Pacific Islands Women in the Eyes of the Travel Journalist Kanetaka Kaoru: Impressions from Her First Journey to the Pacific Islands in 1961

In 1961 a renowned Japanese travel journalist Kanetaka Kaoru (b. 1928) paid her first visit to the South Pacific Islands to film television travel documentary program Sekai no tabi (“The world around us”). Her travelogue that derived from the journey recounts how Kanetaka’s opinion of feminine beauty evolved from comments on beauty by appearance to astute queries of what beauty means. Her views, which sometimes challenged the conventional sociocultural mores of the Japan of her time, developed from her own descriptions of and interaction with women, and from the responses of tourists to her appearance. In Fiji she became increasingly aware that beauty is not only about appearance, but also about the whole decorum reflecting manners and morals. In Papua and New Guinea Kanetaka’s observation of and interaction with the women prompted questions about aesthetics, which branched off to considerations of what it means to be a human being