. Is it just me, or did Yumiko Shaku look better before her surgery? In that one double picture you posted up there (after the one with her and the dog), I personally thinks she looks much better in the pic marked 2005 than she does in the one marked 2006.
They even have a TV show where they pay for normal (non-celebrity) people to have plastic surgery.
I am not an expert on plastic surgery, but it’s pretty amazing what they can do here. One of the girls they had on the above-mentioned show changed so drastically I was positive it was a different person.
I don’t dislike Shaku’s new look, but I have to agree in that there was nothing really wrong with her before the surgery. Apparently she is trying to look like a TV announcer named Takigawa Krystal, who you can see here…
http://blog.e-danbe.net/images/takigawa.jpg
It all reminds of this joke this comedian (don’t recall who it was) used to do about plastic surgery and how it would be strange to marry this beautiful, gorgeous girl, but then when you have kids, they turn out butt ugly, because it turns out the wife had tons of plastic surgery.
Back in the states celebrities have plastic surgery, but I think they tend to be more subtle (with notable exceptions) about it. Generally they try to keep the same face no matter how old they get or what not, but with the Japanese celebrities it’s trendy to get a whole new face.
Oh, thanks for posting Takigawa’s picture… now I guess Shaku’s look makes more sense to me. Still, I didn’t know how trendy it was to get a whole new face like that!!
Love the joke about the ugly kids, by the way. I’ll have to remember that one!!
Yeah, obviously it’s not all celebrities who do it, but it is getting more common, which is why I thought it was interesting.
The Morning Musume music groups and their male equivalents Jonny’s are fairly famous for doing this and you can find tons of photos on the Web showing how their faces (especially eyes and noses) gradually change throughout the years. In those cases it seems that it’s actually something that the management companies suggest and even pay for.
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