Often, Money Has to be Sacrificed to Retain a Unique Identity
In front of the Harajuku train station in Tokyo is a busy shopping arcade called Takeshita Street. During the 90s, this was the epicenter of a major fashion counterculture in Japan. Young women with tanned skin, boldly colored hair and gaudy clothing strutted down the street, presenting themselves as the antithesis of a mainstream culture that believed in the beauty of fair (read: white) skin, jet-straight shiny black hair, and cute blouses with toned-down designs. The eponymous "Harajuku style" became known worldwide as a streak of individualism in a Japanese society perceived as fundamentally conformist.
Fast forward two decades, Takeshita Street remains busy with crowds of shoppers, thumping with loud voices and background music of shops trying to draw in customers rubbing shoulders with one another as they struggle to move forward in the narrow alleyways. But even as the street remains as vibrant as it did in the heyday of Harajuku style, something about the place has changed. Gone are kids who try to look out of place in a still-conformist Japan, replaced by shops stocking the bubble teas, generic souvenir T-shirts, and even Korean cosmetics.
In essence, Takeshita Street has become just another of dozens of shopping streets catering to the youthful crowd and especially foreign customers. The street continues to leverage the past glory of Harajuku style to get people to come, but what it has to offer has become not at all different from what can be bought in many other trendy shopping arcades that are located throughout Tokyo. Both domestic and foreign tourists seeking to find the Japanese fashion counterculture will be sourly disappointed by just how similar Takeshita Street, and Harajuku, in general, is to just any other shopping-cum-residential area across the city.
Sure, it can be argued that the outsiders' perception of Harajuku style was exaggerated even in the peak of its fame. Japan of the 1990s, much more than today, was a place that ensures people think and behave the same way. Hence, the practitioners of Harajuku style may be dressed differently, but to survive in Japanese society, they had to maintain a "mainstream mind." In other words, the gaudiness of the 90s Harajuku youth may have just been a particularly visual fashion fad, quick to set in and then disappear. It is a far cry from the supposed vanguard of Japanese individualism, as some proclaimed Harajuku style to be.
As fashion trends naturally change over time, it would have been natural for Harajuku style to go out of style if it does not adapt to the needs and desires of a new generation of youths. And fall back it certainly has. As a new generation of youths perceives tanned face and colorful hair as hallmarks of their mother and aunts' generations, the appeal of Harajuku style is no longer that of trendiness, but nostalgia. But nostalgia does not fly with foreigners and teenagers who are not familiar with 90s Japanese pop culture. Takeshita Street had a choice of clinging to its past glory or catering to a new generation of consumers with different offerings.
In short, it chose money over identity. But jettisoning shops that sold goods related to Harajuku style that no one really participates in anymore, it made room for shops that sell things young and foreign consumers do want, whether it be street food or generic Japan-related souvenirs. In its own way, Takeshita Street has become a model of keeping up with consumer trends, reinventing itself to stay relevant and profitable. Perhaps in that relentless drive to stay up to date, it is worthy as the one-time home of Harajuku style. Just as it was the epicenter of counterculture fashion trends of the past, today it is keeping itself alive with a more materialistic, tourist-driven consumer trends of the present.
Yet, by so thoroughly relegating Harajuku style in history books in exchange for steady income into the future, Takeshita Street has lost its unique identity. Harajuku style may have been just a visual cue rather than a true culture, and it may have become a source of nostalgia without much of ongoing market demand, but at least it is something different, presenting a kind of easily identifiable uniqueness that is, despite recent drives toward greater diversity, remain extremely difficult to find within Japanese society. That uniqueness is what allowed Takeshita street to emerge as an irreplaceable destination in the past, and the loss of that uniqueness puts a major question mark on the street's future.
