« On the Utada Hikaru Mom Scandal | Main | Rejected 2K/Gingham T-shirts by Experimental Jetset »
October 2, 2006
Nitpicking the Mainstream Media
While iMomus and Jeans Now properly dealt with Ben Anderson's Tokyo travel article in The Guardian last week, I had not taken a look until it popped up on my screen while searching for something unrelated earlier today. Obviously the novice Japan traveller is not going to produce the most cutting-edge piece about the city ever written and will generally follow the Western-Friendly Concierge Playbook (Page 1: Zakuro!), but paragraph two sort of took the story out of the realm of reality and into our Western collective-fantasy of hyper-cool neo-Tokyo c. 1998 CE:
Omotesando is also home to the cult clothing line Bathing Ape, the epicentre of Tokyo's youth culture. Armies of kids covered in its bright camouflage and shiny trainers wander round the four Bathing Ape stores all day and often camp out overnight on a rumour that a new top or trainer has just arrived. They get their hair cut at the Bape salon and eat off gold-rimmed china, especially made with the Ape logo, at the Bape cafe.
I do not mean to pick on Bape or single it out, but this whole paragraph is historical fiction, based on hearsay. I can promise you that neither Anderson nor anyone on their team - in this year 2006 - actually saw kids camp outside overnight or swarm to get their hair cut at the Bape salon and eat the Bape cafe. (Wait, did kids ever swarm to eat Bape and have a Bape haircut??) This is like doing a travel piece on New York and talking about "all the graffiti on the subways." ("I dunno, man. I mostly took cabs, but I asked a colleague about it and he said it was far out.") Was there a time when this observation was true about Bape and Omotesando? Sure. Is it really accurate to describe Omotesando as the "epicentre" of Bape rather than the central fashion headquarters for the nation? No, not in 2006 when everyone in Japan has moved on from a brand that topped the charts a full decade ago.
Last Thursday afternoon, I passed by the Omotesando Bape store and no one was in it. The weekends are surely different and I do not want to make my personal observation into the Law, but no matter: the fact that Ape has a lot of stores does not mean that Ape in 2006 is filling all of those stores with rabid first-tier customers.
But imagine how embarassing it would be to everyone to learn that Bape has seen better days.
The day I arrived, Vanity Fair was in town to interview Nigo, and I'd only just missed Natalie Portman and Stella McCartney, who both took him out for dinner.
What if Ito Misaki and Hamasaki Ayumi went to Los Angeles and chose to go out to dinner with Mickey Rourke? Needless to say, the Japanese media would have the reponsibility of protecting the honor of these two women by playing up Mickey Rourke's reputation, nudging the facts, going on hearsay and "rumour" to make him sound like the hippest (and strongest!) guy in town. Nigo is Nigo, and at this point, his fame is more about his fame than his actually selling clothes. But must we extrapolate some kind of fantasy 1999 scenario of his stores to live up to his legend? Are all travel writers doomed to go somewhere and fantasize their surroundings as those existent five years ago instead of sizing up the situation from a ground-level inductive perspective? Or should they read blogs by jaded locals totally myopic about the grand narratives bestowed on Japan from the outside world?
Posted by marxy at October 2, 2006 5:45 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.pliink.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/112
Comments
agree, especially when it comes to Omotesando. There are tons of new stuff happening in Aoyama/Harajuku, new shops opening, new brands, new styles etc which are very interesting and feel much more '2006' than Bape. But Bape is big in America and Europe (never seen as many Bape T shirts as when I was back in Paris last July) and writers have to make their target audience feel 'secure' about its super expensive Bape clothes. Boring, I know.
Posted by: DIGIKI at October 2, 2006 7:36 PM
hey this style of imaginary psychogeography works fine for Momus, why not let The Guardian have theirs too?
Posted by: Chris_B at October 2, 2006 8:24 PM
This just in: some guy named "Hard Gay" is the newest hit in Japan.
Posted by: James at October 2, 2006 8:37 PM
Fake BAPE = pretty big in Thailand.
Posted by: Adamu at October 2, 2006 9:04 PM
It is possible he saw a bunch of kids in Bape gear and just exaggerrated, playing up to his Grauniad readers. The last time I was in the area, I saw a gang of kids covered in Bape clothing and laden with shopping bags fresh from a trip to the store. Like you said, Bape is well past cutting edge, but if you're a journalist in town fow a few days, it's probably much easier to embellish some previosuly know half-facts than to do some fresh digging. Pff.
Posted by: Markk at October 2, 2006 11:06 PM
I was in London and saw the piece on the day it came out. I did chuckle at that BAPE paragraph - utter frickborsh.
But Cher Maitre, surely you are guilty of inflating Mr. Nigo's rep more than most - crediting him with paving the way for UNIQLO, for example...
Posted by: Martin Webb at October 3, 2006 12:03 AM
james: you don't know how right you are. I'm on a little visa soujourn in the states, and caught E! broadcasing an youtube looking clip of a very old hard gay bit, and calling it "this week in Japan". Just after they played another clip from some show I didn't even recognize, with a couple of current celebrities looking 10 years younger.
Don't blame them though. American radio still uses the word "alternative".
Posted by: nate at October 3, 2006 12:21 AM
I'm glad you picked up on this - I felt the same reading t hat article and a bit cheated. despite being 'jaded', perhaps journatlists could learn a bit more about modern japan from the blogs. btw - I just heard on the grapevine that infact it is osaka that is becoming uberchic!
Posted by: stu at October 3, 2006 9:51 AM
The last time I was in the area, I saw a gang of kids covered in Bape clothing and laden with shopping bags fresh from a trip to the store.
Yes, but they were tourists from Hong Kong.
Posted by: Rory P. Wavekrest at October 3, 2006 11:18 AM
osaka has always been cooler then tokyo. forever.
you can never been cool if your #1
in short:
number oneness does not equal coolness.
Posted by: trevor at October 3, 2006 1:22 PM
Just like strawberry milk is cooler than chocolate milk.
Posted by: marxy at October 3, 2006 3:21 PM
Once upon a time (between '92 and '98 I suspect since that was my tenure), kids probably did have to wait around outside the Ape store on rumours a new item was going to show up: because they didn't have anything on the damn shelves. I was walking by once, went into the store, not a damn thing interesting, and left. I didn't understand what the big deal was, figured it was manufactured 'cool' via fake exclusivity via not actually putting anything out for sale. Which is sort of odd for Japan where not many businesses would chance wasting all that free kuchi-komi by not having product for sale to cash in all at once when your 15min came around. Next, I said. (i take it from continued mention of the brand in this blog that they actually did make some sales at some point following my visit though and went on to some sort of popularity?)
Posted by: Slim at October 3, 2006 3:49 PM
i take it from continued mention of the brand in this blog that they actually did make some sales at some point following my visit though and went on to some sort of popularity?)
Yes! Actually it's because of all the not-cashing in that they were able to continue for so long.
Posted by: marxy at October 3, 2006 5:37 PM
Ben Anderson is fantastically versatile, ne? From 'Imagined Communities' to this ...
Posted by: Richard Lloyd Parry at October 8, 2006 9:28 PM