Am I underestimating or overestimating the difficulty required in procuring this particular stream of songs from early 80s? And not the “I Love the 80s” 80s, but the past mass hits with zero appeal to later media curators — not lucky enough to make it to punchline status. Like ELO’s “Xanadu” but with less name recognition. Do they make CD collections of this genre? Is there a Usen channel dedicated to it? This must be a high-level management decision, because the bleached-hair pock-marked punk-rock clerks at this “recycle shop” could not possibly be responsible.

Whatever the case, the corporate DJ collective know the perfect ingredients for ambiance. No matter if you are in Mobile, Alabama or Mitaka, Tokyo, there is no better music for browsing used furniture and refrigerators than Juice Newton and her ilk. We were looking for a dresser drawer, but I eventually wandered off to see what kind of overpriced yet cruddy musical instruments were on display and whether somebody had done me the favor of leaving behind the board game Stratego.

Past the rack of dusty men’s sportcoats, but before the endless reams of soiled children’s clothes, there is a big glass case filled with luxury handbags. The ordering corresponds to the unspoken hierarchy of status and popularity in Japan. First comes Louis Vuitton, which takes up a whole vertical section. Then comes Gucci, Chanel, followed by Coach, Prada (ouch!), and “Misc.” You may be tempted to believe that this stock is mostly fakes because of parallels to the suspicious stock of similar stores in countries with more rational approaches to luxury goods, but with somewhere between 40-90% of all Japanese females owning a Louis Vuitton product, imitation goods are unnecessary for making sense of this mini luxury select shop within what is otherwise a mildewed warehouse of refuse.

At Tokyo suburban junk stores, you can buy the same black Chanel bag that Paris Hilton wore to her sentencing last week and also pick up some classic games for your Super Famicon.

The European luxury super-brands almost have it in their interest to send out an army of ground-staff to raid these locations and buy out all of their own products. Because the dolor brought on from these sad, overlit stores — middle-class Salvation Army shops without even the basic appeal of charity and property rotation — overpowers the magic and mystery of any and all luxury goods. These bags are not even afforded the charm of functionality and practicality. No one picking up a half-price Gucci wallet would experience the adrenaline rush of rewarded frugality. The brand images get sucked into the vortex of despair contained with the glass cabinets — a variety of abandoned dreams organized by conglomerate, rotting away in the clothing corner of a thrift shop in the middle of nowhere. LV’s Monogram Multicolore may as well be an old version of Scrabble with the Q and the W missing.

For the last four years, I have felt that the gears of Japanese fashion cycles have ground to a rusty halt, but now it is spelled out for all to see: the November issue of Vingtaine boasts the headline article 「３年後でもおしゃれな服」”Clothes that will still be fashionable three-years later.” Back when the Japanese economy kept expanding and incomes were high across the board, it was almost a virtue to spend money on things that would be absolutely unusable in one year’s time. 「消費は美徳」(”Consumption is a virtue!”) they used to say — directly mixing national plans for economic growth with Confucian morality. The whole fun of “o-share” was keeping up perfectly with artificial trends invented by our style superiors.

The misleadingly-titled Vingtaine is actually read by women in their late 30s, although the magazine’s young foreign models make it look a bit younger. If anybody has money to burn in Japan these days, it must be fashionable women in their late 30s, who either have decent jobs or are married to men with decent salaries. But how optimistic about their economic future could they be if they are requesting clothing that is “trendy” yet a middle-term investment.

To a certain extent, trend cycles have become so fast in the 21st century that they have exceeded the threshold of relevancy. But this desire for permanently-chic apparel seems to be a head on the same Hydra that brought us the rationalistic obsession with Louis Vuitton bags — $2000 is not so bad if the leather bags never break, never go out of style, and can be worn daily. If one is to buy fancy things in Japan now, they must not be frivolous purchases for the moment, but a step in building up a base of belongings to be used over a lifetime. Blouses and skirts are pianos, not toothbrushes. Data shows that the Japanese economy is now “in the longest post-war expansion,” but this does not translate into optimism on the Japanese Street.

In the middle of the 1990s, beer alone made up something like 75% of the liquor market in Japan. No surprise, really: most everyone around the world loves a cold tall one no matter whether the occasion is celebrating a rise in mutual fund portfolio value or suppressing the despair of losing a white-collar job to restructuring. Despite the fact that Japanese beer is excellent across-the-board, Japanese consumers have recently abandoned it in droves for fake “beer-flavored” malt-beverage substitutes: happoshu and fake-happoshu “third-category beer.” These fake beers now command about 25% of the alcoholic beverage market.

