New eyebrows, Old Labour

[imomus]

In Japan, the pace of change is unrelenting, and as the changes arrive, we here at Click Opera report them to you. Yesterday I brought word of a new art movement, today--hold the front page!--it's a new eyebrow shape that is sweeping Japanese fashion magazines. Here (from Hanatsubaki, Dazed and Confused Japan, and H magazine) are snaps of what I call the Denis Healey eyebrow.



Yes, it seems that the British politician is, like so many undervalued Western things (like Momus, indeed), a cult in Japan. Well, certainly amongst stylists on trendy fashion magazines, who are painting his distinctive eyebrow shape (stray wild unplucked hairs brushed upwards, or a tiny smudge of eyeshadow just above the brow if you want to cheat) on the faces of beautiful young models like the delicious Rina Ohta, perhaps in an attempt to spread his Old Labour values ("I'm going to tax the rich until the pips squeak!").

It's the least we Western trend-makers can do to return the favour by spreading Japanese values in the West. My new column at Wired is Water therapy for better humans, and lays out for unbathed Western barbarians the correct use of water.

Meanwhile, I'd like to thank David Fenech for introducing me to a wonderful American cultural export: the folk song collector John Jacob Niles and his gorgeous falsetto voice.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Some of it does creep close to the awful old cliche, the "Stylist Sneer" (ie the girl in the top left photo in my original examples). In fact, I'm not endorsing these looks; my personal taste is summed up with the new book (http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4838716117/250-1346143-6481817) that's just come out collecting all the images from Relax magazine's A Girl Like You pages:

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the way, the "Girl Like You" photographer is Masafumi Sanai (http://www.sanaimasafumi.jp/). He uses a 6x7 format camera, mostly natural light with delicate colorations, and does most of his own developing and printing too. Plants and old-fashioned, somewhat run-down Japanese locations crop up time and again in his pictures, enhancing the beauty of the girls much more than a standard studio shot would. You have the feeling you just glimpsed this girl at the market, and she made your day.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Another PS: Sanai was in the original Superflat exhibition, and has sleevenotes for his book written by Konishi from Pizzicato 5. So he's a veteran of two of Japan's big cultural exports from the last decade, Superflat and Shibuya-kei!

[akabe.livejournal.com]

masafumi sanai's stuff is beautiful indeed. so is chikashi suzuki's. and they both freed japanese photography from araki-ism.

btw. they were both part of murakami's first superflat show /hey, you just said this, just noticed/, that's how unbeliavably things converged at that time.

[akabe.livejournal.com]

japanese photography -> read - japanese male photography