寻找美丽女人：中日美女文化史

An oblique tooth is viewed in the United States as requiring straightening but in Japan it may be thought of as emblematic of a young woman’s charm. While a slim body is a prerequisite for beauty today East and West plump women were considered beautiful in Tang dynasty (618-907) China and Heian (794-1185) Japan. Starting from around the twelfth century in China bound feet symbolized the attractiveness of women. But Japan which received sundry influences from China never adopted foot binding. Instead shaving eyebrows and blackening teeth became markers of feminine beauty. Before modern times neither Japanese nor Chinese paid much attention to double eyelids but in the course of the long twentieth century they became a standard for distinguishing beautiful from plain women. Thus criteria of beauty greatly differ by era and culture and therein lies many riddles.

一颗歪牙，在美国会被认为是需要矫正的牙齿，在日本，它却被视为年轻女性具有吸引力的表现。尽管时下东西方都将纤细的身材当作美丽的先决条件，然而在中国唐朝（618-907）和日本的平安时代（794-1185），丰满的女人被认为是美丽的。在中国，约从十二世纪开始，被缠裹的双脚象征着女性魅力。然而在日本这个受到中国纷杂影响的国家，缠足从来没有被接受过，取而代之的是剃掉眉毛与涂黑牙齿成为女性美的标志。近代以前，无论中国还是日本都没有对双眼皮投以关注；然而在二十世纪的漫长进程中，双眼皮成为了区分女性普通或美的标准。如此，美的条件会因地区、文化而大为不同，这其中存在着许多谜团。

Focusing on changing representations of beauty in Chinese and Japanese cultures Cho Kyo in The Search for the Beautiful Woman (Bijo towa nanika: Nitchū bijin no bunkashi) attempts to clarify such riddles from the angle of comparative cultural history. Before modern times Japanese culture was profoundly shaped by Chinese culture and representations of feminine beauty too received continental influences. In considering Japanese representations of feminine beauty the author examines literary and artistic sources scattered across historical materials and classical literary works.

针对中日文化中女性美的特征改变这个情况Cho Kyo 在《寻找漂亮的女人》这一书中试图从文化史比较的角度来破解谜团。近代以前，日本文化受中国文化深刻影响，女性美的特征也受大陆的影响。关于日本女性美的特征，作者考证了分散的历史资料和文学经典中的文化艺术资料。

Cho Kyo (Chinese name Zhang Jing) is a professor in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University who has been a guest professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). His specialization is comparative literature with cultural history as a secondary field of research. These sextions are excerpted from his 2012 book The Search for the Beautiful Woman: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and Aesthetics (Rowman & Littlefield Kyoko Selden translator).

Cho Kyo（中文名张京）是日本明治大学全球日本研究学院的教授，曾经是国际研究中心日本研究院的客座教授。他的第二研究领域专长于比较文学和文化历史、这些片段都节选自他2012年的著作《寻找漂亮的女人：历史和当代审美视角》（Rowman & Littlefield Kyoko Selden 翻译)这本书。

Are There Universal Criteria for Beauty?

美有通用的标准吗？

The Search for the Beautiful Woman: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and Aesthetics trans. Kyoko Selden (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2012).

《寻找漂亮的女人：历史和当代审美视角》翻译Kyoko Selde（Rowman & Littlefield Kyoko Selden 2012)

What constitutes a beautiful woman? Intrinsically criteria vary greatly depending upon peoples and cultures. A woman thought of as a beauty in one culture may be considered plain in another. This is not normally in our consciousness. Rather images of beauty are thought to be universal across cultures. Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn gain worldwide fame as beauties not simply in American eyes but in Asian and African eyes. But on the basis of what criteria?

