I’ve got no specific, personal beef with Hiroshi Fujiwara — the man ultimately responsible for bringing A Bathing Ape, Undercover, Head Porter, Goodenough, AFFA, Visvim, Soph., Base Station, Neighborhood, Sarcastic, Real Mad Hectic, Original Fake, and Bounty Hunter into this world and ushering in the Golden Age of Underground Crossover in the 1990s. He has been rewarded handsomely for his promotions and innovations of Japanese consumer culture over the years, and everyone now concedes that the man is the coolest Japanese person to ever walk the Earth. I do not contest the general conclusions of that assessment.

Seeing his face on the cover of Tokion in June 2007, however, has a very clear subtext: this hazily-defined, yet specific cultural enterprise in which many of us are actively or passively invested has succumbed to total and utter contraction. Terminal decline! Messages and dialogue now depend on a constant stream of flashbacks stuck somewhere between nostalgia and amnesia. Hiroshi Fujiwara is only on the cover, because They/We have yet to find a modern day replacement.

Tokion knows fully well that there is nothing new to say about HF unless somebody suddenly decided after all these years to pry open the Pandora’s Box and start asking the hard questions about the mechanics behind his success. (For example, is nobody interested in pointing out the contradiction of a master capitalist and friend to wrestling dons un-ironically displaying portraits of Marx and Engels in his studio?) But no, HF’s the same-old tight-lipped magician — never betraying his fellow practitioners by revealing the nature of his marketing tricks. Unlike Nigo — the once Cornelius clone with Buddy Holly glasses who underwent a complete tenkō conversion into the Church of Hip Hop over the last six years — HF remains the same old mysterious HF. There is something comforting, however, in the dependability of his enigmatic existence. The only thing new about HF at this juncture is that intentionally-unglamorous thing on his nose — which would have kids lining up at pharmacies if “kids” still did that kind of thing.¹

Now I don’t blame Mr. Fujiwara for being on the cover. He’s not asking for more press — he’s just the target of the aimless media machine. The problems lie deep within the anachronistic cultural rules that still guide the hands of editors and other gatekeepers. We continue to live in the shadows of living giants like Fujiwara, and their massive and manifold successes set an impossible standard for newfound stardom. There is no new Hiroshi Fujiwara, and there will be no new Hiroshi Fujiwara. No one will ever pilot independent underground street clothing into a massive empire and a penthouse in Roppongi Hills again. Nike is not flying the head of FatYo! around in the corporate jet. So while everyone is waiting for the new Hiroshi Fujiwara, they have no choice but to put the actual Hiroshi Fujiwara #1 on the cover.

And you can’t just abandon Hiroshi Fujiwara, because he is currently the only living-and-breathing relic of the dream still integral to the foundations of the Tokion Weltanschauung — that historic-specific delusion that somehow niche tastes and DIY can cross over to mainstream success and fame. But at what point does Fujiwara cease to be a role model and start mutating into a symbol of cultural oppression from history’s past. I remember seeing “Kill Your Idols” on a t-shirt from one of the myriad brands in his orbit, but no one is actually reading the text: HF is the least likely icon to die of regicide.

Continued »

Most of the time, a majority of people on Omotesando road in the middle of the day are not shoppers but photographers, ready to pounce on the next stylish girl with pink hair coming out of Wendy’s with an S-sized frosty. Somebody, however, has to supply the massive amounts of street snaps in Japan’s monthly fashion magazines. (PingMag has an interview with some of these photographers here.)

At first look, these impromptu style portraits seem to function as a way for editors to capture “what’s happening on the the streets” and pass it along to their readers. Youngsters can then compare their own style against the “standard” implied in the pictures or nick ideas for their own wardrobes from the most stylish.

The reality behind this media phenomenon, however, is not so clear-cut. I recently interviewed the managing editor at one of Japan’s longest-running and most prestigious male fashion magazines. The magazine ran a special feature on “snaps” for their May issue, and I asked him how they went about procuring the large number of images.

First, they ran an announcement in the back of the previous issue about where and when the street fashion shoots would be held in each of Japan’s major cities. This brought the magazine’s core readers out to the photographers, reducing the production team’s reliance on passers-by. Once shots came back to the editors, they selected photos based on the subject’s skill in appropriating and using the styles advocated in the magazine. By choosing specific styles from a pre-selected group, the editors were able to strengthen the validity of their own fashion message by demonstrating the prevalence of the magazine’s signature style out on “the streets” through this overwhelming and implicitly-objective photographic evidence.

