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Girl Royalty: The 1959 Coronation of Japan's First Miss Universe

On 19 July 1959, over 200,000 people turned out along Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, California to watch the city’s 8 annual Miss Universe parade. Even more watched live coverage on TV (Ryon). At the height of its popularity, the Miss Universe Pageant, much like the Olympics, championed uniqueness through national costume events and peace through friendly competition. The pageant also promoted the belief that all its girls embodied a modern kind of femininity, one emancipated into a liberal swimsuit feminism of global beauty and upward mobility. When Miss Japan won the crown in Long Beach that summer, becoming Miss Universe 1960, many saw her victory as just such a moment of liberation. A 22 year-old ‘‘leggy fashion model from Tokyo’’, Kojima Akiko was the pageant’s first Asian victor. Americans and Japanese alike hailed her achievement as a major step forward for Japanese women’s rights. Even her unusual height and long, straight legs were read as signs of postwar progress. Back in Japan in mid-August, the new Miss Universe was seen promoting everything from cosmetics to appliances to lipstick while Japanese beauty contests of all kinds experienced a deluge of entries. Yet to Kojima’s dismay, rumours emerged that tarnished her reputation. These rumours saw Kojima and the Miss Universe contest as an American ploy to curry favour with Japan; they denied the naturalness of her beauty, the spontaneous fortune of her victory, and the goodwill gestures of the pageant itself. Charges arose that Kojima had resorted to breast injections to create her hourglass shape and that the Max Factor Corporation, a major Miss Universe sponsor, had fixed the contest in order to better launch a new line of cosmetics in Asia. Others suspected that hopes for the renewal of the controversial US-Japan Security Treaty had assured Miss Japan’s win in Long Beach. Such suspicions threatened to undo the image of Japan’s triumphant Miss Universe, reframing her as an overly ambitious, oddly tall,