My Fashionable Endeavours in Kansai Gaidai

Last Sunday, when I went to Umeda (shop-district in Osaka) with my friend Miho from Tokyo – I bought very stylish to my mind glasses – a little bit reminding the fashion of the 60-s… Full of enthusiasm and this consumerist’s happiness of a newly-bought stuff, I ran into the lounge, full of my American and Canadian friends, expecting  all kinds of those well-assimilated Japanese-like admire and exclamation kinds: “Kawaii!” - but I never got either oneL On the contrary, my endless, inspired by black-n-white movies affection to retro-fashion was critiqued utterly by my Western friends, while among my Japanese ladies of taste I managed to have success. Is the fashion (while being such an international thing) that much different between East and West too?

you will hardly see this kind of jeans in Japan

You may sign out, my pretty readers – of course, the fashion is very globalized and glocalized (borrowed but assimilated for a local culture) nowadays. However, it’s the understanding of beauty and modesty – what differs pretty noticeably here and there. I don’t want to sound orientalist (Edward Said’s unpleasant sense of this word) and create a fabulously different image of Japan, but the idea of beauty here is closer to what we, Westerners call “cuteness”, “prettiness”, while oversees – especially in the liberalized States – the beauty seems to be associated with words like “hot”, “sexy” and “seducing”… This idea might be proved by the scene we observe every day in KG - Japanese girls experience very many styles of clothing, but they are not tend to demonstrate their bodies the way Westerners used to do to attract sexually.

Such loose and pale clothes reminds me of kimono

Kimono Echo

The way I look at Japanese society, connecting every contemporary social issue with the traditional thinking from long ago might be annoying and banal, but I can’t get rid of the idea that loose, gentle, spring-like light shirts and one-piece dresses on girls and many-layered clothes on guys have something to do with kimono fashion, which is (thanks kamisama) still very much “alive” in Japan not only on special occasions, but subconsciously - in casual clothing as well. So, nothing is tight or too bright but modest and stylish is the first law of looking pretty here.

Lost in Self-Expression                          Only walking around Kansai Gaidai you may notice how broad the choice of styles in the modern Japanese world of clothing. According to my observations the top three styles are: light hippy (straw hats, long skirts, head band, light brown accessories and leather sandals), sweet tomboy (jeans overalls, funny boots, tiny hat) and cute Lolita (light extremely short skirt, blouse, ribbons) + native American theme, Audrey Hepburn-like 60-s fashion, etc… The foreigners who have not spent that much time in Japan to buy a fashion magazine and to travel deep into provincial towns would be pleased by the creativity of the Japanese youngsters, being so into world history. But some of my international friends complained that Japanese people don’t seem like know or are interested in more than just the way they cover their body in a “kawaii” and stylish way. They just get a certain amount of image-packs from the Internet or fashion magazines, so ironically they have to swim with the flow of everybody trying to distinguish themselves, without thinking too deep of what their style really means…

Manly Men

Whole attention on boots, please:)

Why are young men in Japan concerned about their appearance so much? They wear various kinds of pullovers, shirts (sometimes with funny signs in broken EnglishJ), shoes (oh, that’s the way the conquered my heart!) and a great deal of different kinds accessories. The material and colours often don’t differ from the girls’ ones, and actually strictly speaking, male fashion seems quite feminine – why? Is it the fault of overcaring and love from parents, called “amaeru” again?

We don’t know. But the fact that the majority of them really cares too much about their appearance (even pull their eyebrows out and take care of a hairstyle almost all the time) might be saying about the collectivistic nature of the Japanese society. Okay, I’ll explain. When you put on pyjama to a school in the Western countries – you are talking for yourself only: I’m just out of bed, I’ve studied yesterday night too hard, I’m going to school to get knowledge but not to show off in a brand-new clothes, etc… While in Japan, whenever and wherever a Japanese person goes – he/she represents or his/her family group, or his/her school, or his/her club, etc – anyways, it’s closely-knitted island hierarchical society, just accept it.

Time to Throw the Rocks…

According to that table, Japanese young people have only some 4 or 5 college student-years for freely expressing themselves, without wearing compulsory dark and identical uniforms. Thus, however little they would think about their styles – it’s already great step to developing unique and independently-thinking identity, which is craved so much nowadays.