Anime Eureka

Every Sunday, hundreds of teenagers get dressed and head to Tokyo’s Harajuku district in a unique fashion show that can only be described as Manga meets Kabuki meets Halloween.

BEHIND THE SEAMS:

            WIDE-EYED CYBER dolls adorned in tight ripped jeans, bright pumps and lace sashes sashay down the streets of Shibuya as if on the way to a punk-retro-pearly-queen carnival party.

            Most of these fashion vanguards are middle or high school students, aged between 12 and 16, doing little more than every other teenager in Harajuku on a Sunday: shop and then chill out and giggle with their friends.

            Fashion here is less of a statement of class, or cool, than pure energy – the unrelenting energy of Japanese adolescents bent on reinventing themselves – and whole fashion movements, on a daily basis. Merchandise usually has a seven-day shelf life, with boutiques having renewal openings every six months, totally refitting their stores with new designs and hiring new sales assistants who better fit the revamped image. There are instances when trends first made popular in Tokyo appear in Paris collections the next season.

            But the one question rattling the puzzled faces of casual observers is: why? Ask any one of them and you’ll more than likely get the same unassuming reply: “Just hanging out.”

            But surely when two 15-year-old girls feel the need to dress up like satanic nurses on a weekly basis, one handcuffed to the other’s neck in a pseudo-S&M way, there should be a deeper reason.

            Japan is said to be a very naïve communist or socialist nation. The psychology underlying behavior is, “Mrs. Sato has one, so I want one too.” or, “I need to buy brand name goods one rank higher in order to stand out.” Tomoko Yasuda, a sociologist from a local university said. The result is a system where everyone ends up possessing the same kinds of goods.

            Also, today, there still exists the authoritarian socialistic-style salaryman existence – the guiding principle of which seems to be, “The nail that sticks out will be hammered down.”

            Apparently, people who display too much individuality or assert themselves too forcefully are disliked and we find many Japanese youngsters staging a protest through fashion. This is something Genki, a deejay at a downtown club, affirms: “Hip-hop offers Japanese youth a medium to vent disappointment. While pop, on the other hand, strays from reality and is censored if there is a slight taint of negativity in it. It’s often packaged like candy.”

            Asked if his rapping and dressing up has changed his outlook in life, Genki, who wears a B-boy outfit of jeans splashed with NBA team patches including a New York Yankees wristband and a big, fake diamond earring, replies: “I didn’t have something I liked to do before rapping. I would wake up, go to school, go to the game center. It was the same every day.”