Young Japanese men are starting to resemble their female counterparts when it comes to the pursuit of beauty, with the nation awash in salons dedicated to male grooming and products such as hair removal creams, electric nose-hair trimmers and face-firming masks targeting the image-conscious man.
Men in their 20s and 30s today were teenagers when the now-common expression "ikemen" — meaning a good-looking man — was a new buzzword. The advent of the term and a social phenomenon lionizing ikemen have given males of this particular age group a belief that looking pretty is pretty cool. At the same time, gaining a more attractive look is a way to compensate for a lack of self-confidence.
A 34-year-old patissier in Osaka is one such man.