This is taste deflation in action: consumer budgets go down and sales of inferior goods go up. Pure-and-simple. (This has now led to a market gap at the top exploited by Suntory Premium Malts, but we will leave that topic for a different day.)

Fashion, however, has been different. These are not items that you put in your body but represent your social status and hierarchical ranking to society at large. Thanks to rising consciousness about socio-economic strata, the major European superbrands — Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry, Christian Dior, and Hermès — have dominated the Japanese fashion scene for the last decade. But instead of being able to go head-to-toe in one brand like the ’80s — or even mid-’90s — young women can only afford to go generic for the shirts and skirts and then “class it all up” with a $2000 bag. But whether the appeal of these brands is “rational” (dependable and classic!) or “aspirational” (Roppongi Hills/Paris Hilton plastic-fantastic!), paying $2000 or more for a bag has been the de facto standard for a very long time. Maybe this year it’s Chloé and not LV, but still: time to take out a loan.

But watch out super luxury: last week’s issue of Weekly Toyo Keizai featured a long feature on “The Coach Miracle.” Many members of what used to be called the “middle-class” are now happy to buy a $400-$500 bag instead of shelling out for a $2000 one. Although the accompanying pictures to the article illustrate a much less fashion-forward, less glamorous crowd, Coach’s growth in the Japanese bag market is unquestionably strong: currently a 9% share, above Gucci, Hermes, and Chanel (LV is still 25%, natch).

Important to note that Coach is not seen as a classic luxury brand, but an “accessible luxury” (アクセシブル・ラグジュリー). Much more Polo than Prada in terms of cachet, with prices to match. More America than Europe — which is almost never a good sign of things to come.

Surely there are strategic business decisions and changes in fashion/taste that explain Coach’s rise, but one cannot help but think back to simple economic realities: buying a $2000-$3000 bag is a bit of an extreme investment at this point in time for a large class of people who have moderate incomes and little chance at wage raises. “Accessible” means having a “nice” bag and money left over to live life with the bag you just bought. And since boys do not care about brand labels anyway, why bother?

If Japanese men can accept that their 21st century life will involve the daily imbibing of vile forms of fake beer, why can’t women come down from fantasy land and stay within the price ranges of their budget limitations? With the economy moving as it is, taste deflation for middle-mass fashion is bound to happen at some point. And since LV is now so overexposed, the time has never been better for going “one-rank” down. I doubt, however, that things will stop at the Coach level. Bape destroyed the fashion market for men by making “fashion” into t-shirts and jeans, which ultimately opened the market for Uniqlo. If Coach says that “dressing up” can be mid-level luxury, then there goes the neighborhood.

As part of some professional research I am engaged in, I talked with two female fashion marketing experts last night about contemporary Japanese women in their 20s. For a majority of the post-war, a Japanese woman’s lifestyle — fashion, makeup, hair, hobbies, general dispositions — could be almost perfectly deduced from her primary magazine of choice. The instruction and guidance are so precise that even the most individual extrapolation of the ingredients would still result in an extremely manifest membership to a certain style.

Knowing this, I have been interested in the grand meaning behind the giant octopus Can Cam currently sitting on top of Japanese society. The magazine has a circulation estimated between 600,000 and 750,000 — quite possibly the best selling title in Japan outside of the phonebook weekly manga. According to my sources, even women who consider themselves non•no readers may also be glancing at Can Cam to skim tips. CC’s popularity has been attributed to the three exclusive models (専属モデル) in their pages — Ebihara Yuri, Yamada Yu, and Oshikiri Moe — but these women (all in the same K-Dash jimusho keiretsu) have only really broken into pop culture over the last year, whereas the magazine started quickly increasing readership after 2001.

Source #1 sees modern culture revolving around goukon (合コン) — the traditional group date system that brings together an equal number of boys to an equal number of girls to meet and flirt at a table. Can Cam readers are obsessed with goukon success, and in the past, that meant catching the eye of that one special boy on the other side of the tatami mat. Now girls aim to win the hearts and minds of the entire enemy side, and ultimately, those boys’ parents.

Boys who attend goukon don’t like designer fashion, weird haircuts, queer collars, innovative fabrics, challenging appearances. And they don’t even like the strong and chic Yamada Yu. They prefer the slightly grown-up yet sweet and adorable Ebihara Yuri (”Ebi-chan” to you). Opposed to its rivals, Can Cam best shows you how to dress exactly like our goukon heroine Ebi-chan and is apparently moving Yamada out of the picture to make more room for Ebi, Ebi, Ebi.

