Here is the paper that I have to submit tonight. I made the references really small so that the rest is more comfortable to read. The reference list is at the end for anyone interested.
The Japanese Gyaru:
Popular Culture, Globalization and the Reflection of a Trend
Introduction
In recent years, it has been noted that Japanese popular
culture has become very influencing worldwide. This is not only a consequence
of MOFA’s Cool Japan campaign, but
the result of sincere audience choices, audiences which come into contact with
Japanese popular culture through the new media, ICT and by direct interaction
(with travel being easily accessible).
This paper examines how globalization made fashion trends
in different parts of the world become aware of and feed off each other. First,
a local adaptation of US
fashion styles created a Japanese young fashion. Secondly, this trend became
visible to Westerners who aspired to follow the Japanese adaptation. Finally,
this Western interest reflected for a third time, now back to Japan, where
increased Western acceptance gave this trend added value and new media
attention.
Popular Culture,
Subculture or Pop Subculture?
What does the term Popular
Culture mean? Storey (1996) identifies various definitions of popular
culture (but suggests that none of these definitions are unproblematic): Popular
culture is favoured by many people; culture that is left over after we decide
what is high culture; mass produced
for mass consumption; originating from the people; or a place of struggle
between the dominant and the subordinate groups of society.
A subculture then, is
an act of “resistance against the dominant culture”. Subcultures mostly
identify with youth cultures, but when does a subculture become pop culture? It
is difficult to define the point when a subculture becomes popular and separate
the two: “rap music in the United
States, where, with the incorporation of
youth culture into popular culture, the concept of subculture becomes difficult
to delineate” because “(sub)cultural practices are co-opted and commodified by
larger socioeconomic processes” (Marcelin, 2006).
In that sense, the term popular
culture is accepted as an adequate term to include the contemporary Gyaru fashion and lifestyle pop (sub) cultures,
since this trend cannot be included in high culture, is originating from the
working class and exists in a contested place of struggle between the dominant
and subordinate groups of Japanese society.
Globalization and
Transnational Japanese Popular Culture
When looking at popular culture today, it is rather
impossible to avoid considering the theoretical perspectives of globalization
and transnationalism. Globalization was originally considered as emanating from
the West (Giddens,1990; Axford; 1995; Spybey,1996 cited in Allen& Sakamoto,
2006) but media globalization also facilitates ‘the de-centering of capitalism
from the West’ (Tomlinson, 1997 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002). Empowered by
globalization processes, transnationalism makes people, ideas and commodities
cross national boundaries and become unidentified with a single place of origin
(Watson, 1997 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002).
This re-centered globalization process of the 21st
century brings Japanese cultural exports such as manga and anime into the
Western markets, thus making Japan
a “visual superpower” (Norris, 2009 cited in Sugimoto, 2009), bringing forth a
“Japanization” of the West (Iwabuchi, 2002). This includes the case of young
women’s imaginative fashion styles in Japan. Already popular in Asia (Ibid), Japanese fashion has now expanded its
popularity into the western youth. An earlier example is the Harajuku fashion (named
after a Tokyo district which has countless clothing stores) which quickly drew
western attention, books’ publications (“Fruits”), countless blogs and a
popular American singer (Gwen Stefani) naming a song, a perfume line and her style
after visiting this Tokyo neighbourhood.
The notion of transculturation
can furthermore explain the evolution and spread of the Gyaru fashion. Transculturation
is the process where the encounter and creative misuse of various cultures
results in the transformation of an existing cultural commodity and the
creation of a new style (Pratt, 1992 cited in Iwabuchi, 2002), hybridization
(Piaterse, 2004; Thomlinson,1999 cited in Allen& Sakamoto, 2006) or stateless
globalism aesthetic through stylistic sampling (Miller, 2004).
The Gyaru Fashion
A striking example of Japanese popular fashion is the Gal or Gyaru (girl) or Kogal (small
girl) trend which is not simply a fashion trend but a “social type”
(Suzuki& Best, 2003) with its own slang (Marx, 2012; Miller, 2004), away
from the traditional Japanese feminine ideals of whiteness (Ashikari, 2005) and
cuteness (McVeigh, 2000) which resulted in much controversy around the
style.
