Ametora
Metadata
Highlights
- Even before Western fashion supplanted traditional costumes, Japanese society had long used clothing as an important marker of status and position. To maintain social order, the Tokugawa military government (1603–1868) micromanaged the nation’s vestments, strictly regulating materials and patterns to certain castes. For example, only the nobles and samurai—a mere 10 percent of the population—were permitted to wear silk. But not everyone followed these rules. When farmers and urban merchants began to accumulate more wealth than their samurai betters, they lined standard cotton robes with silk in an act of subversive panache. (Location 204)
New highlights added June 16, 2023 at 9:50 AM
- Facing this scarcity of materials, few companies attempted to mass manufacture garments for sale in the Japanese market. The shortage of textiles forced many women to make “reborn clothing” (kseifuku), American-style items from old kimono fabric and discarded parachute nylon. (Location 411)
New highlights added June 16, 2023 at 5:19 PM
- 1963, Kensuke Ishizu laid down the master concept for Western dress in Japanese with just three letters: “TPO,” an acronym for “time, place, occasion.” Ishizu believed that men should choose outfits based on the time of the day and season, their destination, and the nature of the event. Ishizu was certainly not the first to think about fashion in terms of social context, but this simple phrase “TPO” (t p , in Japanese) set it as the central principle for how the Japanese adopted American style. (Location 836)
- With these writings, Ishizu hoped to relay his conviction that Ivy fashion was not a fleeting industry trend but the path towards a noble way of life. Seeking to avoid the waxing and waning of so many previous fashion trends, he famously proclaimed, “I don’t make trends—I want to create new customs.” (Location 851)
New highlights added October 2, 2023 at 6:40 PM
- Facing this scarcity of materials, few companies attempted to mass manufacture garments for sale in the Japanese market. The shortage of textiles forced many women to make “reborn clothing” (kōseifuku), American-style items from old kimono fabric and discarded parachute nylon. (Location 339)
- 1963, Kensuke Ishizu laid down the master concept for Western dress in Japanese with just three letters: “TPO,” an acronym for “time, place, occasion.” Ishizu believed that men should choose outfits based on the time of the day and season, their destination, and the nature of the event. Ishizu was certainly not the first to think about fashion in terms of social context, but this simple phrase “TPO” (tī pī ō, in Japanese) set it as the central principle for how the Japanese adopted American style. (Location 701)
New highlights added October 5, 2023 at 10:45 AM
- If the format of Whole Earth Catalog was confusing to Kobayashi, its message made even less sense. The pioneers of Japan’s nascent pop culture celebrated consumerism—jazz, rock ’n’ roll, Ivy clothing, diner food, sports cars, and electronic appliances. By contrast, Stewart Brand asked American youth to forget meaningless, fleeting trends of mass culture and go back to building civilization with their own hands. The Japanese could understand hippies as the latest trend in American music and fashion, but the Whole Earth Catalog moved along a completely different vector. It encouraged a revolutionary set of values, ideas, and practices intended to change the very essence of society. Back in Japan, Kobayashi shared his copy among friends, but no one could make heads or tails of it. (Location 1471)
New highlights added October 7, 2023 at 3:32 PM
- The Heibon Planning Center team all grew up devouring discarded American mail-order catalogs—a medium they believed was the ultimate representation of life in the U.S. As Kobayashi explains it, “You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.” They imagined American families snuggled around the fireplace, flipping through the pages and dreaming of a better life. Since Japan lacked a culture of mail order, making such a catalog felt magical and foreign—like Americans producing a book of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. (Location 1546)
- Youth no longer bought things as an avenue towards new experiences—record players to listen to jazz LPs, suits to impress girls, mountain parkas for hiking. Youth fetishized goods as goods. (Location 1701)
New highlights added October 10, 2023 at 2:17 PM
- Local Japanese teens called them sukajan (“Yokosuka jumpers”) and snapped them up at stores targeting American sailors on shore leave. Yokosuka teens were the first to embrace the jackets as “colonial chic,” but the garment went national after appearing on the main character of the 1961 film Buta to Gunkan (“Pigs and Battleships”). (Location 1848)
- Bassist and singer Eikichi Yazawa grew up in the ruins of post-atomic Hiroshima, abandoned by his mother and left an orphan when his father died from a radiation-related illness. His only joy each day was listening to American music on the radio. (Location 1875)
- All four designer brands benefitted from “reverse importation.” Just as foreign goods arrived in Japan with an automatic halo of legitimacy, these designers became godlike figures at home thanks to their critical acclaim in Paris. (Location 2314)
- And with so many teens wearing Japanese designers, editors and consumers alike stopped looking overseas for “correct” ideas on fashion. Armed with a new faith in their own economy and culture, they championed and celebrated ideas of domestic origin. Japan had not just “caught up” to American fashion by the mid-1980s—Tokyo’s fashion scene far exceeded the sophistication ever seen in the U.S. (Location 2343)
New highlights added October 13, 2023 at 7:33 AM
