ONE EXPRESSES oneself in various ways: deeds, words, gestures. The expression is presentational: one shows who one is, or who one wishes to be taken for, by the choice of word or gesture. There are many systems of expression, some well known, some known scarcely at all. Spoken and written language, for example, is a very well studied system of expression: the weight and nuance of each word, of each grammatical construction is known. This knowledge is consciously applied when one writes or speaks; one creates the impression of who one hopefully is through a choice among its many parts. Other forms of expression are scarcely studied at all, though used none the less. Various kinds of gesture, in themselves forming languages, have been only partially codified, and among these clothing as a system of expressing feeling and thought is rarely studied at all. Yet, as a means of self-comment and self-presentation it is one of the most common forms of gestural language: the “sentence” formed by the complete ensemble speaks plainly about the wearer and is so intended to; the language is well understood though rarely (Roland Barthes is an exception) studied.
In Japan, a land where the emblematic is most visible and where signs and signals are more openly displayed, the language of dress is more codified than in many countries in the West. It is consequently better known and more consciously used. Kunio Yanagita, the early folklorist, has said (as quoted by Bernard Rudofsky) that “clothing . . . is the most direct indication of a people’s general frame of mind.” This observation is shared by a majority of Japanese—or at any rate used to be when the traditional Japanese costume was their only form of sartorial expression. It said much about the country and the people and indeed did express their general frame of mind.
The kimono comes in only two sizes, male and female. It is also never designed to fit the wearer. Rather the wearer is designed, as it were, to fit it. The assumption is that we Japanese are all alike (except for the important sex difference, about which too much cannot be made) and, this being so, tailoring as a form of uniqueness is not valued in this land where the truly unique is so often unwelcome. Since harmony is our goal in all things we show our happy similarity in our national costume.
To be sure there is room for minor variation. A young girl shows she is young by wearing bright kimono; an old woman shows she is old by wearing only subdued colors. Traditionally the wealthy but otherwise unprivileged merchant class indicated their state by plain kimono lined with the most expensive materials. Both kimono pattern and hair style indicated the social position of the wearer—a geisha would “look” quite different from the married woman of good family.
The kimono, like all forms of dress, also shows much more than it ostensibly presents. The language of clothes, like any other language, is filled with nuance and deeper meaning. The kimono defines the wearer in more senses than one. Though not shaped to the body, it encircles and confines the body, it holds and supports it, as do few other forms of dress.
In contrast to the Arab kaftan or the Persian chador, which has no contact with the body at all and only covers it, the kimono delineates the wearer. It is, particularly in the woman’s costume, so tight and so supported by layers of inner kimono, that it is like a molded shell.
What is molded, however, are not the breasts, the hips, the behind, those areas emphasized in the West, but the human form itself, the torso. The result is a costume so tight that it hobbles the wearer and prevents any actions other than walking, standing, sitting, kneeling—a repertoire of movements which, given the possibilities of the human body, is quite limited. The inescapable suggestion is that something this tight and constricting must therefore enclose—like the lobster’s shell—something soft and fluid.
In this sense the kimono can be seen as a metaphor for the idea that the Japanese has of himself—and is hence presenting. We are a people whose social consciousness is at least as strong as our individual consciousness; we live in a rigid conforming society and both our strong social self and the strong social rules we obey are necessary because we would otherwise not know who we were. Like the lobster we are defined not by an inner core but by an outward armor—which may be social or sartorial. These—our ideas, our clothes—are informed from the outside. We so express our social self because, to an extent, that is all there is.
At the same time, however, the social contract has many escape clauses and the kimono itself has myriad possibilities for individual variation. Our emotions, our vagrant fears and wishes, can all be expressed so long as we show these only within the context of our society and its laws; this is visible within the context of the kimono, our national costume, the Japanese dress.