美女有哪些特征？内在标准很大程度上取决于人们和文化。在一种文化中视为美女的可能在另一文化中认为是很普通的。这通常不受我们的意识控制。当然美的形象可以跨越文化差异。Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn是世界公认的美女，不仅在美国的审美观中，亚洲和非洲也同样视他们为美女。但最基本的标准到底是什么呢？

Have universal standards for determining beauty emerged with the global reach of consumer culture and the media? As products of multinational enterprises transcend national boundaries to spread worldwide people of different races and nations have come to use the same cosmetics and people of different skin colors and facial and bodily features have come to don similar fashions. As a result the fact that different cultures have distinctive standards of beauty was forgotten before we realized it.

难道美的通用标准是由消费文化和媒体的全球覆盖决定的？超越国界全球传播，不同种族、不同国家的人们使用同样的化妆品，不同肤色和面部身体特征的人们有同样的时尚。事实上，不同文化的人们有自己独特的审美标准，只不过在我们意识到之前就遗忘了。

In earlier epochs different cultures shared no common conception of beauty. In ancient times each culture held a different image of beautiful women. This was naturally so when cultures were widely different such as Western Europe and East Asia but images were not identical even between closely connected cultures. Both Chinese and Japanese are Mongoloid. Moreover in pre-modern times China and Japan shared Confucian culture. Despite the fact that cultural ties between the two countries were extremely close however images of beauty in Edo Japan (1600-1868) and Qing China (1644-1911) were strikingly different. For example while bound feet were a condition for female beauty in China in Japan blackened teeth were considered beautiful.

在较早的时代，不同文化对美的概念都有不同的理解。古代，每种文化都对美女有不同的画像。在文化差异大的地区这很自然，比如西欧和东亚，但是即使在紧密联系的文化中，画像也不是太完全一致。中国和日本都是蒙古人种，在现代社会之前，中日都有儒家文化。除了两国文化的紧密关联之外，两国美女画像在江户时代(1600-1868)和清朝(1644-1911)明显不同。比如，中国女性以裹足为美，日本女性则以黑齿为美。

At present with the advance of globalization the same commodities are not only distributed throughout the world but also information easily transcends cultural walls. Boundary crossings represented by satellite television film and the Internet have greatly changed values and aesthetics of the non-Western world but also of the Western world ... such that the very categories of East and West and perhaps North and South are problematized. As American visual culture is being consumed at the global level the Western sense of beauty inevitably penetrates today’s developing countries. But Chinese and Japanese conceptions of beauty have also at various times made their way across the globe through art literature film commodities and communications.

现在，随着全球化趋势的蔓延，不仅货物可以流通到世界各地，信息也突破了文化的限制传播。电视、电影、网络的跨界，已经在很大程度上改变了西方世界和非西方世界人们的审美观....打破了东西方和南北方的局限。因为全世界都在消费美国的视觉文化，当然西方的审美观也不可避免的打入了到了今天的发展中国家。但是中日两国美的概念很多时候也通过文学、电影、媒体等商品的方式在全球占有一席之地。

Despite the rapidly advancing standardization of aesthetic sensibility however criteria of beauty have not necessarily become uniform. In Sichuan province a young medical student from the Republic of Mali became acquainted with a Chinese woman. They fell in love and eventually married the bridegroom staying on in China and becoming a doctor. A People’s Daily reporter who interviewed him asked: “Would you let us know the secret for winning a beauty like your wife?” “We Mali people have a completely different sense of beauty from yours. A person you regard as a beauty isn’t necessarily always beautiful in our eyes” he said by way of preface before answering the reporter’s question.

除了急速发展的美感标准化外，美的标准却还没统一。在四川省，一位来自马里共和国的医学院学生结识一位中国女人。他们相爱结婚定居在中国，当了医生。人民日报采访他，“你可以告诉我们是怎样获得像妻子这样美的女孩的芳心的吗？‘他回答问题前先说了这样一句话：”马里人和你们的审美观完全不同，你们觉得美的人在我们眼里不一定也美“

