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imomusThis person caught my attention on the Style from Tokyo street fashion site (bigger picture here). Spotted last week in Harajuku, this is, we're told, the organiser of DENPA, a "fun event featuring Japanese pop culture". His name is Tentosen and he's 25.
I like the picture for lots of reasons -- the dual picture plane which divides the photo into a flat leafy stairs area and a receding street perspective, the group of more normally-dressed kids coming up the street, the epicene quality of Tentosen himself (he's shaved his eyebrows and grown his hair), the way he's both young and old, contemporary and ancient, and the way he combines something trad with something rather punky, trashy and pop.
"Japanese motifs are being seen more often in Tokyo these days," Rei Shito, who writes Style in Tokyo, tells us under her photo. "This is not Japanese style as seen by Japanese, but Japanese style as seen by foreigners. There are deep differences between how we see ourselves and how others see us."
That quote is interesting, because it seems to suggest that stereotypes are more inspiring to people interested in style than realities. The very thing that makes PC types decry stereotypes is what makes arty types interested in them: the fact that they're lies. But lies can be more interesting than the truth, as anyone who's actually thought through my "every lie creates the parallel world in which it's true" dictum can attest. The scenarios you create in your imagination when you misrepresent are so much more interesting than the ones you create when you simply represent. They're more creative.
This may be why young Japanese are more interested in what foreigners are projecting onto Japan than what Japan actually is. The wrongness of foreigners about Japan might be more inspiring -- more able to shape the future of Japan, perhaps -- than any rightness about its present ever could be.
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If you go to the Denpa website you learn that this is a regular club event happening every two months at Shibuya Axxcis. It's been going two years. "DENPA is wild club party which fuses Anime with Fashion and Noisy Electro," runs the description. They also have a motto: She said "Don't make us suffer for stereotype." I'm not sure who the "she" is there, but for me that's a proposal that we enjoy stereotypes without guilt.
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For me, the style of the DENPA club itself is less interesting than the style of the guy who runs it. Ultra-fast BPMs, robo-voiced maidens, acid-coloured lights, anime fashion, throwbacks to early German 90s techno, a whiff of Perfume, the Nakata Yasutaka production sound, Aira Mitsuki-style pop and Drop-style fashion characterise proceedings. Tentosen -- who attended St Martin's in London -- drew some inspiration from Kashpoint too, and from S&M style.
DENPA looks fun, but the stereotype factory being used here is mostly anime, exported to the West and re-imported to Japan with its misunderstandings intact. But I find Tentosen more intriguing outside on the street, in the pale light of day -- an anime character who's wandered out into reality, challenging it. A stereotype, skewed but shameless, made flesh.
I like the picture for lots of reasons -- the dual picture plane which divides the photo into a flat leafy stairs area and a receding street perspective, the group of more normally-dressed kids coming up the street, the epicene quality of Tentosen himself (he's shaved his eyebrows and grown his hair), the way he's both young and old, contemporary and ancient, and the way he combines something trad with something rather punky, trashy and pop.
"Japanese motifs are being seen more often in Tokyo these days," Rei Shito, who writes Style in Tokyo, tells us under her photo. "This is not Japanese style as seen by Japanese, but Japanese style as seen by foreigners. There are deep differences between how we see ourselves and how others see us."
That quote is interesting, because it seems to suggest that stereotypes are more inspiring to people interested in style than realities. The very thing that makes PC types decry stereotypes is what makes arty types interested in them: the fact that they're lies. But lies can be more interesting than the truth, as anyone who's actually thought through my "every lie creates the parallel world in which it's true" dictum can attest. The scenarios you create in your imagination when you misrepresent are so much more interesting than the ones you create when you simply represent. They're more creative.
This may be why young Japanese are more interested in what foreigners are projecting onto Japan than what Japan actually is. The wrongness of foreigners about Japan might be more inspiring -- more able to shape the future of Japan, perhaps -- than any rightness about its present ever could be.
