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Japan’s respect for celebrities goes west

High on a mighty billboard, pouting down at the masses on the most elegant shopping street in Asia, Victoria Beckham could be the last of a dying breed: a western celebrity deified by the Japanese for her beauty and glamour.

Just yards beneath her handbag advertisement, a station newsstand peddles a rather different image of the Spice Girl — and evidence of a changing Japan. A lurid, two-page spread in the January edition of Gossips Press subjects Ms Beckham’s face to what is, by Japanese media standards, scrutiny of unprecedented detail and cruelty.

The article, From Plain To Posh, juxtaposes

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