MSNBC (January,2005)
- Japanese take a page from Cinderella
'Princess vacations' leave reality behind, for a price
By Anthony Faiola
Updated: 8:28 a.m. ET Jan. 12, 2005TOKYO - So what if they were not real glass
slippers; they sparkled nonetheless with the bits of crystal that Reiko Handa,
59, applied to a pair of new pumps. Her hair, voluminous from extensions, soared
in a regal bun as she dashed through the brisk Vienna night last winter. There,
she recalled, handsome Austrian gentlemen escorted her up castle stairs to a
lavish ball where Handa and a group of other Japanese women
realized their childhood fantasies of being Cinderellas for a day.
In Japan, dreams of youth are being bought — often for between $4,000 and
$10,000, and sometimes more — by thousands of women who use vacation time to
step into the pages of a storybook. So-called "princess vacations" have become
the hottest tickets in town for a host of would-be Cinderellas, from women in
their twenties to senior citizens.
"How I danced that night!" beamed Handa, a caretaker for the elderly. She is
making plans through a Japanese tour operator for a reprise in Britain this
summer. "I left my real life behind and entered a dream world. I can't wait to
do it again."
Fantasy chic has become an art in Japan, where theme parks bring foreign
countries to life and
"cosplay," dressing up like
the characters in Japanese animation and manga comics,
has been a hit for years. In the name of fashion, young non-Christian couples
sometimes hire local Westerners to preside over their weddings as faux priests.
But even so, the princess trips are raising eyebrows as escapist fads among
Japanese women.
In the trendy Shibuya and Harajuku neighborhoods of Tokyo, for instance,
teenagers and women in their thirties and forties have embraced what they call
the "Lolita fashion."
Dressing up as little dolls
in frilly dresses and lacy baby caps, hundreds of such girls and women parade
along the sidewalks of Tokyo clutching teddy bears and wearing enormous ribbons
in their hair.
Other women have turned to "celebu" — or celebrity — lifestyles. What started as
mimicking the fashion tastes of American personalities has turned into a cottage
industry, including popular classes. In one class, called "How To Behave Like a
Celebrity," students spend hours studying how to walk, talk and gesture like a
movie star.
Still other Japanese women are paying thousands of dollars to attend elaborate
etiquette schools, mostly with the aim of jetting off on school-run trips
offering the chance to briefly brush up against European high society. Such
schools offer trips during which housewives and secretaries can sip champagne
alongside royals in Monaco or wear wide-brimmed hats as they watch the ponies at
the Prix de Diane Hermes outside Paris. Women often take the classes to boost
their self-esteem.
"I breathed the same air as the high-class people of Europe," said Yoshiko Mito,
36, a former flight attendant who has had free time since marrying a man whose
job often takes him away from home for days at a time. "It gave me more
confidence, being among those people and behaving correctly."
Variety of explanations...
Sociologists are offering a variety of explanations for the immersion of
Japanese women in role-playing fantasies. The doll-like dress-up girls,
according to analysts who have studied the trend, have been infected by
pessimism following the protracted recession here. Although the economic tides
in Japan are turning up, the change has yet to trickle down to many Japanese.
Women are also confronting changes in gender roles, as they increasingly put off
traditional lives of marriage and child birth in favor of careers in a society
that is still dominated by men.
"Women are confronting a chauvinist society where it is hard to feel a sense of
fulfillment in the workplace," said Terue Ohashi, a sociologist at Reitaku
University in Tokyo. "Therefore, they are finding ways to express their
frustrations, by living a temporary dream or escaping reality. Think of it as
catharsis."
A gender gulf...
Surveys have shown that years of economic stress have created a gulf between
Japanese men and women. Married men, who often lead separate lives from their
families, are working longer hours and spending more time on business-related
entertainment. Many are taking separate vacations, to play golf or to ski. Enter
the princess vacation concept, which both vendors and clients say is about
finding fulfillment. Local tour operators began selling the idea about five
years ago, as news stories emerged about women who were finding their inner
princesses, buying tickets and hiring local dancing partners at the aristocratic
balls of Vienna. The idea caught on, particularly among Japanese women who had
taken classes in social dancing.
At home, the women receive help from the tour companies in selecting a dress,
jewelry, shoes and hair accessories — most often tiaras. Once in Austria, they
get tips on how to move majestically, delicately grasping the arms of their
Austrian escorts, mostly dance instructors hired by the tour organizations.
Austrian aristocrats do attend the balls, and tour operators say they have
generally welcomed their new Japanese guests, enjoying the extra ticket sales
but typically limiting tour groups to 30 attendees per ball.
'I think all women share the princess fantasy'
Among Japan's would-be princesses, Makiko Horio is the queen. After seeing a
Vienna ball on TV in 1994, the thirtyish former banker (a real princess never
reveals her true age, she says) bought an airline ticket, a layered dress and
some costume jewelry and attended the first of her 50 Austrian balls. Her life
as a clerk in a foreign bank, she said, paled by comparison. "I wanted to be a
princess," said Horio, who goes by the professional name Makiko Krone because it
sounds more European. "And I am not the only one. And there, under the
chandeliers and with the gorgeous dresses, you can feel like one."
In 2000, she quit her job and opened a travel agency, serving some 20 to 30
clients each year while landing her "princess dream trips" on magazine covers
and TV shows. Her Web site asks women: "Don't you want to debut at a Vienna
ball?"
"I think all women share the princess fantasy," she said, sipping a café au
latté inside the elegant, European-style lobby of a Tokyo hotel. She wore a red
ball gown at 10:30 a.m., and a glittering necklace cascaded down her neck. In
the United States, she said, young women have high school proms, and later,
weddings in white dresses where they get to satisfy their princess desires. "But
in white kimono, you just don't feel like a princess. So now is our chance," she
said.
She bristles at the idea that Japanese women are indulging in escapism. Rather,
she blames Japanese men — who, she said, are too often absent and lacking in
chivalry, and expect to be served by women.
"In Japan, the men do not open doors for us or allow us to enter first," she
said. "But in Austria, they know how to treat a lady."
Special correspondent Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company