scrawny

幕末から明治にかけて西洋化が進むにつれ、天皇の装いも和装から洋装へと変わりました。

When Japan's Emperor Dropped His Kimono

Emperor Meiji sat for a photograph in 1872 wearing a courtier’s robe and hat that reached for the sky — a symbol of tradition in the East. But to Europeans? Not so much. The 20-year-old leader, despite all the pomp, looked baby-faced and scrawny. But by the time he sat for a new photograph one year later, Meiji was sporting a beard and military regalia, and had parted his hair in a fashion not unlike Jefferson Davis.

In the 1850s, Japan ended its entrenched isolationist policy on the world stage to open its doors. The West rushed in and built trading hubs in Japanese cities like Sapporo and Yokohama. The Meiji emperor, meanwhile, was coming of age, and the young leader — thanks to Japan’s newly minted Western ties — influenced generations to come on how they would look and dress in Japan.

In 1865, men are in skirts. A decade later, an elite man is to be wearing a suit or growing a beard.

Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University

He was made into a “public figure in the European mold,” says Robert Hellyer, associate professor of history at Wake Forest University, who teaches about East Asia and Japan.

（以下省略）

http://www.ozy.com/flashback/when-japans-emperor-dropped-his-kimono/71303

今回取り上げる単語は、scrawnyです。

『ジーニアス英和辞典』（第五版，大修館）で調べたところ、「やせこけた」と載っておりました。
同じような意味の単語でscraggyとskinnyがあり、それぞれ「（骨が浮き出るほど）やせこけた」、「やせこけた、がりがりの、骨と皮ばかりの」と定義されておりました。

Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition Reserved, Oxford University Press)によると、 “unattractively thin and bony”とのことでした。

個人的な解釈として、記事内で “baby-faced and scrawny”と表現することにより、天皇はまだ幼く決して強い存在ではなかったことを表しているように思いました。（Gomez）