The absence of universal standards for physical beauty was recognized early on along with the discovery of “the intercultural.” Ever since Darwin stated “It is certainly not true that there is in the mind of man any universal standard of beauty with respect to the human body”1 many researchers have made the same point. Claude Lévi-Strauss who observed the body drawings of the Caduveo tribe in Brazil and described them in Tristes Tropiques (1955) conjectured as to why many men belonging to other tribes came to settle and marry Caduveo women at Nalike: “Perhaps the facial and body paintings explain the attraction; at all events they strengthen and symbolize it. The delicate and subtle markings which are as sensitive as the lines of the face and sometimes accentuate them sometimes run counter to them make the women delightfully alluring.”2  When he wrote this the aesthetics that greatly differed from Western sense of beauty did not shock his readers. In their daily lives however most people still believe that essential physical beauty exists universally.

生理美的标准的出现早于”跨文化“的发现。达尔文说：”人类美的衡量标准不仅仅局限于身体上“1，很多研究者也作出了同样的结论。列维 ; 克劳德·李维-史陀，观察了巴西卡杜维奥部落的身体图案，他在《忧郁的热带》 (1955)推测道：为什么其他部落的男人会娶巴西卡杜女人并在Nalike安定下来：”也许，脸部和身体彩绘能解释她们的吸引力；无论如何，彩绘强化、代表了她们的美。脸部线条的精细刻画让她们很高雅温和，有吸引力。2，当他写到他的审美观与西方审美观有很大不同时，并没有让读者惊讶。在他们的日常生活中，大多数人人认为身体上的是广泛存在的。

Kitagawa Utamaro The Courtesan Takikawa of the Ogiya Brothel Accompanied by her Kamuro 1801. Honolulu Museum of Art; WikiCommons.

喜多川歌磨（译者注：喜多川歌磨1753-1806，日本浮世绘最著名的大师之一，善画美人画，“大首绘”创始人。）作品：荻谷青楼的妓女泷川和她的神室。绘于1801年。现存于檀香山艺术馆。维基共享资源。

How Foreign Races Were Regarded

外国种族如何被评价

It was in the twentieth century that images of beauty became homogenized from the West to Asia and Africa. Earlier aesthetics of facial features not only differed but with some exceptions different peoples thought one another ugly. The Portuguese Dominican friar Gaspar da Cruz (1520-70) who visited China in the mid-sixteenth century portrayed the Chinese in his South China in the Sixteenth Century as having “small eyes low noses large faces.”3 Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) the Italian Jesuit priest who stayed in China from 1552 to 1616 wrote “Men’s beards are thin and meager and at times they have none at all. Their hair is rough and straight…. The narrow elliptical eyes are noticeably black. The nose is small and flat….”4 While neither missionary directly says Chinese are ugly discomfort lurks between the lines.

到二十世纪，美的意象从西方到亚洲和非洲逐渐同质化。早期的面部特征美学不仅各不相同，除少数外，几乎不同的人种都认为其他人种丑陋。葡萄牙多明尼教派传教士加斯帕尔·达·克鲁斯（1520-1570）在十六世纪中叶访问了中国，他在“十六世纪的南中国”中将中国人描述为“小眼睛塌鼻梁大饼脸”。意大利耶稣会传教士利玛窦（1552-1610）1552年到1616年待在中国，他写道，“中国男人的胡子很稀疏，有时候根本没有。（译者：明朝太监应该不少吧？）他们的头发又粗又直…狭窄的椭圆形眼睛呈现出明显的黑色，鼻子又小又塌……”但没有一个传教士直接说中国人丑陋，尽管字里行间让人略感不适。

Japanese faces looked the same way to Westerners’ eyes. The German doctor Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796-1866) who resided in Japan from 1823 to 1829 and 1858 to 1862 states of people of inland Kyushu “their faces are flat and wide with small and wide noses large mouths and thick lips” “wings of the nose pressed deep eyes wide apart cheek bones protruding.”5 Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) who visited Japan in 1775 says: “[Japanese people’s eyes] are oblong small and are sunk deeper in the head in the consequence of which these people have almost the appearance of being pink-eyed. In other respects their eyes are dark-brown or rather black. . . . The eyebrows are also placed somewhat higher. Their heads are in general large and their necks short; their hair black thick and shining from the use they make of oils. Their noses although not flat are yet rather thick and short.”6 As time passed exaggerated portrayals of ugliness became fewer but eyes directed toward Mongoloids did not change much from the cases of Gaspar da Cruz and Matteo Ricci.

