Japanese dress forms

In a comment she left, Valerie gives me the perfect opening for a topic I've been wanting to write about:

I agree with all you've said about sleeves and other fitting issues. I draped a muslin and tried it on an elderly client last year. After much tweaking to her contours, the armholes and sleeves turned out just like your illustrations [in the book]!...Back to the sleeve and armhole issue- is there a dress form that represents that shape?

According to information that Helen Darmara sent me, it appears there just may be. Helen said she researched the Bunka dress form "and found an interesting article on how the 'new body' was measured and developed". Bunka is better known in the US as a Japanese pattern and fashion magazine publisher but the company got its start (and remains) as a fashion college. I guess the magazines and books were a necessary consequence in the development of material for the curriculumn. It was in collaboration with Bunka that the Digital Human Laboratory (under the auspices of AIST-Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan) developed a new form. The details shown on the site are fascinating. Armhole shaping is the least of it. Below is an illustration of a comparison of two forms. On the left is the new Japanese form. On the right, a traditional dress form.