- Sixty years after World War II, Americans clamored after the Japanese brand A Bathing Ape the same way that the Japanese had obsessed over American style in the preceding decades. This stunning achievement, however, was completely lost on Japanese youth. From the 1990s onward, a small subculture of hip-hop fans in Japan dressed in colorful baggy clothes in imitation of African American rappers. Yet when their heroes in the U.S. started wearing a Japanese brand, they struggled with the cognitive dissonance and kept their distance from Bape. More broadly, the era of “reverse importation” was over: no one in Japan cared about A Bathing Ape because it was big overseas. The great irony is that teens learned to cherish local over global from the Ura-Harajuku crew, who gave them higher quality and more stylish Japanese product than what was coming from abroad. (Location 2687)
New highlights added October 14, 2023 at 4:28 AM
- Take Ivy revealed the degree to which Japan’s deep interest in American style kept the knowledge alive while Americans spent decades rejecting their own legacy of dress. Few Americans in the 1960s thought to take pictures of college students any more than they would take pictures of hamburgers, highways, or oak trees. On the other hand, the Japanese—in their examination of Ivy League style as an alien culture—needed reference materials and photographic evidence. Years later, when fashion brands like the Gap, J.Crew, and Ralph Lauren foraged for authentic historical records, they discovered the Japanese documentary material as the best source for photos of student clothing from Trad’s golden years. Beyond Take Ivy, Japan’s cataloging of American culture has played a major role in helping U.S. brands return to their roots. Levi’s Japan revitalized the 501 before its American headquarters thought to do so, and was the first global unit to make vintage reproductions. Kurabō and Kaihara’s work in selvedge denim nudged Cone Mills to pull out its own old looms, as well. (Location 3170)
- “Ivy is a lot like tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet). It was originally German but now it’s just part of Japanese cuisine. You serve it with rice and miso soup and eat it with chopsticks. I think Ivy is becoming like tonkatsu. It may have originally come from America 60 years ago, but after 60 years of being in Japan, it’s been arranged to better fit us.” The Japanese at first shortened the words “American traditional” to Ametora, but now an entire set of Ametora practices stands as its own separate tradition. (Location 3221)
- “Clothes have always had the highest return on investment because, unlike other kinds of culture, they’re seen by others, and the Japanese care a lot about that. Clothes can express personal identity and also act as a communication tool.” (Location 3233)
- There is a precedence for this idea of “copying towards innovation” in the pedagogy of traditional Japanese arts. In flower arrangement and martial arts, students learn the basics by imitating the kata, a single authoritative “form.” Pupils must first protect the kata, but after many years of study, they break from tradition and then separate to make their own kata—a system described in the term shu-ha-ri (“protecting, breaking, and separating”). (Location 3291)
title: “Ametora”
author: “W. David Marx”
url: ""
date: 2023-12-19
source: kindle
tags: media/books
Ametora
Metadata
Highlights
- Even before Western fashion supplanted traditional costumes, Japanese society had long used clothing as an important marker of status and position. To maintain social order, the Tokugawa military government (1603–1868) micromanaged the nation’s vestments, strictly regulating materials and patterns to certain castes. For example, only the nobles and samurai—a mere 10 percent of the population—were permitted to wear silk. But not everyone followed these rules. When farmers and urban merchants began to accumulate more wealth than their samurai betters, they lined standard cotton robes with silk in an act of subversive panache. (Location 175)
- Facing this scarcity of materials, few companies attempted to mass manufacture garments for sale in the Japanese market. The shortage of textiles forced many women to make “reborn clothing” (kōseifuku), American-style items from old kimono fabric and discarded parachute nylon. (Location 339)
- Facing this scarcity of materials, few companies attempted to mass manufacture garments for sale in the Japanese market. The shortage of textiles forced many women to make “reborn clothing” (kseifuku), American-style items from old kimono fabric and discarded parachute nylon. (Location 411)
- 1963, Kensuke Ishizu laid down the master concept for Western dress in Japanese with just three letters: “TPO,” an acronym for “time, place, occasion.” Ishizu believed that men should choose outfits based on the time of the day and season, their destination, and the nature of the event. Ishizu was certainly not the first to think about fashion in terms of social context, but this simple phrase “TPO” (tī pī ō, in Japanese) set it as the central principle for how the Japanese adopted American style. (Location 701)
- With these writings, Ishizu hoped to relay his conviction that Ivy fashion was not a fleeting industry trend but the path towards a noble way of life. Seeking to avoid the waxing and waning of so many previous fashion trends, he famously proclaimed, “I don’t make trends—I want to create new customs.” (Location 712)
- 1963, Kensuke Ishizu laid down the master concept for Western dress in Japanese with just three letters: “TPO,” an acronym for “time, place, occasion.” Ishizu believed that men should choose outfits based on the time of the day and season, their destination, and the nature of the event. Ishizu was certainly not the first to think about fashion in terms of social context, but this simple phrase “TPO” (t p , in Japanese) set it as the central principle for how the Japanese adopted American style. (Location 836)