I asked, are these fashion shots helpful to editors for discovering the next trends? In other words, do street snaps also function as a source of inspiration for fashion editors? No, it’s the opposite. Streets snaps allow editors to check to make sure that their wardrobe recipes end up being used by their target groups. For example, the magazine in question had been advocating wearing neckties with short-sleeve polo shirts for a year but had yet to see this combination out on the town. In the May street shots, however, kids had clearly adopted the style, and these photos helped ease fears in the editorial office that their message had not be in vain.

Obviously, a magazine like FRUiTS is a different animal — more interested in the artistry of fashion than facilitating the sales and consumption of it. (Last time I checked, FRUiTS did not offer brand names and prices next to the outfits like CUTiE.) Therefore, there is no real commercial agenda to guide the photographers and editors of FRUiTS into crafting photos towards a singular narrative. We should also understand that FRUiTS is not used in the same way as other fashion magazines. It is simply a collection of photos rather than a prescriptive magazine where readers demand a gentle voice of authority.

If editors from the mainstream fashion titles are selecting individual street shots with the intention of proving the widespread usage of their own advocated style, where does the bottom-up flow of tastes come into play in this process? Bottom-up implies that the elite and powerful will adopt and champion ideas from their “inferiors” and customers, but a majority of Japanese magazine editors do not go through the street snap production process with much room for inserting opinions, styles, and concepts that they do not already approve. At best, editors are using the photos to gauge the efficacy of their own message with reader tastes, but this involves consumers/readers saying “yes” or “no” to top-down styles rather than creating their own complex message and sending it up the food chain.

I do not mean to deny the existence of bottom-up taste flows in Japan — for example, the brands comprising the Tokyo Girls Collection are mostly designed by young women the same age as the consumers. But with the street snaps in the most widely-read fashion magazines, I find it hard to pronounce an equality of top-down and bottom-up flows once the real mechanics of the process have been illuminated.

For all those dirty old Japanese men who are sick of seeing that human chunk of Italian ham Girolamo Panzetta on the cover of their beloved Leon, the brand new magazine Zino gives you 73-year old journalist Tahara Soichiro slouching on a rooftop, drinking the bubbly, wearing a dozen different shades of off-white. The guy oozes sex the way that most men ooze ooze. This Ole Granddad is so over-sexed that he doesn’t even bother to look at the hot white woman in the bikini standing right in front of him. Either that or he was photoshopped into the setting.

Zino comes to us from Kishida Ichiro — the media maverick and lothario who helmed Leon until he was asked to leave last year. Generally speaking, the content in Zino seems to be identical to Leon — high-end gear for sketchy old guys. Lots of reptile skin and huge watches. Opposed to the self-imposed racial segregation of Leon, however, Zino actually uses a few Japanese men as models, adhering to the widely-held belief that dudes are dudes as long as they have stubble.

Readers may not be screaming out for two rival versions of the same magazine, but apparently advertisers cannot resist the idea of a magazine targeted towards single and lecherous rich men who spend their Sosekis on luxury items instead of on wives and the results of their procreation.

And if you are thinking, hey, Zino is just “fronting,” check out the inside-cover ad: Hermès, baby. You can’t even afford to talk to guys who work in the Hermès stock warehouses.

Zino’s motto is “リッチを誇るな、センスで光れ！” — “Don’t be proud of being rich, dazzle ‘em with your good sense.” Nobody embodies these words better than Mr. Tahara Soichiro — that guy is as hot as the goddamn sun.

Update, September 2008: Zino sadly ceased publication a few months ago.

CanCam Stats for June 2007 Pages: 556 Pictures of Women Modeling Distinct Outfits or Makeup: 842 Pictures of Ebihara Yuri (Ebi-chan): 164 Pictures of Yamada Yu: 29 Pictures of Oshikiri Moe: 0

Commentary: With the departure of Oshikiri Moe to AneCan, Ebi-chan and Yamada Yu have had to up their pace to cover the court as a tag-team. That being said, Yamada’s performance can be said to be marginal at best — winning only 29 points against the powerhouse Ebihara at 164. Shooting that many distinct pictures for a monthly magazine qualifies as first-tier modeling hustle. Bench-warmers Maki and Naoko also seem to be getting quite a lot of face time. The two girls are making themselves out to be the new star players, ready for their rightful place on the starting team. Rookie Mine Erika also makes some big plays towards the end of the game.