There are numerous subcategories within the
Gyaru term, each with particular characteristics: the ane-gal (older gal), the
mama gal, the b-gal (“black” i.e. rap culture girl), the ganguro
(to an Afrikan shade tanned gal), the bihaku-gal (white-skinned gal), the
yamamba (mountain witch- with “negative makeup” i.e. black face, white features
and silver hair), the Gyaru-o (man gyaru) and so on (Watrous, 2000 et al
cited in Suzuki&Best, 2003; Marx, 2012).
Emerging in the 1980s (Marx, 2012) the Gyaru look was originally characterized by appropriation,
domestication and indigenization (Iwabuchi, 2002) of various American looks
discovered on TV, such as the California girl or the hip-hop look (Marx, 2012; Miller,
2004) but it finally evolved to represent a unique image of Japanese cultural
identity, something that was “not seen before” (Miller, 2004), in the extreme
faces of the ganguro and yamamba categories. No one might have
noticed, but Japan
found “its own domestic, non-designer fashion” (Marx, 2012). Invented by teens, Gyaru
fashion “emphasizes fakeness and kitsch (…) appropriation of the elegant and the awful” but it is also
egalitarian because girls from any economic
background can acquire the look (Miller, 2004).
Because of their
popularity and controversy, the Gyaru occupied a big share of media interest (Ibid;
Marx, 2012) and became advertising targets, “in hopes of sparking national and
even international crazes" (Watanabe 1997 cited in Suzuki&Best, 2003). Breaking into the mainstream in the 1990s, a large number
of magazines in Japan address the Gyaru
tastes and large shopping districts -such as Shibuya (Marx,2012; Suziki&Best,
2003) and Ikebukuro, with Shibuya’s “109” stores being the most popular - cater
to their lifestyle.
The Western Gyaru Reception
Westerners who visit Japan or young people following
fashion blogs are often excited with the Gyaru
trend. It is indeed a brand new appearance that was never seen before and has now
succeeded in being a unique part of Japanese popular culture that appeals to
the West. It is worth
mentioning that not only the moderate Kogal
style (with medium tan and makeup) has made an impact on western youth, but the
shocking Yamamba and Ganguro styles as well. Some informed
western followers acknowledge the paradox of the situation and admit being “Western girls trying to be Japanese girls, trying to
be Western” (Robinson, 2009).
There is a big number of Western
gyaru blogs who imitate the fashion and demonstrate their own
versions of it. A simple Google search on “gyaru blogs” will bring up examples
of non- Japanese
gyaru bloggers such
as
http://everyday-gyaru.livejournal.com/
and
http://bloggers.com/tag/gyaru. Online
communities such as YouTube popularize Japanese
gyaru fashion brands and cosmetics. Even western traditional media
have featured cosmetics that are sold in
gyaru stores such as “109” (see Panych,
2012 in Allure magazine). Kirin
(2009) mentions women visiting
Tokyo
just to shop at “109” (spending amounts like 1800€), Japanese culture events in
Barcelona that
attract 60.000 people and even foreign
gyaruo
(men gyaru).
Back to Japan
Japanese bloggers and media, on their turn, became aware of
the western gyaru appeal. For example,
a show broadcasted by NHK (national television channel) in Japan featured western gyaru that were mentored by their favourite Japanese gyaru model, Aina Tanaka (Kirin, 2009).
Unlike other Japanese popular cultures (i.e. anime, J-pop)
which were also regarded as social evils but were later re-evaluated and
promoted as cultural exports (Linhart, 2009 cited in Sugimoto, 2009), the
western popularity of the gyaru
culture- facilitated by globalization- was
an authentic proof that the real cool
Japan did not need to be promoted by
MOFA’s ‘Cool Japan’ soft power foreign policy campaign in order to captivate
the West. But indeed, responding to the western popularity, the Japanese
government has “approved plans to recreate
fashionable districts of Tokyo in foreign cities and it hopes to export four trillion
yen worth of "Cool Japan" fashion by 2020” ( Oi, 2012).
Conclusion
This paper demonstrated how the processes of globalization
made a (once controversial) Japanese fashion that was an adaptation of western
images, take part in a global reflection process where the Japanese
appropriation of the look became popular in the West and finally was received
with renewed value (because of its western popularity) in Japan, with plans to
be included in MOFA’s ‘Cool Japan’ future foreign policy campaign.
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