1. Introducing Japanese Fashion, Past and Present 2. Lost in a Gaze: Young Men and Fashion in Contemporary Japan 3. Boy’s Elegance: A Liminality of Boyish Charm and Old-World Suavity 4. Glacé Wonderland: Cuteness, Sexuality and Young Women 5. Ribbons and Lace: Girls, Decorative Femininity and Androgyny 6. An Ivy Boy and a Preppy Girl: Style Import-Export 7. Concluding Japanese Fashion Cultures, Change and Continuity Bibliography Index
Through cutting-edge analysis of contemporary style tribes, Japanese Fashion Cultures challenges widely held notions of gender relations and European style imitation in Japan.
Masafumi Monden is Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Western Australia.
Masafumi Monden’s fascinating and important book, Japanese Fashion
Cultures, will be of great interest to everyone interested in
fashion, gender, globalization, and youth culture. His research on
young Japanese men and their attitudes towards fashion is
especially significant, as it calls into question persistent
stereotypes about how men and women are assumed to engage with
fashion.
*Director and Chief Curator, The Museum at FIT, New York City,
USA*
From the possibility of subversion in lace-trimmed Lolita outfits
and petite pinafores straight out of Alice in Wonderland, to the
enchantments of Milkboy dandyism, Masafumi Monden's Japanese
Fashion Cultures offers up a delightful combination of case studies
that reveal the very best thinking in fashion theory today.
*Laura Miller, Eiichi Shibusawa-Seigo Arai Endowed Professor of
Japanese Studies and Professor of Anthropology, University of
Missouri–St. Louis, USA*
Masafumi Monden’s book is a gem. By bringing together and exploring
colourful examples from Japan’s vibrant street culture and fashion,
he artfully demonstrates just how individualistic, innovative, and
original the Japanese are. He also dismantles myths and
misperceptions about gender relations, sexuality, and social
relations in Japan.
*Brian J. McVeigh, University at Albany, SUNY, USA*
Monden provides a rich and detailed examination of the subtle
intricacies of gendering and sexuality in contemporary Japanese
fashion. While exploring the extremes of Tokyo street fashion he is
able to illuminate some of the mechanism behind the perplexingly
divergent ways to be a man or a woman in today’s Japan.
*Toby Slade, University of Tokyo, Japan*
Fashion trends are inherently transitory and intrinsically
fragmented. Yet Monden sees sufficient continuities and
commonalities within the world of contemporary Japanese fashion to
warrant a search for significant social and cultural insights. In
his four case studies, he examines fashion magazines aimed
specifically at young men, the reasons behind the style choices of
two female ‘idol’ singers, the seeming discontinuities between
outward appearance and hardheaded individuality present in the
heroine of a well-received film, and the long-term success of ‘Ivy
Style’ among both men and women in the world of modern Japanese
fashion … his work upends conventional expectations by intuiting,
for example, that fashion-conscious young Japanese men might well
be rejecting the blue suit, white shirt and tie style typical of
the conventional Japanese ‘salaryman’ rather than exhibiting a kind
of feminized masculinity … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division
undergraduates and above.
*CHOICE*
Here is fascinating insight into the ‘boyish charm’ of Japanese
menswear labels such as Milkboy. … Suddenly, as an American, I am
given new insight into the semiological logic of a style which one
might have assumed to be uniquely American— the logic of ‘dressing
down’ without actually dressing down; indeed, ‘dressing down’ to
demonstrate ‘old money’ status. … I for one have learned a lot.
*Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture*
For anyone interested in the development of Japanese fashion,
contemporary Japanese styles or more broadly the ways in which men
and women negotiate the fluid nature of fashion or the
representation and negotiation of gender through fashion, this is a
valuable and fascinating read.
*Costume*
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