A Japanese woman on social media is drawing attention for saying she’s just won the title of “Miss Kyodai,” Kyoto University’s beauty pageant. The issue? Kyoto University canceled its beauty pageant last year.
Japan’s beauty pageants – “Miss Contests” (ミスコン; misu-kon) – are rapidly disappearing or changing form as they draw claims of reducing women to their appearances. Those held at universities, which are meant to focus on holistic enrichment of students, have become particularly controversial. Some schools, like Sophia University, have responded by opening their contests up to all genders and have de-emphasized physical appearance.
Kyoto University, meanwhile, opted last year to cancel its own combined Miss/Mister Kyodai Content. (“Kyodai” is the school’s nickname, a contraction of 京都大学, kyouto daigaku.) The school committee responsible for managing the November festival at which the contest was held decided to scrap the event after a six-hour debate that weighed factors such as lookism and protecting the rights of sexual and gender minorities.
Only two contestants?
However, that didn’t stop company AGE Entertainment’s subsidiary Misscolle from holding its own “Miss Kyodai” contest. The company, which hosts other (apparently legitimate) Miss and Mister contents, put up a mysterious site about the “contest” in January that shows two “finalists”: Ichijo Miki (一条美輝), who claims to be a first-year student at Kyoto University’s School of Medicine, and a woman identified only as “T.E.”.
Now, here’s where things get weird(er). Ichijo has a realistic social media presence on both X and Instagram. She appears to have started Instagram in May 2024 and X in July 2024 and has around 2,500 followers on each platform. Her Instagram posts dating back to the beginning of the account all seem to have been edited six weeks ago to reflect her status as a “finalist” in this unsanctioned Miss Kyodai Contest.
By contrast, “T.E.”, who’s identified as a Myanmar national, has no identifiable social media presence. Her birthdate is listed as January 1st, and she’s only identified as a graduate student – no listed major. Her images on the site don’t show up in reverse image searches.
There’s no evidence that there are any contestants beyond these two or that the names were whittled down from a larger list.
AGE Entertainment’s involvement in this affair seems strange. The company sponsors other legitimate-looking contests, including Fresh Campus Contest 2024, which it’s held since 2010. Interestingly, Ichijo is also a finalist in their 2024 contest.
Four days ago, Ichijo took to Instagram and X to announce she was the “Grand Prix winner” of the “first-ever” Miss Kyodai Contest. Commenters on Instagram seemed to lap up the claim. On X, however, her announcement received an extensive community note explaining that the event was an unofficial contest that was using Kyoto University’s name without its permission.
The supporting evidence for the community note links to a PDF on Kyoto University’s website. In response to questions about the contest, the university responded:
“It is not true that this effort has received permission to use our university’s name. We will consider a response as we investigate the situation.”
It also came out during this that “Ichijo” isn’t Ichijo Miki’s real name. According to her, she took “Ichijo” from Higashi-Ichijo-Dori, a road that runs outside of Kyoto University campus.
Debating the trolls
Because we live in an age of zero accountability where no one apparently needs to apologize for anything, the backlash hasn’t stopped Ichijo. She’s even going toe-to-toe with dissenters in her replies, insisting that the contest is legitimate.
In one thread responding to a dissenter, Ichijo claimed the contest was sponsored by the “Kyodai Miss/Mister Contest Office,” which is a “student organization” at Kyoto U. She says the student org only conducted the event in “cooperation” with Misscolle. When someone noted that the university disavowed any relation to the contest, she stuck to her guns, instructing people to email a GMail address to confirm the contest’s legitimacy.
In response to the “controversy,” someone set up a new X account sometime earlier this month claiming to represent the Contest Office. The latest tweet insists the “office” is “investigating” claims the event is unsanctioned.
Frankly, I can’t help but laugh over this entire thing. On the one hand, something weird is going on. I’m curious to find out how AGE Entertainment got itself involved in this and why it’s risking a lawsuit from one of Japan’s most prestigious universities. I’ve reached out to AGE and will publish a response if I receive it.
On the other hand, the people most upset about this appear to be the type of men who have very strong opinions about women playing video games. So it’s hard not to root for Ichijo Miki and wish her success in her blatant attention grab.
Update 2/14/2025: Ichijo Miki seems to have privated her X account as of today. AGE Entertainment has not yet responded to our inquiries.
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