A standard costume is like an accepted idea. It is self-evident. One does not examine its meaning until one has ceased to believe in it. In the same way, the meaning of the kimono was not apparent until it stopped being widely worn. Now we see that—a truism—those who wear kimono also entertain oldfashioned ideas. At the same time there lingers, naturally enough, an air of the respectable about the kimono. The wellbrought-up girl has one and wears it upon the proper occasions (weddings, tea-ceremony lessons, New Year’s) though the rest of the time she may be in jeans. She is showing that she is a decent girl but that she also has modern ideas. She is not suggesting, I think (which would be the suggestion of the American girl gotten up for an American wedding), that she is just wearing the garment for peripheral reasons but that the real her is different. Rather she is stating that she is both modern and respectable at the same time.
Hers is one solution (sometimes in kimono, sometimes in jeans) to a communicative problem which the Japanese have been facing for some time now. How do you indicate sartorially who you are when the vehicle for so doing is disappearing. And particularly when there is a strong taboo against—a possible answer—wearing Japanese and Western costume in combination.
When Japan began modernizing itself a hundred years ago many were the mistakes—bustles worn backwards and the like. More important, the Japanese were not prepared to read properly the lexicon of Western dress. As might have been expected the Japanese choice was initially for Western clothing too formal for either the occasion or the person or both. Hats, gloves, sticks elements known to have had originally aristocratic nuanceswere used by all Japanese men who could afford them. The women likewise were always too dressed up. One still sees remnants of this early reading in even informal court functions and the Japanese abroad are usually, given foreign standards, overdressed. That Japanese in Western clothes look always off to a wedding or a funeral is an old observation but one still, to an extent, valid.
One can understand the reasons. The rigidity of the kimono was being sought for in the rigidity of foreign formal dress. Overdressing for an occasion, which is what all formal dress consists of, means by definition a presentation of the social self. The clothing is much like the conversation on such occasionssocial, that is, impersonal.
The language of dress in the West is now nothing if not personal and fashion has become a system of dialects. Individuality is sought for, if not always achieved, and social dress—as in formal dress—has all but disappeared. The Japanese, having scrapped their own native costume and having proved understandably maladroit in handling the various nuances of Western formal dress, are now presented with a new problem—or rather, the same old problem in a new guise: how to present the social self given only the apparently highly individualized clothing styles they are given a choice among.
To an extent the modern Japanese has the choice made for him by fashion itself, the linguistic equivalent of which might be free speech but the true aim of which is to make everyone for a season speak alike. The Japanese problem, its quest for clothing expressing a social norm, is solved so long as everyone appears more or less the same, even though the clothing itself may have originally carried highly personal nuances.
Take jeans, for example. These have now become the uniform of the young in all countries. Being a uniform this means that the young are all saying the same thing. Though the fashion (as fashion) was originally radical in America (we are not going to dress up, we are going back to the earth, we are egalitarian, etc.) and even to an extent revolutionary (down with formal clothing, down with elitist thought, down with civilization), it has now become the equivalent of an accepted idea and is defended only in that jeans are cheap, easy to wash, do not need pressing, and everyone else wears them.
In Japan jeans at once became a uniform for the young and originally carried the same message of youthful revolt, of attacking bourgeois ideas of respectability, of “thinking young.” In no time, however, jeans (always chosen a size too small and given to shrinkage besides) became the kimono equivalent. They encase snugly and safely, and their message has become socially conciliatory—if everyone says the same thing, then no one says anything. Jeans became the unexceptionable container for young bodies, was accepted as such, and its original somewhat inflammatory message has now become its opposite: we are conforming, we are rocking no boats.
Not that this has not occurred in other countries. And not that other countries do not likewise seek the safety and security of the unexceptionable social costume. My point would be that, in this as in other things, the phenomenon is more visible in Japan. And that, given the admitted difficulties the Japanese encounter in “reading” modern fashion, their mistakes are often instructive.
