i think these pageants should cut to the chase,drop the pious act,lose the pretentiousness,and stop pretending to be anything more than a cattle show.Make the girls parade naked on stage.

I agree that picture is hardly worth the complaint. She's more clothed than she will be at the Miss Universe pageant when she's parading around with a bunch of other near-naked women. But I do disagree with your comment that she or her people may be 'ahead of the curve'. Kimonos and qipaos have been sexy and in for awhile, and so have Asian fetishes. I don't think people are suddenly thinking the Japanese are 'pretty and pervy'. Maybe they're just trying to capitalize on the exoticization of Asian women, kind of a double whammy when you're talking about a world beauty contest.

I didn't think it was possible to offend the taste of the beauty pagent crowd. Fake boobs. facial reconstruction etc. are in bad taste and the opposite of beauty.

You're complaining about bad taste in a beauty pageant?

Isn't that missing the point? Beauty pageants are not about good taste, and never have been.

Good article...and yeah, there's much ado about nothing'...'cept culture and how subjective can it be?
In the case ms.japan here...bravo.

Am I the only person who looked at the picture and said "pretty girl, cool outfit", and then read the copy three times and still wondered what the fuss was about?

Really! Most creative thing I've seen from a beauty pageant. Much more artful than the usual cookie-cutter stuff you usually see.

Even though it appears lewd because of the contrast between a heavy black top and light pink fabric underneath, there is actually nothing revealing about the costume at all. This is one of those "it's all in your head" moments for the prudes and quite frankly reveals more about their own inner thoughts than it does of Miyasaka's body.