This meta-narrative of female desperation towards capturing ideal boyfriends at group dates leads to another question: who is the ideal boyfriend? Rich and hot. How is this different from the 3高 (tall, well-educated, large salary) ideal of the late ’80s? It’s not really so different, they claim, although girls today care a lot less about where the money is coming from (something revealed by the deletion of the educational requirement.) Post-Bubble, the 3高 made room for the 3C (comfortable, communicative, cooperative), but that sounds less like a husband and more like a social worker. (Am I right ladies???) In the last several years, that pipe dream of sensitivity got thrown out the window, and girls are on their feet with a new pipe dream: lusting after rich men in fancy suits sans cravate who will save them from a dull life of economical savings and buying clothes for their nobody kids at the Uniqlo across from Bldy. Needless to say, the bulk of Can Cam readers come from middle-class and lower middle-class backgrounds and are a bit concerned about their own abilities to pull themselves up to the top echelons of the class ladder, where all the real action is.

Can Cam girls may be a plurality, but there are two other groups worth mentioning:

First, the Ero Kawaii (”erotic cute”) crew — exemplified by butter caramel squash Koda Kumi, the magazine ViVi, and the popular lingerie catalog Peach John. These are girls who do not necessarily care about finding boyfriends, because boys have never shown much interest in them to start with. Japanese guys don’t like too much skin — they prefer the demure, conservative beauty of Ebi-chan, remember — so the Ero Kawaii crew make up for it by the self-gratifying passage into softly aggressive outfits that leave a 20% pie piece to the imagination. I hate using the term “ero kawaii” — feels like I got some memo from Dentsu and am explaining Japanese “cool” to you in Fall 2005 — but I think it is important to realize how attracting boys is not at the core of the controversial look. Also for reference, these girls — like their Can Cam second-cousins — want to become very wealthy, just not necessarily through the economic transaction of marriage.

Second, the “independent” girls who are generally from wealthy backgrounds. They are not necessarily interested in boys because their birth-right gives them a confidence that failure to attract a well-to-do guy in a banana yellow Porsche will not lead them to a bland, frugal future. This confidence also means not having to follow all the instructions in those 2 kg. magazines: ensembles can be put together more freely. Not caring what men think about you opens up some serious options.

A friend told me last night that the Shibuya record store Zest Records has closed up shop. A sign on the door states simply, “We have closed. Thank you,” and with no new address provided and the webpage non-responsive, I have to assume that they are permanently out of business. According to Japanese bloggers, they ceased operation in early July. No goodbye party or official announcement — Zest ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

Zest Records began its life as a noise/avant-garde shop, but a new owner named Wakabayashi Yukinori turned it into the central record store of the Shibuya-kei movement. They stocked old bossa nova, ’60s groove, mondo, European club-pop, plus all the records from domestic labels Escalator, Crue-L, Trattoria, and Readymade. Kaji Hideki, Naka Masashi (Escalator founder), and Matsuda Gakuji (Cubismo Grafico, Neil and Iraiza) worked there as store clerks. Zest primarily handled vinyl, which gave it a flavor unique from the CD super-warehouses down the street.

In the mid-’90s, the popular “alternative” girl’s magazine Olive featured the store in an issue, and suddenly, trendy teens started crowding the little space on the weekends, looking to buy into what they perceived to be the most fashionable sound on the planet. But vinyl sales peaked in ‘99. In 2002, I asked Wakabayashi in an article for Tokion how the future of the Japanese analog record market was looking. He answered, “a dark shade of gray” at the time, but evidently, it’s finally gone all the way to black.

Shibuya-kei died a lot sooner than vinyl, however, and for the last few years, Zest had tried to reinvent themselves as a dance music store specializing in o-share club music (think Royksopp and Junior Senior instead of tech-house or hip hop.) DMR across the street already had the corner on that market, unfortunately, and a lot of longtime Zest fans felt that the store had sold them out.

When the indie record store Maximum Joy closed down last year, those with interest in international indie pop consoled themselves by saying, hey, at least there’s Zest! But now, there’s no Zest, and while Jetset and Escalator’s Caprice can pick up some of the slack, there is the fundamental issue that this entire unique field of independent music has lost its market. Shibuya-kei is dead and now buried — with the alumni going into left-field experimental music (Kahimi Karie, Cornelius), dance punk (Escalator), or just repeating themselves ad nauseum (Konishi Yasuharu). The Neo Shibuya-kei kids have Oricon chart aspirations, mostly because they saw the original musical stream as stylish domestic pop and not the anti-major label struggle it really was. Most importantly, there are fewer and fewer young consumers who are interested in taking a chance with relatively experimental or innovative musicians, and as Japan veers further towards neo-Nationalistic navel-gazing, that collective impulse to explore diverse historical sounds from abroad has faded.

I am surprised that Zest lasted as long as it did. The heart behind that one-time energetic community has withered away, and we can now only expect the castles to fall one by one.