Take for example the emblazoned tee-shirt. In America, where the fashion first started, wearing a Coca-Cola tee-shirt meant precisely that one would not subscribe to those institutionalized habits or virtues which accompany indiscriminate and habitual Coca-Cola drinking. The intent was ironic, as in so much American fashion. If one wore a Yale or a Harvard teeshirt, not only did one not go to those schools but one also was expressing an ironic scorn for the qualities they presumably inculcated. Wearing surplus U.S. Army gear meant you were anti-Vietnam-War and hence anti-Army. Often the irony was a put down—the various confrontation messages worn across the chest—some witty, some not.
In Japan, however, Coca-Cola wearers love Coca-Cola. It is a sign of their modernity. The boy with Yale or Harvard on his chest would really like to attend these universities. To be this cosmopolitan is to be progressive. Surplus Army uniforms (always U.S., never Japanese) mean merely being with-it in some obscure (to the Japanese) sense. And as for the emblazoned messages, since no one can read them or, if reading them, understand them, the mere fact that one is wearing English on the tee-shirt indicates a contemporary and progressive frame of mind. Some of the results are startling. IF IT MOVES SUCK IT may be fitting on a sardonic American college boy but it is not (where I saw it) when it covers the bosom of an innocent Japanese highschool girl. The mock come-on or put-down built into the American youth context is entirely missing.
Yet, with it all, even when the ostensible message is not apprehended, the under-message (we are with it, we are among the new knowledgeables) is there. Printed tee-shirts everywhere mean I’m OK, you’re OK. In Japan the printed foreign word (divorced of all meaning though it must be) is fashionable. One is not an old fogy, nor is one stuck in the mud. Rather, one is young, mobile, hopeful, and looking to further horizons. One is also cultured. Foreign words—English in Japan right nowhave the same eclat that French in the menu used to have in America. The under-message is the same: we are cosmopolitan. This is important on a small, overcrowded, intensely provincial archipelago.
And sometimes the messages also coincide to a surprising degree in the two countries. Take, for example, the too-big look, clothes purposely several sizes too large, pants or skirt bunched at the belt, coat or blouse sleeves extending down over the hands, shoulders sagging because too wide—a brief fashion.
In America and Europe the message was that the girl in the too-large man’s suit (and the fashion was male clothing on girls, though it consisted of not just any old men’s suit but men’s suits purposely designed too large for girls) was really saying that try as she may for a man’s role in this man’s world (now that she has been “liberated” enough to attempt it) the role is just “too big” for her.
This message may have had some slight relevance in America where there has indeed been an amount of publicity concerning women’s presumed liberation, but in Japan where woman is not in the slightest liberated, the message, though presented, has no social relevance. It is a message without a context.
In America the implication was that the woman wearing this outfit and so obviously “failing” to perform the male role was, therefore, a figure of some fun. At the same time, she was attractive, as only a person who admits her faults can be attractive. She was “smart,” “cool,” “cute”—there are various adjectives incorporating several degrees of honesty and charm. She was also safe since she had nothing of the threat of the W omens’ Libber about her-she was, in fact, a turncoat, snuggling up to and affirming the male image.
In Japan all of this wealth of nuance is lost. The too-big look as a foreign fashion has simply been taken over unexamined. Japan has, however, also enlarged this particular fashion—and here is where the messages in the two countries coincide. Toobig costumes are also made for men—or, at least, boys. One sees these adolescents in the bunched and baggy trousers, the sagging coats which we in the West only associated with fashionable girls. Here then, the original American message, makes sense. Japanese male youngsters cannot “fill father’s pants”; both the costume and social responsibilities it suggests in its original form are “too much” for the wearer. This large outfit is, tellingly, nothing other than the “gray flannel” suit long associated with an orderly and conservative life. There is no hippy costume which is “too big” and in Japan the idea of a kimono “too large” would no longer carry any meaning at all. The outsize ensemble (again especially tailored, usually in “natural” colors since natural, that is, earth colors are at present also fashionable—true legacy from the hippies) is a parody of Papa’s best suit and means that Sonny cannot and will not live up to inherited responsibilities. Here the effect is consciously “funny,” and young men so dressed are figures of fun, just as women in the West so dressed were—though in both countries “funny” is read as “charming” or “disarming” in that, like all joke outfits, this one really sets out to placate. In Japan, boys so signally failing to live up to inherited virtues (hard work, the rat race, wife and family) cast some slight doubt on such virtues and since the doubt is there, the costume has a meaning. In the case of girls wearing the same costume, however, the effect is meaningless. She is simply—neuter term—”fashionable.”
