Anti-Fashion Narratives from Japan

Japan has been on my mind in the last few days (well, you probably realised it already from yesterday's posts).

Let’s stay focused on Japan for at least another post to explore some very interesting anti-fashion narratives.

There are some great and inspiring connections between film and fashion, but, before cinema started influencing fashion designers, literature provided some wonderful descriptions of characters’ attires and fashion trends.

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s works offer quite a few examples. The Italian author also had an obsession for dandy and decadent styles and often designed dresses (and underwear...) for his mistresses.

Yet I do feel that some of the most interesting contemporary fashion narratives hail from Japan.

This country is stereotypically considered as a place where there are more fashion victims than anywhere else in the world, but some of the most beautiful and even moving stories produced by Japanese authors and involving fashion seem to actually go beyond the most superficial aspects of fashion to explore its connections with psychology and society.

Japanese author Haruki Murakami told in his short story "Tony Takitani" (first published in 2002 on The New Yorker, but also available in book format in the anthology Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman) the tale of a technical illustrator called Tony Takitani who falls in love and marries Eiko Konuma, a woman completely obsessed by designer clothes and accessories.

Eiko soon fills with expensive clothes an entire room - converted into a walk-in wardrobe - of their house.

When she suddenly dies in an accident, Takitani first tries to hire a female assistant, Hisako, asking her to wear his wife’s clothes, but then decides to sell the entire contents of the wardrobe.

The story touches upon different issues, from solitude to identity and was turned into a wonderfully minimalist film by Japanese director Jun Ichikawa in 2005 (you can watch it on Mubi).

The director managed to adapt Murakami’s poetical and minimalist style into an elegant and touching film that follows the story page after page, frame after frame.

In both the story and the film, Tony’s wife seems to be born to dress up, she wears her clothes so naturally that she ends up inhabiting them.

Clothes empower her, filling up what’s missing inside her, yet they also defeat her since she is totally bewitched by designer’s garments and can’t restrain herself in the presence of clothes. In a nutshell it's as if the colour, design and texture of a coat or dress or the look of a pair of shoes would put a spell on her. 

After she dies Eiko’s clothes turn into her lingering shadows infused with warmth and haunting Tony, while her identity seems to be erased, removed from the earth yet still alive in her wardrobe.

In the film Ichikawa uses the shots of the garments hanging in the wardrobe almost to evoke Eiko's ghost and also adds a Vertigo twist by using the same actress in the roles of Tony's wife and Hisako.

There are some wonderful hints in the story and in the film about the power of clothes and one of the most striking images is that of Hisako crying in the walk-in wardrobe after finding herself in front of Eiko's expensive clothes and accessories.

While the clothes neatly hanging around her are tangible references to Eiko's death, Hisako's tears are caused by the shock she gets at seeing the amount of fabulous garments surrounding her.

I’ve always been interested in empowerment through clothes and fashion identities and I guess these are the main reasons why this short tale/film fascinates me so much. 

I also love the way Moyoco Anno tackles issues regarding fashion and identity in her manga stories  such as "Chameleon Army" and "X-Girl When Her Blood Tingles" (both published in Japan in 1999), featured in an anthology I mentioned in a previous post.

The former tells the story of a good-looking and fashionable woman, Nitta, who starts her new job in a rather boring company where she soon finds herself challenged by an unassuming colleague, a young and unattractive woman who slowly transforms through new clothes, accessories and hairstyles into Nitta's exact copy.

The "X-Girl" story is even more surreal and powerful: the young and trendy daughter of a manager arrives in the factory her father directs and starts revolutionising it.

She introduces colourful uniforms, asks the workers to care about their looks and even launches a competition offering prize money to the most stylish worker.

Misa is the most silent, humble and unfashionable worker in the factory, and also hides a terrible fashion secret: when she lived in Tokyo she used to spend all her money on clothes and had terrible debts.

Provoked by the young manager, Misa makes an effort and digs in her wardrobe revealing herself as the most stylish worker by donning an exclusive and rather eccentric design by Thierry Mugler she had bought in her previous life as a fashionista.

Though short the story features some wonderful moments of anti-fashion irony.

Moyoco Anno - who is also a journalist and beauty expert, writes about fashion and even collaborated last year with Shu Uemura releasing a series of cleaning oils with bottles decorated with her drawings of "Tokyo Kamon Girls" - definitely knows how to tell stories that show some of the strangest effects fashion can have on human beings.

I would actually love to see a proper fashion film written by this Japanese author or based on one of her anti-fashion stories.

I'm sure it would be much more intriguing than all the third rate and embarrassing blockbusters allegedly involving fashion but basically glamourising credit card debts, stupidity and IT bags that, unfortunately for us, constantly get released every year.  

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Comments

[Family portrait ideas]

would actually love to see a proper fashion film written by this Japanese author or based on one of her anti-fashion stories.