[Error: unknown template video]
If you go to the Denpa website you learn that this is a regular club event happening every two months at Shibuya Axxcis. It's been going two years. "DENPA is wild club party which fuses Anime with Fashion and Noisy Electro," runs the description. They also have a motto: She said "Don't make us suffer for stereotype." I'm not sure who the "she" is there, but for me that's a proposal that we enjoy stereotypes without guilt.
[Error: unknown template video]
For me, the style of the DENPA club itself is less interesting than the style of the guy who runs it. Ultra-fast BPMs, robo-voiced maidens, acid-coloured lights, anime fashion, throwbacks to early German 90s techno, a whiff of Perfume, the Nakata Yasutaka production sound, Aira Mitsuki-style pop and Drop-style fashion characterise proceedings. Tentosen -- who attended St Martin's in London -- drew some inspiration from Kashpoint too, and from S&M style.
DENPA looks fun, but the stereotype factory being used here is mostly anime, exported to the West and re-imported to Japan with its misunderstandings intact. But I find Tentosen more intriguing outside on the street, in the pale light of day -- an anime character who's wandered out into reality, challenging it. A stereotype, skewed but shameless, made flesh.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 12:06 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
Rather wonderful lyrics:
They're connecting: Dream and Metalogica
It's revolving: Roads' Entropica
Yes or no? Wonderful Literarica
Before or after? Go to the Technopolica
To a Coelacanth tail, good morning...
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Date: 2009-08-16 12:14 pm (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
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Date: 2009-08-16 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 12:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 03:13 pm (UTC)Crooner Lindsay
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 04:15 pm (UTC)I can see it's different and different attitude, but they use that earlier culture as a jumping off point.
cosplay and s/m extreme fashion was at its peek at that time... so... kinds similar.
great post, and this is why I feel this cross pollination has been a good thing for japan and the rest of the world.
There are a couple reasons that these stereotypes dont seem to cause japan harm....
but how they maintain that equilibrium still blows my mind.
lets say... Japan has a great sense of 'host:guest' relationship.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 05:25 pm (UTC)Seems to be our theme of the week here at Click Opera!
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Date: 2009-08-16 07:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 09:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-17 12:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-16 11:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-17 12:54 am (UTC)I don't think that's what Rei Shito -- or me, in the entry -- is saying. They know the stereotypes, and that makes Tentosen relevant -- simply the fact that he lives up to those stereotypes with a certain amount of individuality and panache. He's an outlier and an eccentric in one sense, but he makes up for that by using national imagery (quite literally, because he's got the old Japanese flag on his chest).
Jim Crow Dance Nite!
Date: 2009-08-17 04:25 am (UTC)Are there any stereotypes, or stereotype images that you find offensive? I get your reasoning that it's "empowering" to reclaim them, however "wrong" they are...
And that's not "the old Japanese flag" on his chest, that's the old Imperial Japanese Navy flag--quite a different thing, in terms of associations, etc.
Re: Jim Crow Dance Nite!
Date: 2009-08-17 10:17 am (UTC)Are there any stereotypes, or stereotype images that you find offensive?
Oh, of course. Most of Lost In Translation I hated for that reason. The shower head being too low, the chef serving a human toe, the "lip my stocking" joke... Obviously I'd like to see the stereotyped in active control of their own stereotypes. It's not stereotypes which are the problem, but who's in control of them, and what they use them for.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-17 09:22 am (UTC)Which no one likes as they think it will dissuade hippies from spending their pounds or possibly look too disturbing on drugs. Look, I say, it's Akihiro Miwa, ffs, what's the problem? (Well, aside from being a sort of third-hand Tadanori Yokoo). Imagine it as an intellectual Danny la Rue on a Union Jack! Well, no one likes that idea either.
I was going to do Miwa's hair in yellow wool for a nice raised effect as well...