在西方人眼里日本人的脸亦是如此。德国医生菲利普.弗兰兹.巴尔塔萨.凡.西博尔德（1796-1866）在1823-1829和1858-1862年间居住在日本，他将九州岛内人描述为：“又宽又扁的脸上长着宽短鼻子，大嘴巴，厚嘴唇”，“鼻翼紧压，双眼分得很开，颧骨突出”。瑞典植物学家卡尔.皮特.桑伯格（1743-1828）曾在1775年访问过日本，“日本人的眼睛又小又方，深深陷在脑袋里，导致这些人看起来几乎都是粉眼睛。但他们的眼睛是深褐色的，或者相当黑的颜色……眉毛长得有点高。大脑袋短脖子，头发又黑又厚，用油抹得闪闪发亮。他们的鼻子虽然不塌但又短又粗。”随着时间的推移，这种丑陋的夸张描绘越来越少，但是对黄种人的观察，从加斯帕尔·达·克鲁斯和利玛窦那时起就一直没什么变化。

Westerners similarly appeared ugly or grotesque in Asian eyes. Yan Shigu (581-645) of the Tang period writes in an annotation in “Traditions of the Western Regions” fascicle 96 of The Book of the Former Han “The Wusun [tribe] have the strangest features among the various peoples of the Western Regions.7 The reason that today’s Hu people [an ethnic group in northern and western regions] with their blue eyes and red beards resemble monkeys in countenance is that they derive from the same ancestors as the Wusun.” When Tang people saw blue (or jasper-green) eyes and red beards they reflexively thought of animals. Of course peoples of the Western Regions are not Westerners. But to Tang Chinese deep sculpted faces of the Caucasoid type appeared ugly.

西方人在亚洲人眼中看起来很丑陋或怪异。唐朝的闫世谷（581-645）在前汉书籍第96分册“西方地区的传统”中注释道：乌孙部落在西部地区的各民族中拥有最诡异的特征。今天的胡人（北部和西部地区的一个民族）长着蓝眼睛和红胡子，脸很像猴子的原因就是他们源自同一个祖先乌孙。当唐朝人看到蓝（或碧绿）眼睛和红胡子的人，他们本能地将其认成动物。当然西部地区的人并不是西方人。但是在唐朝中国人眼里，白人那种深度雕刻的脸庞是丑陋的。

Likewise when they directly described Europeans. “Biographies” 213 in fascicle 325 of The History of the Ming (1368-1644) characterizes the Dutch as having “deep set eyes and a long nose with the hair eyebrows and beard equally red.” Seemingly an obxtive depiction of physical characteristics the passage employs the words “deep set eyes and long noses” with a clearly derogatory nuance. The term “red hair” (hongmao) as a disparaging alias for Westerners began to be used around then. Likewise “red hair jasper eyes” (hongmao biyan) was a negative expression. As in Tang China red hair (or gold hair) and blue eyes were directly connected to the image of wild animals. Such a view was finally reversed in modern times.

当他们描述欧洲人时亦是如此。“列传”在明朝历史（1368-1644）325册中的第213页将荷兰人描述为“深邃的眼睛，长长的鼻子，红头发、红眉毛和红胡子”。看起来是对物理特征的一个任务性的描述，但他们采用的词汇“深眼窝和长鼻子”却带有明显的贬义色彩。从那时开始，词条“红头发”（红毛）便成为称呼西方人的绰号。同样的“红色头发碧绿眼睛”（红毛碧眼）也是个负面表达。这是因为在中国的唐朝，红头发（或金发）直接和蓝眼睛连在一起就是一副野生动物的形象。这样的观点直到近代才最终被推翻。

Leng Mei Leaves 24 and 25 from Collected Album of Paintings 1677-1742. National Palace Museum Taipei; WikiCommons.

