Taiwanese Tourists Love Wearing Kimonos in Japan — Yang Zhao: Clumsy Steps Ruin the Scenery

▲Wearing a kimono in Kyoto is a popular experience for many visitors. (Photo / Illustration, taken by reporter Tsai Wen-jun)

Online News Team / Comprehensive Report

When traveling in Kyoto, Japan, many tourists enjoy renting a traditional Japanese kimono on-site to immerse themselves in cultural experiences and take pleasure in an alternative form of travel. However, in the eyes of writerYang Zhao, this trend of tourists wearing kimonos lacks any sense of beauty and instead mars the picturesque scenery.

Yang Zhao, who has authored works such as "Chronicles of an Autumn Town" and "Great Love," published an article on his personal Facebook page recounting his observations during a trip to Kyoto. The article begins by mentioning that the garden of Ginkaku-ji Temple originally featured simple, elegant rectangular stones, allowing visitors to step across the water. But due to the overwhelming number of tourists, cement, wooden planks, and railings were added. Yang Zhao believes“that simple, open, and clean lines have been lost — and will never return.”

What Yang Zhao considers “even worse” is encountering groups of women in kimonos along the Kiyomizu Path, most of whom clearly do not know how to wear or walk in a kimono. In the article, Yang Zhao writes“Even more awkwardly, many of the kimonos are particularly shoddy, and the figures wearing them are especially ungraceful. As soon as you hear them speak, you know they are Taiwanese tourists.” Yang Zhao expressed that being among such Taiwanese tourists fills him with sadness and sorrow.

▲Japanese kimono. (Photo / Illustration, taken by reporter Ho I-chen)

Yang Zhao pointed out that tourists lack the aesthetic sensibility rooted in the Japanese tradition of “hanami.” During cherry blossom season, women are expected to wear their finest kimonos to admire the flowers, while men should dress modestly so as not to detract from the scenery. Yet, in Yang Zhao’s words, “The kimono-clad tourists I encountered and observed had absolutely no sense of this kind of beauty. They were actually willing to don poorly made, casually cut garments made from printed fabric — which can hardly be called real kimonos — and walk with steps that are neither graceful nor elegant. Far from complementing or enhancing the natural tranquility of the plants, they became the worst possible disruption to the scene.””

▲Yang Zhao. (Photo / From Wikimedia Commons)

In addition to discussing how tourists wearing kimonos can ruin scenic views, Yang Zhao’s article also delves into details about the aesthetics education and sense of beauty responsibility among Taiwanese people. At the end of the article, Yang Zhao concludes with: “The most basic, fundamental line of aesthetic education — at the very least, teaching citizens not to ruin the beauty of the landscape with their own ugliness — if even this bottom line cannot be upheld, then Taiwan is truly pitiful.””

As the article circulated online, it sparked heated discussions among netizens. Some commented, “But the shoddy kimonos in the article were made by the Japanese, and the rental experience was also invented by the Japanese...”, while others responded with humor, saying “I can only give it 87 points, can’t go higher.”

%Jia Fang Zhang Cheng Ju's comment. (Image / Strong News)