In Japan, Beauty Salons Are Busy With Men Seeking `Pretty Boy' Look

TOKYO - They come to Satoshi Usami's beauty clinic looking for the perfect eyebrow, the right blush for their cheeks, the lipstick that will say it all.

They come to Usami to make them pretty. And they are men. Every last one.

Young Japanese men are flocking to salons for facials, plucking their brows, putting on makeup. Being prissy, in public.

"Boys today just want to be beautiful," says Kazuhiro Saito, editor of Brutus, a popular men's magazine. "They don't care if it seems girlish. For them, beauty has no gender."

And to accommodate them, the number of salons, fashion magazines and cosmetic products aimed at men has skyrocketed. Television commercials sing the praises of the "bishonen," or pretty boys.

Leading the media wave is the magazine BiDan - a title combining the Japanese characters for "beauty" and "man." Two years after its launch, the monthly has a circulation of well over 200,000 and has spawned several imitators.

Even 7-Eleven Japan is cashing in. In March, the convenience-store chain introduced a line of cosmetics for men.

The trend is a break from the decidedly drab gray-or-dark-blue-suit look that has dominated men's fashions throughout most of Japan's postwar period - and still has its hold on the legions of urban office workers over the age of 30.

But even that crowd is starting to preen.

Tobu Travel, a major travel agency, just held its first "Beautiful Boy Transformation Tour," a one-day, $110 trek through several Tokyo salons for makeovers and manicures with a professional photo shoot at the end.

Tobu had expected the participants to be young. But about half were middle-age or older, many of them apparently nudged into action by their wives, organizer Yasushi Shinohara said.

"We were really surprised," he said. "Until now, people have tended to spend money on things. Now, they are spending more on their bodies, on themselves."

Beautician Usami, whose beauty booth is among the suits on the men's wear floor of a popular Tokyo department store, said he is seeing more older men among his clientele as well.

"Maybe they're embarrassed, since they walk by, once, twice, sometimes three times before coming in," he said. "But in the end, they always come in."

Though the beauty trend is a sharp contrast with the monotone stereotype of the modern Japanese male, it has a solid historical footing.

For 300 years, women's roles in Kabuki theater have been played exclusively by men - many considered more beautiful and ladylike than their real-life counterparts.

Cross-dressing singers and actors on TV have been big with the Japanese public for decades, regularly appearing in prime time. One was featured in a recent commercial for women's cosmetics.

Japan has also been flooded by a wave of new boy bands fronted by men like Izam, a 6-foot-tall, platinum-blond chart-topper known for platform boots, ankle-length skirts and his marriage to a Japanese model.

The general public will probably never adopt the extremes of the entertainment world. But on any big-city street, it's hard to miss the young men with gelled hairdos, smooth dewy skin and sculpted brows. On trains, high school boys pull out pocket mirrors almost as quickly as the girls.

"Finally, men care about how they look," said Ryuko Shioya, a spokeswoman for the cosmetic company Shiseido.

Ten years ago, the company launched a makeup line for men, but soon discontinued it after poor sales.

Shiseido tried again in 1996 with its "Geraid" line, and is now selling a million men's eyebrow grooming kits a year, along with truckloads of face cream, hair gel and compacts.

Twenty-three-year-old Masahiko Kanaya, a first-time customer at Usami's clinic, said he was happy with his 1,500 yen ($13) brow cut.

"I wanted to do it myself, but I wasn't sure how," he said, glancing at his reflection in a mirror.

His girlfriend, Misa Maezawa, approved.

"He looks good," she said. "I just hope he doesn't let this go to his head."