冷枚（译者注：清代宫廷画师，善画人物、界画，尤精仕女）1677-1742画集中的第24、25册。现存于台北故宫。维基资源共享。

Following the Opium War (1840-42) China and the West experienced a reversal of power and Chinese views of Westerners gradually changed. In 1866 the Qing official Bin Chun (1827-1910) was sent as the first formal representative to observe Europe. European women came to look beautiful in his eyes.8 Interestingly his memoir called Occasional Jottings Aboard a Raft (Chengcha biji) makes no reference at all to the color of hair and eyes.

鸦片战争后（1840-1842），中国和西方经历了一个力量的逆转，中国人对西方人的观点逐渐改变。1866年清朝官员斌椿（1827-1910）作为第一个正式大使去观察欧洲。在他的眼里，欧洲女人看起来很漂亮。有趣的是他的回忆录，被称为木筏随笔（乘槎笔记）中，丝毫没提及头发和眼睛的颜色。

When looking at people of a different race or ethnicity whether the observation is of the same gender can affect aesthetic judgments. There are many examples in which in the eyes of male observers foreigners of the same gender look ugly yet women look beautiful. Siebold and Thunberg mentioned above as well as the German physician and naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) write in their travelogues that Japanese women are quite lovely. Likewise even if Western women looked attractive to a Qing government official he may not necessarily have similarly appraised Western men.

当观察不同种族或民族的人时，观察者的性别与其是否相同也会影响审美判断。有很多例子表明，在男性观察者的眼中，外国男性看起来很丑陋，但外国女性看起来很漂亮。上面提到的西博尔德和桑伯格，还有德国的医生和博物学家恩格尔伯特·坎普弗尔（1651-1716）在他们的游记中写道，日本女人很可爱。同样，即使西方女性对清政府官员来说长得颇有魅力，但他可不一定如此评价西方男性。

In China too once it was recognized that the West had overwhelming power “red hair” and “jasper eyes” became gradually less ugly. Indeed in the twentieth century they were transformed into a symbol of beauty. Western fiction in translation exerted great influence on the reversal of the image. Along with that approaches to the portrayal of Westerners also changed. In Chinese fiction poetry and non-fiction “red hair” changed to “golden hair” (jinfa) and “jasper eyes” to “indigo pupils” (lan yanjing).

一旦中国认识到西方有压倒性的力量，“红头发”和“碧眼睛”逐渐变得没那么丑了。实际上在二十世纪，红发碧眼变成了美丽的象征。西方小说的译本对这种印象的反转发挥了很大的作用。随着这种转变，对西方人的描述也发生了变化。在中国小说、诗歌和散文中，“红头发”改为“金发”，“碧眼睛”改为“靛蓝色的瞳孔”（蓝眼睛）。

A similar trend was common in Japan as well. There seem to be two stereotypical depictions of Westerners in modern Japanese fiction: extremely ugly or exceedingly beautiful. When portrayed as ugly physical characteristics suggestive of non-humans such as a bear-like huge body intense body odor and uncanny blue eyes are heavily emphasized.9

类似的趋势在日本也很常见。现代日本小说对西方人似乎有两种刻板的描绘：极度丑陋或极度漂亮。当描绘成丑陋时，其身体特征常暗示为非人类般的存在，例如经常强调熊一样巨大的身体，浓郁的体味和恐怖的蓝眼睛。

Whether people of a different race appear beautiful is less a matter of judgment based on looks and styles than a product of one’s uation of that race’s culture. From the start it is meaningless to try to determine whether Caucasians or Mongoloids are more beautiful. To compare the appearances of races that differ in eye color hair and skull structure is like comparing chow and bulldog as it were and judging which animal is more aesthetically appealing. In this sense the Miss World competition can hardly be expected to have any “fair criteria of judgment.” The interracial comparison is predicated on a myth that humans are all the same.

