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Japanese girls walking - Uchimata

2010-06-15T17:02:10Z

Shared by anthonyjhicks.com
Have always wondered about this.

Not all of them, but many Japanese girls usually walk pointing their feet inwards. Sometimes in the most extreme cases, like in these videos, this fact surprises many foreign tourists that visit Japan:

“Uchimata” is the name of one of the most used techniques in judo and it is also a word used for the position of the legs in which the tip of the feet point inwards.

The theories about why Japanese women walk like that are very varied: some blame the Japanese diet for being too low on calcium and proteins, some theorize that it is something genetic, that the skeleton of the Japanese woman has a tendency to have short legs and the hips constitution is different, thus the uchimata position is something natural for them. Other theory says that when you walk wearing a kimono it is much easier to advance adopting an uchimata position and, even though kimonos are not used daily anymore, the way of walking has stuck in the subconscious of the Japanese woman; others say that according to Japanese beauty standards women are more attractive if when they sit down they adopt an uchimata position.

The most accepted theory is that it is a deformation consequence of the position that Japanese women use when sitting on the floor; men also sit down on the floor from very early ages but they usually adopt different position. That is to say, the traditional way of living on the floor is possibly one of the causes of the uchimata.

Photo from my new book Momentos

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