If sometimes the messages of fashion coincide in both the West and in Japan, most often they do not. Take, for example, the American ensemble which consisted of the highly unfashionable: materials such as Georgette and velveteen cut in a deliberately old fashioned manner—puffed-sleeves, yoke neck—and often accompanied by hair in a bun, or a primped permanent, and sometimes granny-glasses. The message is that we are so serious we do not care for fashion (though this ensemble, in fact, became rapidly fashionable—a logical development from the earlier “ugly-is-beautiful” fashion), and we in our own way care for and have indeed found the true virtues—those of our grandparents and not our parents. Further, we are sober and recognize true-worth and are honest enough to proclaim this.
Such a complicated sartorial metaphor is not legible in Japan where, in any event, the different strata of historical costume in the West are not recognized. At the same time, since fashion is fashion, this look is everywhere in the larger cities. Here, again, however, some changes have been made. Since Japan has never had a fashion which has been downgraded (and, as we have seen, even the kimono is at certain times and places proper and hence fashionable still), there is no need for irony. The Japanese see the unfashionable look therefore as a continuation for one of their own fashions: the velveteen and beribboned little-girl dress which has, indeed, never gone out of fashion. Styles of the ‘Thirties (to which the American ensemble is most beholden) are not recognized as such and, in any event, the implied nostalgia cannot be felt. Therefore, the American unfashionable look is treated as a logical extension of Japan’s own little-girl look. This says that I am innocent and nubile, of good family and am aware of my own cuteness; I am something for you to admire and think fondly of. Consequently granny glasses and puff sleeves as a fashion fit well with ankle-length party skirts and hair ribbons. Kate Greenaway is laid directly on top of Clyde’s Bonnie.
Not only do the Japanese read Western fashion differently Geans), creatively (the too-big suit on the boy), and wrongly (the ugly look), they are also not at all “at home” with it ·and never have been. The only Western dress to which they have thoroughly accustomed themselves and which they wear naturally is the institutionalized costume.
We foreigners are used to this only in specialized professionsnurses, stewardesses, etc., and typically the wearers are usually female. In Japan, however, the institutional costume is everywhere. All Japanese cooks wear a “cook suit,” all white and with a big puffed hat; most younger Japanese students wear the black serge high-collar Prussian schoolboy suit; day-laborers concoct typical and usually identical outfits; even the ordinary man off for a day of skiing or hiking fits himself out in a full skiing or hiking ensemble. The conclusion is inescapable: the Japanese is truly at home in Western dress only if it is some form of livery.
Alison Lurie has written that to wear livery is to be “editorialized or censored, “ which is quite true. But it is also to be—finally—defined. It is this, the need for this definition (at the cost of editorialization and censorship, to be sure), which is so felt by modern Japanese. One cannot wear jeans forever and so the logical progress is therefore into identical dark business suits, with white shirts and sober neckties, and company badges in the lapels. To be defined is (in Japanese terms) to know who you are socially, or even sociologically. This is of prime importance. Thus, everyone “says” the same thing, and this “conversation” uses only the safest of cliches. If “who I am” is the sartorial message the world over, then clothes can also answer the even more pressing question of “who am I?” The Japanese response to this is: I am what I appear to be; I am the role and the function I am dressed for.
There are thus within the purely Japanese context no problems of ambiguity, dishonesty, irony, or intention vs. interpretation (terms Alison Lurie used in speaking of a possible vocabulary for dress). Likewise, since the costume which even the young must eventually opt for is so unequivocal, there is no room for eloquence, wit, or even any but the most rudimentary information. Unexampled similarity remains the ideal of Japanese dressthough the unavailability of the kimono, that most strictly Japanese of garments, is still obviously felt.
—1981