判断不同种族的人是否美丽已不仅仅基于外表和风格，更多的是那个种族文化评估的产物。从一开始就试图判定白种人和黄种人谁更美丽这一点本就无意义。从眼睛、肤色、头发和颅骨结构的区别来对不同人种的外貌进行比较，就跟比较松狮犬和斗牛犬哪个更好看一样。按这说法，世界小姐比赛就别指望有任何“公正的评判标准。”人种间的比较必须基于一个前提，即所有人都一样。

Takehisa Yumeji Kurofuneya (Black Ship Inn) 1919. Takehisa Yumeji Ikaho Memorial Museum; WikiCommons.

竹久梦二（译者注：日本新派画师，将西方写实手法与东洋本土诗趣结合，被称之为漂泊的抒情画家）作品：黑船店。绘于1919。现存于日本伊香保的竹久梦二纪念馆。维基资源共享。

Beauty as a Metaphor

美是一种隐喻

Detailed inspection of changes in aesthetics from age to age clarifies that criteria for “beauty” are affected by elements other than beautiful looks. “Insiders” are beautiful; “outsiders” are ugly. “The noble” are beautiful; “the humble” are ugly. “The upper” are beautiful; “the lower” are ugly. “The affluent” are beautiful; “the poor” are ugly. “The holy” are beautiful; “the secular” are ugly. “The good” are beautiful; “the evil” are ugly. The more we go back to ancient times the more striking this tendency becomes.

各个时代审美变化的详细考察表明，“美”的标准受美丽外表之外的因素影响。“本族人”是美丽的；“外族人”是丑陋的。“贵族”是美丽的；“平民”是丑陋的。“上层”是美丽的，“下层”是丑陋的。“富人”是美丽的；“穷人”是丑陋的。“神圣”是美丽的，“世俗”是丑陋的。“善良”是美丽的，“邪恶”是丑陋的。我们越是往远古时代追溯，这种倾向就越明显。

Chinese dynastic histories invariably depict foreign peoples negatively. That is also the case with portrayals of diplomatic emissaries in paintings. This is not limited to foreigners. In writings portraying conflicts be they historical accounts or fiction friends tend to have beautiful countenances while foes both leaders and soldiers look ferocious. The aesthetics that appraise “insiders” as beautiful and “outsiders” as ugly also applies to women. Commoner women rarely appear in literature of ancient times. Nearly without exception those depicted in poetry and fiction are court women or noble women. As in literary works like “The Goddess of the Luo” (Luoshui-shen fu) by the poet and statesman Cao Zhi (192-232) descxtions of glamorous clothing convey feminine beauty. Because sartorial splendor was among the requirements for a beauty women who could not hope for such garb were eliminated as obxts of depiction.

中国断代史经常负面性描述外国人。外交使者所绘的画像亦是如此。这不仅限于外国人。在他们的历史记录或小说对冲突的描绘中，朋友们都有着美丽的面容，而敌方无论领导还是士兵都看起来凶神恶煞。将“本族人”视为美丽的和将“外族人”视为丑陋的美学同样适用于女性。平民妇女很少出现在古代文学中。诗歌和小说中所描绘的女性几乎无一例外都是宫廷女性或贵族女性。在文学作品中，例如诗人政治家曹植（192-232）所作的“洛神赋”，通过迷人的服装来展示女性的美丽。因为美女必须要有美丽的衣裳来搭配，而她们并不希望此类装束在文学描绘中被淘汰。

That beauty and ugliness are metaphors of vertical relationships is readily apparent in representations of rank among states and races. As mentioned above in pre-modern China foreigners including those such as Mongols Tibetans and Uyghurs living on China’s borders and Europeans were deemed ugly not only because they were regarded as “outsiders” but because they were “people of lower standing” than the Chinese.