- If the format of Whole Earth Catalog was confusing to Kobayashi, its message made even less sense. The pioneers of Japan’s nascent pop culture celebrated consumerism—jazz, rock ’n’ roll, Ivy clothing, diner food, sports cars, and electronic appliances. By contrast, Stewart Brand asked American youth to forget meaningless, fleeting trends of mass culture and go back to building civilization with their own hands. The Japanese could understand hippies as the latest trend in American music and fashion, but the Whole Earth Catalog moved along a completely different vector. It encouraged a revolutionary set of values, ideas, and practices intended to change the very essence of society. Back in Japan, Kobayashi shared his copy among friends, but no one could make heads or tails of it. (Location 1471)
- The Heibon Planning Center team all grew up devouring discarded American mail-order catalogs—a medium they believed was the ultimate representation of life in the U.S. As Kobayashi explains it, “You could understand the entirety of American life from the Sears-Roebuck catalog.” They imagined American families snuggled around the fireplace, flipping through the pages and dreaming of a better life. Since Japan lacked a culture of mail order, making such a catalog felt magical and foreign—like Americans producing a book of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. (Location 1546)
- Youth no longer bought things as an avenue towards new experiences—record players to listen to jazz LPs, suits to impress girls, mountain parkas for hiking. Youth fetishized goods as goods. (Location 1701)
- Local Japanese teens called them sukajan (“Yokosuka jumpers”) and snapped them up at stores targeting American sailors on shore leave. Yokosuka teens were the first to embrace the jackets as “colonial chic,” but the garment went national after appearing on the main character of the 1961 film Buta to Gunkan (“Pigs and Battleships”). (Location 1848)
- Bassist and singer Eikichi Yazawa grew up in the ruins of post-atomic Hiroshima, abandoned by his mother and left an orphan when his father died from a radiation-related illness. His only joy each day was listening to American music on the radio. (Location 1875)
- All four designer brands benefitted from “reverse importation.” Just as foreign goods arrived in Japan with an automatic halo of legitimacy, these designers became godlike figures at home thanks to their critical acclaim in Paris. (Location 2314)
- And with so many teens wearing Japanese designers, editors and consumers alike stopped looking overseas for “correct” ideas on fashion. Armed with a new faith in their own economy and culture, they championed and celebrated ideas of domestic origin. Japan had not just “caught up” to American fashion by the mid-1980s—Tokyo’s fashion scene far exceeded the sophistication ever seen in the U.S. (Location 2343)
- Sixty years after World War II, Americans clamored after the Japanese brand A Bathing Ape the same way that the Japanese had obsessed over American style in the preceding decades. This stunning achievement, however, was completely lost on Japanese youth. From the 1990s onward, a small subculture of hip-hop fans in Japan dressed in colorful baggy clothes in imitation of African American rappers. Yet when their heroes in the U.S. started wearing a Japanese brand, they struggled with the cognitive dissonance and kept their distance from Bape. More broadly, the era of “reverse importation” was over: no one in Japan cared about A Bathing Ape because it was big overseas. The great irony is that teens learned to cherish local over global from the Ura-Harajuku crew, who gave them higher quality and more stylish Japanese product than what was coming from abroad. (Location 2687)
- Take Ivy revealed the degree to which Japan’s deep interest in American style kept the knowledge alive while Americans spent decades rejecting their own legacy of dress. Few Americans in the 1960s thought to take pictures of college students any more than they would take pictures of hamburgers, highways, or oak trees. On the other hand, the Japanese—in their examination of Ivy League style as an alien culture—needed reference materials and photographic evidence. Years later, when fashion brands like the Gap, J.Crew, and Ralph Lauren foraged for authentic historical records, they discovered the Japanese documentary material as the best source for photos of student clothing from Trad’s golden years. Beyond Take Ivy, Japan’s cataloging of American culture has played a major role in helping U.S. brands return to their roots. Levi’s Japan revitalized the 501 before its American headquarters thought to do so, and was the first global unit to make vintage reproductions. Kurabō and Kaihara’s work in selvedge denim nudged Cone Mills to pull out its own old looms, as well. (Location 3170)
- “Ivy is a lot like tonkatsu (breaded pork cutlet). It was originally German but now it’s just part of Japanese cuisine. You serve it with rice and miso soup and eat it with chopsticks. I think Ivy is becoming like tonkatsu. It may have originally come from America 60 years ago, but after 60 years of being in Japan, it’s been arranged to better fit us.” The Japanese at first shortened the words “American traditional” to Ametora, but now an entire set of Ametora practices stands as its own separate tradition. (Location 3221)
- “Clothes have always had the highest return on investment because, unlike other kinds of culture, they’re seen by others, and the Japanese care a lot about that. Clothes can express personal identity and also act as a communication tool.” (Location 3233)
- There is a precedence for this idea of “copying towards innovation” in the pedagogy of traditional Japanese arts. In flower arrangement and martial arts, students learn the basics by imitating the kata, a single authoritative “form.” Pupils must first protect the kata, but after many years of study, they break from tradition and then separate to make their own kata—a system described in the term shu-ha-ri (“protecting, breaking, and separating”). (Location 3291)