Are Japanese being Western?

When we look at magazines, especially fashion magazines, and even though they are selled only in Japan, often Models are Western or half Western. For example, almost all fashion models of Men's non-no, which is one of the majour men's fashion magazines in Japan, are Western or Western mixed and they show up many pages. Same as girl's fashion magazines. Look at picture above. This is the picture of girl's fashion magazine names "mini". Most models of mini are half - Western. Japanese young people look at them and refer to their fashion.

But why publishers use weatern models?

Why not Japanese?

(Of course there are many Japanese models, but western models are incresing recently.) Japanese figure and western figure are really different. And also, face and hair are different. But why Japanese young people imitate them or refer to their fashion?

Also, when we look at young adult girl's fashion magazines, like "ViVi', we'll find makeup pages teaching " how to be western face" or " how to be craggy face". They teach how to show our noses taller and eyes bigger and more clear.

These examples of mogazine models and make up show the fact that " Japanese wants to be Western". I'm sure that these thinking came from "akogare"(= means yearning) for western countries or cultures. Now, the westernization in Japan is too big to write in this my tiny blog, but the big part of the root of westernization is Akogare.

this is 'VIVI's page! http://www.joseishi.net/vivi/

this is men's non-no's page!

http://mensnonno.shueisha.co.jp/home.html

Daido Moriyama, his work about Osaka

In 1938, Daido Moriyama was born in OSAKA. After the experience of free graphic desiner, he became assistant to photographer TAKESHI Iwamiya. In 1964, he became independent. In 1972, he published photographic collection named 「写真よさようなら」, and it shocked the photograph world, but after this, he stoped taking photo temporarily. In 1982 he came back to the world of photograph. Then he published a lot of fresh works one after another, for example "Daido-Hysteric"etc.

Firstly, to do this bog, I used Mr.Moriyama's book, named "Osaka plus"and my writting 'll be based on this book. Osaka plus is a photographic collection of Osaka people and town. Pictures in Osaka plus are all balck and white. His picture shows daily life in Osaka including people's beautiful points and dirty points, without any decoration.

This Osaka puls represents real Osaka very well. He photographed many kinds of people, for example, young hostess ladies,homeless people, young ladies, couples,and so on. For instance, Osaka is very famous for homeless people,and the number of homeless people is the most in Japan. Osaka plus has many homeless pictures which are same as what we see on street. I guess he photographed homeless people because homeless people are one of big part of Osaka. Also, he took many photos of sex industry, but he makes fun of them. Through these pictures, I could see how Mr. Moriyama think aboput people.

Osaka plus seems to haven't any particular theme, and it just looks like taking photo at random.

I think this is his successful point because thanks to no theme, he can take photo from many aspects, and many kinds of people. Some times we can see more Osaka when there is no themes.

As my personal opinion to Mr.Moriyama's work, it was really good to chose Osaka. I think Osaka is the place where we can see more human nature than like Tokyo.When we look Osaka plus, we might feel that Mr.Moriyama likes Osaka people.Mr. Moriyama took picture of some parts of people that we can't hate. I'm sure he likes Osaka town and people!

My information came from...http://www.bbb-inc.co.jp/daido/about.html　and

大阪 plus (2007, published by 月曜社, written by Daido Moriyama）

Japanese Fashion is being Global

Fashion, which is one of the biggest Japanese culture, is now being global and more close to common citizen. We can see this change in fashion magazines. The most important "key" of this change is "SNAP". 'SNAP' means snapshots of people's fashion. And this "people" doesn't means fashion models, but citizens in town. SNAP is now very thriving in Japan. Almost all fashion

magazines have SNAP.

For example, look at first picture. This is one of the mainstream men's fashion magazine named "POPEYE"( the January 1 number, published by　マガジンハウス). The main feature of this number is SNAP, using 38 pages for SNAP. AS you can see in second, third, and forth pictures above, POPEYE's SNAP features have not only Japanese people, but also New yorker, Parisian, and Londoner. If we compare Japanese people's fashion and foreighner's fashion, their styles are a little different, but many points are similar. For example, when we look at men's snap both in Japan and other countries, many people are wearing "skinny jeans'.

Japanese readers study fashion not only from Japanese, but also foreigners. SNAP is playing big

role for globalized fashion. In addition to these magazines, there are magazines which consist of only snaps. Look at last photograph. FRUiTS, right side magazine, is all about Japanese girl's snap especially in Harajyuku. And STREET , left side magazine, is all about Londoner's snap.These magazines are really popular among people who like fashion. If we read them, we can see Japanese fashion and foreigh fashion affect each other.

How much and how far fashion will develop in the future?

link→http://www.fashionsnap.com/streetsnap/country/uk/london/ you can see many snaps in this site!

link2 http://www.fashion-j.com/r/magazine.html this site shows almost all fashion magazines in japan!