A first-time visitor to Japan may find that the hands catch the eye before anything else. The way a shop assistant returns change with both hands. The way tea is poured for a guest before the cup is empty. The way a person coming home goes to the basin before doing anything else. None of these are formal rituals. They are simply the ways the hands are used in everyday life.
This article, written with English-speaking readers in mind, looks at a few of those everyday gestures and at a sense that runs beneath them: that the hands reflect the person. We keep to what is general and modest, since customs vary from household to household and are changing all the time.
At the end of that line of thought is what Soie calls the aesthetics of gesture. It is the reason hand beauty, as we understand it, is spoken of not only in terms of moisture and smoothness but also in terms of how the hands move.
Offering with both hands
A business card, a gift, change at a till, a document across a desk. In Japan, things are very often handed over with both hands, even when one would easily do. The gesture carries an unspoken message: this object, and you, are not being handled carelessly.
When something is offered with both hands, the hands arrive at the centre of the other person's gaze. The backs of the hands, the fingertips, the skin around the nails are all in view. Because this gesture is part of ordinary life, the hands are seen roughly as often as the face. It may be one reason the idea of hand beauty, of caring for the hands as one cares for the face, has found a natural place in Japan.
A wrapped gift is held in both hands and lifted slightly as it is passed; the person receiving it takes it in both hands as well. In that exchange, the hands convey respect before a word is spoken. Beautiful hands, in this sense, are hands one is not embarrassed to extend in such a moment.
Pouring tea, offering a towel
Tea made for a visitor. A warm hand towel offered before a meal. Japanese daily life has many moments in which the hands do the work of hospitality. The hand holding the teapot, the hands cupping a bowl, the hands unfolding a towel. None of these gestures are performed to be watched, and yet they are watched all the same.
In such moments, the stillness of the hands sets the tone of the room. Nothing is hurried, nothing clatters, and when something is set down the hand stays with it to the end. Cared-for hands look all the more composed in motion. Put the other way, dry and roughened hands can make even the most careful movement look slightly rushed.
Washing the hands as a threshold
Wash your hands when you come home. Wash your hands before you eat. In many Japanese households these are among the earliest lessons taught to children. The habit is hygienic, of course, but it also marks a threshold: the outside is rinsed away before one enters the inside, and the day is given a boundary.
From the point of view of hand beauty, this habit has two faces. Frequent washing rinses away the sebum film and makes the hands prone to dryness. At the same time, a day with many hand washes is a day with many occasions to face the hands, and each one is an opportunity to add moisture back. Soie's proposal to think of "wash, then moisturise" as a single habit sits comfortably within this culture of washing.
The same attentiveness extends outside the home. A hand towel before a meal, sanitiser at the entrance to a shop, hands washed on arriving at the office. Because cleanliness of the hands is taken seriously, the hands in Japan are washed, dried and wiped a great many times a day. That is exactly why the moisture added afterwards matters so much.
Hands that reflect character
There is a saying to the effect that you can know a person by their hands. Hands that have worked, hands that have been handled with care, hands that have lived in a hurry. In Japan, the sense that the condition of the hands says something about a person's life and character is widely and quite naturally shared.
This does not mean the hands must be beautiful. It is more a feeling that attentiveness shows there: whether a person looks after what is theirs, whether they handle objects with care. Neatly kept nail contours, a moist back of the hand, a quiet movement when something is set down. Details like these speak for a person before words do.
The hand addressing a letter, the hand holding a bowl, the hand resting on a child's head. The quieter the gesture, the more the person watching looks at the hand itself. Care, seen this way, is less a response to being looked at than the most immediate way of making one's own movements careful.
The aesthetics of gesture, as Soie sees it
Soie regards the hands as the place where a person's character shows most clearly. Applying, touching, offering: making every one of these movements beautiful is what we call the aesthetics of gesture. It is why we think of hand beauty as extending beyond the moisture, smoothness and radiance of the skin to take in fragrance and movement as well.
Care itself is a gesture. A drop of serum placed on the back of the hand, the palms brought together, the serum worked between the fingers and around the nails. Carrying out those thirty seconds attentively carries over into the attentiveness with which something is later handed to another person. Soie's Enlight Hand Serum, a beauty serum designed only for the hands, was made for this daily gesture: it sinks in without stickiness, and a fragrance composed by the brand's dedicated perfumer leaves a quiet trace on the movement.
Soie's thinking on the beauty of the hands is set out on our Hand Beauty page. Offering with both hands, pouring tea, washing on coming home: gestures that already belong to everyday life in Japan, done with a little more care. Hand beauty begins there.
