Natalie Alvarenga
3/25/18
Op-ed
Harajuku is dead
Pop culture icons like Gwen Stefani have been appropriating Japanese culture shamelessly for a long time. I am studying the way that Japanese subcultures have been appropriated because I want to find out why or how the subculture in japan has declined, in order to understand how appropriating a style and making it mainstream affects the smaller subculture negatively and could possibly lead to its decline.
Gwen Stefani in the 90’s created an album called Love. Angel. Music. Baby. Songs like Hollaback girl and Rich Girl feature Japanese girls dancing in the background of her music videos as if they are her props. She also created a perfume line with various characters as the names in her album. Love, Angel, Music, Baby. She also created a cartoon called Kuu Kuu Harajuku, where none of the cartoons are Japanese, yet it is a show that is supposed to be about Harajuku. The problem with all of this is that she is objectifying these women into stereotypes and used as dolls for her own benefit while perpetuating stereotypes about Japanese women. I want to examine how borrowing from Japanese culture and bringing it to pop culture in the U.S. affects the actual subculture in Harajuku and can lead to their disappearance.
Just last year in early 2017, Shoichi Aoki seized to create FRUiTS Magazine, which was a widely-known magazine that highlighted the creative and free style of Harajuku youth. Aoki states in an interview that, “if you picture it as the source of a river, then recently there have been factories erected on its banks, and businesses have appeared, but they have stressed the limits of this little fountainhead”. Aoki is talking about the bigger businesses that have opened up in the spaces where smaller designers used to sell their creative pieces and mix and match different styles in order to dress like a subculture in Harajuku. The reason for the end of his publication is because of the lack of original style in Harajuku. Aoki describes the youth of today as stylish and looking good, but not with the free spirit and creativity he used to come across in the area. He says, “The frenetic signature image has been co-opted and commercialized by corporations, celebrities, and attention-seekers, and ultimately replaced by one more conservative and less unique among Tokyo’s style-conscious kids. These days they are more likely to wear mass-market clothing from Uniqlo and other international clothing chains”.
I believe that the decline is due to the increase of attention that was placed on the style of Harajuku through pop icons like Gwen Stefani, who could spread this subculture to mass media around the world. This would make the subculture that once existed in Harajuku feel as if they were no longer unique to their style. Due to the appropriation of their mix of culture and style in pop culture and overseas, the feeling of rebellion for Harajuku youth against the strict culture in Japan begins to disappear. The reason why they wanted to dress so different becomes forgotten as they see they style being spread and used for popularity or even to make a joke out of them.
