When a foreign-born contestant won Miss Japan last month, it sparked much wringing of hands from certain sections of the commentariat and internet, and a roughly equal amount of earnest gushing about how much Japan was changing.
Carolina Shiino, who was born in Ukraine but has lived in Japan since the age of five and eventually naturalized as a Japanese citizen, was awarded the title of Miss Japan in a ceremony in January. The face of Japan was now officially a white woman. This was enough of a news story to make waves internationally.
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Now, as they say, the plot thickens. The 26-year-old Shiino has resigned her title as Miss Japan, not because of pressure from trolls but because she was having an affair with a married man with a family.
The details are actually a little sad for her, since she wasn’t really the guilty party in this sordid tale.
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The man, Takuma Maeda, is one of those hot and hunky celebrity doctors that seem to bag famous ladies. He had apparently told Shiino that he was divorced and single, though she reportedly still continued to see him after she found out about his family.
A tabloid broke the story on January 31 with a picture of Shiino holding hands on date with the doctor, claiming they had been in a relationship for three years.
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It is easy to see why Shiino would be such a catch for an alpha male in Japan: she is fully acculturated and speaks Japanese with native fluency, but has exotic, Eastern European looks.
Shiino and her agency initially denied adultery but the fallout was quick. She was dropped by her agency on Monday after they found out she had continued seeing Maeda, and it was also announced that Shiino had “voluntarily” given up her title as Miss Japan.
With her promising career as a model in tatters, the future looks rather bleak for Carolina Shiino. We wonder what the professional and personal impact, if any, for Dr Maeda are.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s time we said sayonara to beauty pageants in the first place, with their outdated expectations of moral perfection for the female contestants.
