Tokyo
Unmasked
Fashion Frenzy: An Inside Look on
Japanese Fashion
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Hypothesis Statement
For My groups Hyper Tokyo Project,
I will be concentrating on fashion as an aspect of Japanese culture.
In my opinion, fashion, although more pervasive in some categories than
others, is still represented in traditional, modern and Western ways.
Traditional forms of fashion
are kimonos and yukatas. Nowadays, these are usually not worn on
a daily basis. Modern influence in fashion can be seen through items
such as school uniforms, loose socks and hairstyles. The Western
side of fashion is mostly worn on a casual everyday basis. This includes
jeans, T-shirts and more.
I think that modern influence
in the most pervasive because it seems (without any research) that the
Japanese like to create their own styles and trends with a taste of Western
and traditional mixed in. Through the history of Japan, fashion has
changed drastically along with the culture itself. I think that as
long as Japanese culture is changing, fashion will continue to be a large
aspect of Japanese culture in the years to come.
An Assessment of My Work
Before beginning my research,
I think that I came into the project with a fairly biased view on Japanese
culture. I had thought that it was Westernizing fairly rapidly and
traditional fashion was disappearing. Everywhere I would look, I would
never see anyone wearing traditional clothing, or if I did, it was only
a few. When I went out into the "real world" to do some research
on the street, basically just by observing the people around me, I was
delighted to see many people still wearing traditional dress. I hung
around a train station for 10 minutes and counted 28 women and 1 man in
kimono. It was really cool because when I really looked around, I
saw that traditional fashion wasn't disappearing at all. It was just
masked by a tremendous amount of Western and modern culture "flooding in."
I really enjoyed getting out
on the street to do some really research. As helpful as going to
the library, Internet and periodicals for sources to help me answer some
research questions, I think that I got the best information from observing
people. It was definitely tough. Many of the points I questioned about
fashion were things I really needed to dig deep for. One example is that
you can't really define "modern fashion" so that was a real challenge.
I think the easiest parts of this have been piecing this "culture puzzle"
together. One frustrating part of this project was answering the questions.
This is because I had to "twist" many of the questions in order to fit
the research I had found. This included modifying, adding and deleting
some of my original questions. It was also really frustrating because there
was a lack of information in certain areas of my aspect. At one point,
I was so angry I was willing to switch topics and start all over!
But in the end, I'm glad that I chose fashion because it gave me a better
look at Japan as it is changing today.
"Tokyo Unmasked" Main
Page
Prepared by Bari Schwartz from Mr.
Hoover's 8th Grade social studies class on April
13, 1999.