Undoubtedly, monetizing counterculture is difficult. Youths do not have money. Youths who refuse to participate in mainstream society are even less moneyed because they cannot make steady incomes as "regular" people do. And counterculture, by its very definition, will only be consumed by a demographic minority with little ability to attract more mainstream consumers. But to abandon concerted efforts to retain any semblance of the counterculture that made it famous puts into even greater doubt of whether Takeshita Street remain relevant in the cutthroat competition among Tokyo's major shopping areas. As it loses its unique identity, will the word Harajuku still mean anything more than touristy shops in the future?
Fast forward two decades, Takeshita Street remains busy with crowds of shoppers, thumping with loud voices and background music of shops trying to draw in customers rubbing shoulders with one another as they struggle to move forward in the narrow alleyways. But even as the street remains as vibrant as it did in the heyday of Harajuku style, something about the place has changed. Gone are kids who try to look out of place in a still-conformist Japan, replaced by shops stocking the bubble teas, generic souvenir T-shirts, and even Korean cosmetics.
In essence, Takeshita Street has become just another of dozens of shopping streets catering to the youthful crowd and especially foreign customers. The street continues to leverage the past glory of Harajuku style to get people to come, but what it has to offer has become not at all different from what can be bought in many other trendy shopping arcades that are located throughout Tokyo. Both domestic and foreign tourists seeking to find the Japanese fashion counterculture will be sourly disappointed by just how similar Takeshita Street, and Harajuku, in general, is to just any other shopping-cum-residential area across the city.
Sure, it can be argued that the outsiders' perception of Harajuku style was exaggerated even in the peak of its fame. Japan of the 1990s, much more than today, was a place that ensures people think and behave the same way. Hence, the practitioners of Harajuku style may be dressed differently, but to survive in Japanese society, they had to maintain a "mainstream mind." In other words, the gaudiness of the 90s Harajuku youth may have just been a particularly visual fashion fad, quick to set in and then disappear. It is a far cry from the supposed vanguard of Japanese individualism, as some proclaimed Harajuku style to be.
As fashion trends naturally change over time, it would have been natural for Harajuku style to go out of style if it does not adapt to the needs and desires of a new generation of youths. And fall back it certainly has. As a new generation of youths perceives tanned face and colorful hair as hallmarks of their mother and aunts' generations, the appeal of Harajuku style is no longer that of trendiness, but nostalgia. But nostalgia does not fly with foreigners and teenagers who are not familiar with 90s Japanese pop culture. Takeshita Street had a choice of clinging to its past glory or catering to a new generation of consumers with different offerings.
In short, it chose money over identity. But jettisoning shops that sold goods related to Harajuku style that no one really participates in anymore, it made room for shops that sell things young and foreign consumers do want, whether it be street food or generic Japan-related souvenirs. In its own way, Takeshita Street has become a model of keeping up with consumer trends, reinventing itself to stay relevant and profitable. Perhaps in that relentless drive to stay up to date, it is worthy as the one-time home of Harajuku style. Just as it was the epicenter of counterculture fashion trends of the past, today it is keeping itself alive with a more materialistic, tourist-driven consumer trends of the present.
Yet, by so thoroughly relegating Harajuku style in history books in exchange for steady income into the future, Takeshita Street has lost its unique identity. Harajuku style may have been just a visual cue rather than a true culture, and it may have become a source of nostalgia without much of ongoing market demand, but at least it is something different, presenting a kind of easily identifiable uniqueness that is, despite recent drives toward greater diversity, remain extremely difficult to find within Japanese society. That uniqueness is what allowed Takeshita street to emerge as an irreplaceable destination in the past, and the loss of that uniqueness puts a major question mark on the street's future.
Undoubtedly, monetizing counterculture is difficult. Youths do not have money. Youths who refuse to participate in mainstream society are even less moneyed because they cannot make steady incomes as "regular" people do. And counterculture, by its very definition, will only be consumed by a demographic minority with little ability to attract more mainstream consumers. But to abandon concerted efforts to retain any semblance of the counterculture that made it famous puts into even greater doubt of whether Takeshita Street remain relevant in the cutthroat competition among Tokyo's major shopping areas. As it loses its unique identity, will the word Harajuku still mean anything more than touristy shops in the future?
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