"When my informants look at a beautiful young Caucasian model in an advertisement with a slogan, such as, 'for making your skin beautiful and young', they can simply see 'young' and 'beauty' in the model's face. They are looking at a beautiful woman in the advertisement, but not particularly a beautiful Caucasian woman. p,82" and the placement of European female models in local advertisements is not perceived as an exaltation of white women. "The partial dethroning of European-heritage people as representatives of a superior 'white race' does not necessarily imply the abandonment of whiteness as an ideal or model in Japan." [...] "The ugliness of European whiteness as compared with Japanese whiteness was mentioned by several of his informants. More specifically it was argued that European-heritage people do not possess white skin but transparent skin." "Three respondents' views are cited below: This may be completely unscientific but I feel that when I look at the skin of a Japanese woman I see the whiteness of her skin. When I observe Caucasian skin, what I see is the whiteness of the fat underneath the skin, not the whiteness of the skin itself." I have seen Caucasians closely only a few times but my impression is that their skin is very thin, almost transparent, while our skin is thicker and more resilient. The Caucasian skin is something like the surface of a pork sausage, while the skin of a Japanese resembles the outside of 'kamaboko' [a white, spongy fish cake] (cited by Wagatsuma, 1968, pp. 142-3)"