Methodology: (1) Obvious advertisements were not counted in the total, but advertorial using the magazine’s models were. (2) Tiny pictures and pictures of women solely holding objects were not counted. (3) Multiple pictures of a specific ensemble were not counted, meaning that the magazine featured almost 842 different ensembles.

With nine-year old girls in thong bikinis currently leading the march of eroticism in Japan (or at least grabbing the most real estate in der Zeitgeist), refined culture magazine for urban professionals Brutus has decided to come out and remind its readers that “adult” women can also be beautiful. The idea is a bit of radical contrarianism, for sure, but such sensational headlines are known to move copies. Relatively young and over-make-up’d Kashii Yuu graces the cover, but the main feature exhibits portrait shots of various older and professional Japanese women that buck the recent infantile gravity of beauty standards.

From the Brutus website:

As seen in the rush of new women’s magazines starting publication, this is an era of diverse ways in which women can “shine.” From catchphrases such as “You’ve graduated from trying to attract boys (mote)” and “Adult, but cute (kawaii),” more focus is being put on “adult” women. Beauty comes from refinement, intelligence, and a strong will. The keyword for the charming female image is “adult” for men — and maybe for females as well. Our sessions with famous photographers are full of charming beautiful women. In this special feature, adult women are beautiful!

Japan these days is a bit SCREAM — Socio-economic Class Rules Everything Around Me — and we therefore are best seeing Brutus as a media representation of the taste culture of professional, well-educated upper middle-class Japanese men rather than as just as a magazine. Brutus is “kachi-gumi” (Winners) media and not targeted towards either middle-range salarymen in the “make-gumi” (Losers) without proper cosmopolitan taste or artistic freeter who have chosen passion for individual creation over a high income. Mr. Brutus is drinking champagne at the opening of Tokyo Midtown in a slim navy-blue pin-striped Super 120s suit with slant pockets. He is not playing pachinko within a dirty cloud of nicotine and J-POP Trance Best 2005.

Sexual attraction and social class are not independent of each other, especially seeing that a specific attribute underlies both career success and interest in “adult” women: self-confidence. This is starting to read like the script to one of those businessman LPs of the 1960s, but the self-confident man has no need to fear women who may challenge him in the realm of ideas or even, gasp, on the income ladder. A sophisticated man needs a sophisticated women on his arm. James Bond does not dote after 16 year-old girls — at least while the camera is rolling.

But whether self-confidence is a source of business acumen or just an inherited privilege of the wealthy, lusting after little girls under the guise of appreciating “genki” or the “blossoming of youth” does not match the chic Brutus lifestyle. The relative newness of the Under-15 boom suggests that it is a sexual desire born of contemporary social conditions: men are attracted to these girls’ innocence as a retreat from a harsh reality in which they are completely emasculated. The “make-gumi” man lacks self-confidence, and extremely young girls (or in more mainstream cases, hostesses/prostitutes) symbolize a desire to create fantasy moments in which the man can regain a sense of control and dominance. Adult women are no good, because they are a reminder of the fall in stature rather than a cure for the failure itself.

Brutus smartly reminds us, though, that “adult” is not just the key for men, but also for women. Japanese analysts posit that women in contemporary Japan pay attention to their style primarily to meet and secure upwardly-mobile men (or at least, self-confident without necessarily the economic motive), and if so, the woman herself must now move towards “adult.” A man’s affection for the immature is a sure sign of low earning potential. This means young women must eventually abandon the simple algebra of “mote“ (being cute in the way that boys like –> a boyfriend) for a more complicated calculus of following your own will as a means to attract the sophisticated man (who may just happen to possess a bulging pocketbook.)

I had doubts on the fairness of putting “adult” sophistication on the same continuum as the pedophilic tendencies of the otaku, but I just went to the bookstore to check out the issue, and much to my surprise, the intro paragraph of the Brutus feature specifically name checks the “Junior Idol Boom” as proof of infantile sexuality taking over modern society. And they too see the fear towards adult women in the communal lack of self-confidence. Without saying it specifically, Brutus does seem to be asking, are you enough of a Winner Man to take on a Winner Woman?