Japan vs. the world: Yamato Nadeshiko

It really does need to be cleaned up. It's a strictly Japanese and Japanese inspired media trope.

It's supposed to be inspirational/endearing to a Japanese audience because of the quintessential, ideal Japaneseness of the character.

So why do we get this wave of secretly steel core non-Japanese (or non-traditionally ideal Japanese) female characters?

We're clearly lacking one trope here.

edited 23rd Jul '11 4:41:21 PM by peccantis

Yes I think the trope has decayed quite a bit, but I thought that's why we created Proper Lady (and whatever the other one we created was).

We just need to clean up the examples now.

People seem to believe the trope to be entirely: demure, traditional woman with a strong inner will. That should probably be its own trope, with Yamato Nadeshiko as its subtrope.

edited 23rd Jul '11 7:18:07 PM by helterskelter

Proper Lady is the sister trope with European cultural baggage.

And it should also be a subtrope to this hypothetical trope. But Proper Lady isn't quite accurate, since not a terrible amount of women fall under its category. It's also not really an ideal here, any more. It was a Victorian ideal, but the ideal now is for stronger, more independent women. The description is a bit inaccurate in that sense.

Proper Lady was a trope. It still is one, even if it's not in fashion anymore. We don't remove tropes when they fall out of fashion, we simply note that fact.

It's still a trope even if it's an older trope. Most of the examples of it are older or period pieces.

You're right though. We need a supertrope for strong but feminine women in general.

Do we really need a supertrope, or can we just link them as siblings?

(I have no preference either way.)

Who wants to add the Bollywood version? :)

I've heard the expression 'silk on steel' when describing sweet girls with determined cores. Could the newtrope/supertrope's names be something like 'Silk Hiding Steel'?

edited 23rd Jul '11 8:55:25 PM by ChaoticNovelist

There are more modern examples that don't really fit into either trope that are getting badly wedged into the Japanese version.

Sounds like a good reason. Second the motion for a supertrope.

@Madrugada: I'm not saying it's invalid, I'm saying that the description is a tiny bit off, because it claims it's the current Western ideal, when it is not. Besides that, there are examples related to both pages that fit into neither, which is why I suggest a super trope.

Ah, that line should be changed. It's the Victorian Western ideal.

I think the supertrope should have been Proper Lady, and the subtropes would be Yamato Nadeshiko and Victorian Proper Lady (or something similar).

You're free to fix it.

How about just Ideal Woman for the supertrope? It's not like the current western feminine ideal can be called proper, or even ladies...

edited 24th Jul '11 5:11:15 AM by peccantis

Whatever happened to the Steel Magnolia trope?

We never had one. Just the film Steel Magnolias.

Ideal Woman is kinda of vague, but I like it. Both Yamato Nadeshiko and Proper Ladies are ideals so the supertrope should invoke that

Perfect Woman?

That seems to be the supertrope.

I think Ideal Woman is better than Perfect Woman. Perfect Woman in media tends to refer to more Stepford Smiler types who act perfect on the outside but are a mess underneath.

I like Ideal Woman, it sounds like a name that can have so many different interpretations. I would insist that it be a pure index from the get go though.

I think that it can be a supertrope for the purpose of collecting what is put forth as "the ideal woman" in a series. A lot of times characters will lampshade something as "the ideal woman". No Real Life examples please.

I think it would work best as having a "general cultural versions" and "character/work specific versions".

Cultural examples would get their own subpage (like what we have right now Yamato Nadeshiko and Proper Lady.) We just use this to Index it in a super trope.

Single people usually will rant about their specific Ideal Woman and that rant itself would be the super trope.

edited 24th Jul '11 5:06:40 PM by Raso