Written by Kate Allanson Conlon.
Image credit: The Regal Chinese Girl (c.1904) by The Casas-Rodríguez Postcard Collection / Flickr, license: CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The process of binding one’s feet for aesthetic purposes has been practised by the Chinese populations of the world for centuries. Footbinding was an ancient custom believed to have originated from the courtesan culture of the Chinese Song Dynasty (920-1279). Originally practised by only elite families, the custom quickly became a significant status symbol that gradually spread to all social levels. Bound feet would be a minimum requirement for many young Chinese brides, and unbound feet would deep her undesirable in the marriage market.
The process of footbinding usually began at around 3 to 6 years of age and was carried out by the children’s mothers, grandmothers, or other older female relatives. The process involved breaking all toes apart from the big toe and folding them under the foot. Bandages would then be tightly wrapped around the newly shaped foot and changed periodically. The perfect bound foot was under 10cm in length and became known as the ‘Three-inch Golden Lotus’, 三寸金蓮, with the Chinese inch being just over 3cm.
The Importation and Popularisation of the Lotus Foot in Taiwan
The arrival of footbinding to Taiwan can be traced back to the mass migration of the Hoklo peoples of southern Fujian in mainland China following the dynastic transition to Qing in the early 1700s. When these Chinese migrants arrived on the island of Taiwan, they viewed the practices of the native plains aborigines as ‘savage’ and ‘uncivilised’ and pushed forward their own customs, such as footbinding, as markers of modern beauty and the perfect Taiwanese bride.
Footbinding was also used to reinforce Confucian ideas and practices of male and female domains. Bound feet ensured that women stayed within their inner quarters of their household therefore confining them to the sphere of home, away from the male domain of the public sphere.
By the 20th century, consumerism and leisure became markers for pecuniary strength in a rapidly modernising and globalising world. This was also true for the case of footbinding and Taiwan. Footbinding at this time was viewed as an act of conspicuous consumption which transformed mutilation into beauty and allowed the patriarch to dominate and prosper. Although popular amongst the Hoklo inhabitants of Taiwan, other inhabitants of the island, such as the Hakka and plains aborigines, did not practice footbinding. As a result, footbinding became the last marker used to distinguish the Hoklo from the Hakka and plains aborigines, with the practice acting as a significant status symbol within Taiwanese society.
Footbinding Under Japanese Rule
Japan, from the outset, planned to develop Taiwan into a model colony with an orderly, disciplined, and productive population and singled out the ‘three degenerate practices’ (footbinding, queue wearing and opium smoking), which they felt hindered the country’s development. As one of the ‘three degenerate practices’, footbinding was actively discouraged by the colonial government who felt the practice clashed with Meiji-era and Western hair and dress standards. The Japanese kept detailed records on the prevalence of footbinding within Taiwan’s society, including footbinding sections in the 1905 and 1925 censuses of Taiwan. The Japanese colonial government at this time did not, however, decide to ban footbinding altogether for fear of disobedience or backlash from civil society. Instead, spearheading the cultural change were the female children of the newly established Taiwanese elite.
The Japanese colonial government utilised their newly established education system for girls to encourage younger generations to either unbind or not begin to bind their feet. The female children of the newly established Taiwanese elite were expected to set an example of keeping their feet natural, with regular school health examinations put in place to assess the status of the students’ feet. Over time, the perceptions of schoolgirls towards their own feet and traditional concepts of beauty began to change, with the disadvantages and inconveniences of bound feet being displayed before them.
By 1915, the Japanese opted to formally ban the practice by forbidding the binding of young girls’ feet and forcing the unbinding of already bound women. Following this prohibition, around 63 per cent (all ages) of those who were bound were forced to unbind. In a historical context, the banning of bound feet and heightened mobility of Taiwanese women was immensely significant, as at this time, this phenomenon was closely linked to the popularisation of feminist ideologies and female emancipation, as the image of women changed from being passive and submissive to autonomous and freely mobile. Footbinding also benefited Taiwan and the Japanese Empire economically. Increasing numbers of young women with unbound feet were able to fill a gap in the labour market, helping to achieve the Japanese aspirations of a modern industrial empire.
However, for many women who were already bound by this time, the prohibition and processes that unbinding their feet involved was traumatic and caused considerable pain both physically and psychologically. By 1920, Taiwan saw a dramatic drop in the prevalence of footbinding, with the proportion of female adults with bound feet from 68 per cent in 1905 to just 11 per cent in 1920.
Legacies of Footbinding
We look back at footbinding with modern eyes and view it as a brutal practice which mutilated and violated the body and private sphere of women. However, this was only one in a long history of socio-cultural norms that women were forced into adopting. Perhaps the true brutal practice was not the footbinding itself but the cycle in which women were put in, whereby they must constantly aspire to change and adapt to be deemed modern and womanly. This practice of holding women to ever-changing socio-cultural norms still exists within our societies today. One such example is the Japanese KuToo movement, which has compared the compulsory wearing of high heels in workplaces to the practice of footbinding, drawing the conclusion that the two practices are no different as both curb women’s free mobility and cause pain to the individual for the sake of aesthetics. Maybe the true legacy of footbinding is not that it allows us to look back and condemn the misdeeds of the past but that it reminds us to reflect on the expectations societies, both past and present, put on women and ask, ‘how do we break this cycle?’.
Kate Allanson Conlon is a PhD Candidate in cultural history at the Institute for the Study of the Asia Pacific, University of Central Lancashire. Her research, generously funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, examines women’s depictions in print culture from the Japanese Empire 1931-1945, how these depictions were influenced by political, social and cultural interests and how these depictions were used as propaganda for the war effort and social cohesion within the empire. Kate is also the recipient of the Association of Dress Historians’ Madeleine Ginsburg Award 2023 and a European Association of Taiwan Studies’ Young Scholar Award finalist 2024.
Taiwan Insight 