美和丑是上下关系的隐喻，这在不同国家种族间的代表阶层中显而易见。如上所述，近代中国的外国人，包括那些生活在中国边境的蒙古人、西藏人和维吾尔人，以及欧洲人都被视为丑陋的，不仅仅是因为他们被当做“外族人”，更是因为他们的“阶级地位”低于中国人。

Suzuki Harunobu Princess Sannomiya (Third Princess from the Tale of Genji) circa 1766. Honolulu Museum of Art; WikiCommons.

铃木春信（译者注：铃木春信是日本浮世绘的著名代表画师。）作品：女三宫（出自源氏物语的三公主），大约1766年绘制。现存檀香山艺术馆。维基资源共享。

Among the Han themselves descxtions of beauty and ugliness formed metaphors of vertical relations. The Chinese expression “talented men and fair women” (cairen jiaren) by definition implies their class origin. The phrase “fair women” does not simply refer to women of lovely appearance but to those of literary families. In China where Confucianism was the official learning and the Imperial Examination System presided over entrance into the bureaucracy literary ability was a crucial measure defining social standing. In fiction of Ming and Qing China although women were not eligible to take the imperial examination or become officials they were never described or depicted as “fair” unless they possessed literary talent.

汉族人对美丑的区分形成了上下关系的隐喻。中国词句“有才华的男人和漂亮的女人”（才人佳人）通过定义来暗示他们的阶级出身。“美人”这个词并不是简单地指那些外表漂亮的女人，而是指那些出身于书香门第的女子。在中国，儒学是官方学科，科举是进入官场的唯一途径，所以文学能力就特别的重要，是决定社会地位的重要手段。在明清小说中，女性虽然没有资格参加科举考试或成为政府官员，但如果她们没有文学天赋，就绝不会被称之为“美人”。

The metaphor most frequently employed presumes “holy” to be beautiful and “secular” to be ugly. In every culture goddesses are without exception depicted as beautiful. Alongside this the entrance of a beautiful woman into a scene is often portrayed in the same way as the descent of a goddess to the earth. An unparalleled beauty frequently shines dazzlingly as if clad in a halo. Such metaphor or interchangeable relationship between a beautiful human and a god or goddess can be observed in Buddhist images as well.

这些隐喻经常假定“神圣”是美丽的，而“世俗”是丑陋的。在所有文化中，女神毫无疑问被描绘为美丽的存在。遵循这个套路，一个美女的出现往往被描绘为女神降临人间。无与伦比的美人经常光芒耀眼好像覆着一层光环。诸如此类的隐喻，或者美丽人类与神或女神之间这种互换关系在佛教图像中也能看到。

That “good” is beautiful and “evil” is ugly is a metaphor that has recurred since the oldest days. In literature of all ages and regions a good woman is almost always beautiful and a bad woman is ugly. We cannot laugh this away as a paradigm in old fiction. In fact the same pattern is repeated today in Hollywood movies. Yet the audience does not find it uncomfortable. The metaphor assuming “justice” to be beautiful and “vice” ugly is generally accepted across history.

“善”是美丽的，“恶”是丑陋的，这个隐喻自古以来一直在重现。在各个时代各个地区的文学中，几乎所有的好女人总是美丽的，坏女人总是丑陋的。我们不能因为这是旧小说的套路而来嘲笑它。事实上，同样的模式在今天的好莱坞电影中不断重演。然而，观众并没觉得不舒服。纵观整个历史，大家普遍接受的是“正义”即美丽和“邪恶”即丑陋的隐喻。

Translated from Cho Kyo Bijo towa nanika: Nitchū bijin no bunkashi (The Search for the Beautiful Woman) (Tokyo: Shōbunsha 2001). Excerpted from The Search for the Beautiful Woman: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and Aesthetics trans. Kyoko Selden (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2012).

译文来源，曹京：搜寻美丽女人（东京：休本沙2001）。摘自《搜寻美丽女人：美学变迁的历史和当代观点。》本文编辑：柯尤库.塞尔登。

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