Japanese Pop Cool-ture Fashion: A Timeline from Takenoko to Y2K

Japanese street fashion is often presented as a sequence of costumes. It is more useful as a sequence of places and publications: a pavement, a shop, a magazine, a photographer. Most styles in this timeline can be traced to one of these, and many were named by someone other than the people wearing them. We call the whole field pop cool-ture, the point where popular culture and clothing become the same thing. The dates below come from museum and trade records and from the Japanese and English reference record, and where accounts disagree both versions are given.

The sun tribe and the Ginza Ivy boys, 1955 to 1964

The first postwar youth style came from literature. Shintaro Ishihara’s novel Season of the Sun appeared in 1955; the Akutagawa Prize and the film followed in 1956, with Crazed Fruit in the summer of that year. The Taiyozoku, or sun tribe, became shorthand for rebellious young men. Who coined the term is unproven. Eight years later the Miyuki-zoku gathered on Ginza’s Miyuki-dori in VAN’s Ivy uniform and were cleared by police before the October Olympics; their story is in The History of Amekaji.

Magazines and travellers, 1967 to 1971

Late in the 1960s Shinjuku had its hippies, the futen-zoku, named after a manga that began in 1967, and from February 1969 folk singers gathered at the West Exit Plaza. Then two magazines changed how girls travelled and dressed. an·an published its first issue on 20 March 1970, non-no followed in 1971 (its name is Ainu for flower), and the national railway’s Discover Japan campaign began on 14 October 1970. The result was the Annon-zoku, young women travelling alone or in small groups with the magazines to the old towns of Kurashiki and Hagi.

Harajuku on Sundays, 1977 to 1980

In 1977 Harajuku began closing its main street to traffic on Sundays, the hokoten. In 1978 Takenori Otake opened Boutique Takenoko, and the dancers who bought their colourful costumes there, the Takenoko-zoku, peaked in 1980; the dance itself began in Shinjuku discos in the late 1970s. Laforet Harajuku opened in October 1978 and Shibuya 109 in April 1979, designed by Minoru Takeyama and aimed at women of about thirty before it became the centre of gyaru style. Alongside the Takenoko came the rockabilly dancers of Yoyogi and Harajuku, the roller-zoku, who used the name themselves. The pedestrian zone was abolished on 31 August 1998.

The DC brand boom, 1980 to 1987

A Parco advertisement of 1979 used the phrase ‘designer brand’, and from about 1980 to 1987 the DC boom, ‘Designer’s and Character’s’, made labels such as Nicole, Bigi, Pink House, Comme des Garçons and Y’s the dress of young Tokyo, peaking in 1986. The term has no firm definition. Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto made their Paris debut in 1981; Hysteric Glamour was launched in 1984, and in 1985 Shoichi Aoki launched the street-snap magazine STREET. Beams and Bobson are not DC brands, and Tsumori Chisato, founded in 1990, falls after the boom.

Ura-Harajuku, 1990 to 1997

In the 1990s the shops moved to the back streets of Jingumae. Hiroshi Fujiwara began Goodenough in 1990 (one account says the late 1980s). Nigo and Jun Takahashi opened Nowhere on 1 April 1993, alongside A Bathing Ape’s start; Neighborhood followed in 1994 and WTAPS in 1996 (or 1997). Last Orgy was not a shop but a Takarajima magazine column by Fujiwara and Kan Takagi, and ‘Last Orgy 2’ was its follow-up by Nigo and Takahashi. In music, HMV Shibuya opened in 1990 and the word Shibuya-kei appeared in its promotion by 1993; the origin of the term is uncertain. Our essay on Harajuku irony takes up the clothes.

Girls, bands and Lolita, 1990 to 2001

The girls’ styles of the 1990s were named by their magazines. Kogal, the schoolgirl gyaru, reached a mass audience through a 1993 television special and peaked in 1998; Egg launched in 1995. Ganguro started in the mid-1990s and peaked around 2000, although one reference says the early 1990s, and yamanba is its extreme form. Shoichi Aoki’s FRUiTS began in June 1997 and ran for 233 issues until February 2017, with Phaidon books in 2001 and 2005. Lolita brands have longer histories: Milk (1970), Pink House (1973), Angelic Pretty (1979), Baby, the Stars Shine Bright (1988) and Metamorphose (1993). Malice Mizer formed in August 1992, X Japan released Blue Blood on 21 April 1989, and visual kei is dated by accounts to the early or mid-1980s. The Gothic & Lolita Bible began in 2001.

Superflat and the world, 2000 to 2005

Takashi Murakami’s Superflat exhibition ran at Parco Gallery in 2000 and the US tour began in 2001. His partnership with Louis Vuitton dates from 2002, and the Multicolore monogram reached the runway for spring/summer 2003. Douglas McGray’s essay ‘Japan’s Gross National Cool’ appeared in Foreign Policy on 1 May 2002. Gwen Stefani’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby. on 12 November 2004 introduced her Harajuku Girls, and Tokyo Girls Collection held its first show on 7 August 2005 at Yoyogi National Gymnasium with 25 brands.

Cool Japan, 2010 to 2012

The government followed the culture: the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry set up a Creative Industries Promotion Office in June 2010, and the Cool Japan Fund began in 2013. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s ‘PonPonPon’ video appeared in July 2011, and Dover Street Market opened in Ginza in 2012. Parallel to all of this, Goldwin, the Japanese distributor of The North Face since 1978, became a reference for technical fashion; calling it the protagonist of Japanese gorpcore is one writer’s view.

Common errors

  • TUNE began in 2004, not 1994.
  • Louis Vuitton and Murakami began in 2002; the monogram reached the runway in 2003.
  • Shibuya 109 was designed by Minoru Takeyama, not Toyo Ito.
  • Pharrell Williams was not a co-owner of A Bathing Ape; he started other labels with Nigo in 2003.
  • The claim that gyaru style began with Wrangler’s 1972 ‘Gals’ jeans is not confirmed.
  • Visual kei did not begin in 1989; X Japan formed in 1982 and 1989 was the year of Blue Blood.

Why Japan

These styles were worn by crowds, photographed by magazines and then kept in wardrobes for twenty or thirty years. The archive of the 2000s, in particular, is often in unusually complete condition, which is why Japan is such a rich place to find the graphic tees, the punk shirts and the club-era techwear.

In the archive now

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Index terms: japanese street fashion history · harajuku fashion history · takenoko-zoku · ura-harajuku · dc brands · fruits magazine · kogal · ganguro · visual kei · shibuya 109 · superflat · cool japan · y2k japan fashion · pop cool-ture

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