Fluency Journal "The Fashion of Japan"

Kensuke Uematsu
Professor James
Section AI
16 May 2007
　　　　　　　　　Fluency Journal "The Fashion of Japan"
　　　　　　I will talk about the fashion of Japan. There are some traditional clothes in the past. In the Heian era, people started wearing a KIMONO. KIMONO is Japanese traditional clothes made from one big cloth. It’s easy to fold and people can wear many when the temperature becomes cold. If it becomes hot, people wear it made by hemp. KIMONO was major people’s clothes in that time. On the other hand, people enjoy the combination of colors when they wear it. They think more about colors than before, and it became one of the Japanese cultures. One meaning of the color of KIMONO is a class in the society and generally, the upper class people wore more beautiful KIMONO than the lower class. In Edo era, there is a common clothe named KAMISHIMO for bushi. It’s a kind of KIMONO and uniform of their force in the district. Every force had an original design and coloration of it. In Meiji era, Japan was influenced by some foreign countries and people wanted to wear the clothes of foreigner so KIMONO went out of use. It’s a kind of development of the country but we lost one of our cultures that wearing KIMONO usually. It’s also a bad thing to forget a traditional habit. Today, we don’t wear KIMONO usually and KIMONO became a special clothe that people wear it in the kind of special ceremony and the New Year. We often call it HAREGI, now.
　　　　　　Nowadays, people wear many kinds of clothe. There are various styles of the fashion and I’m going to talk about men’s fashion because I don’t really know the girls’ fashion. First, there are two big groups of the style, slim and fat. Slim style, for example, skinny pants, tight shirts and tight jackets are very close-fitting. This style is the trend in these days but I don’t want to wear these tight clothes because it uncomfortable for me. However, some of my friends like this style are looked very cool. Fat style, for example, large pants, large T-shirts and large parka are more relax-fitting. This style especially called “B-style” and the people choose bigger size than they really suit. It is liked by the people who like hip hop music or some kinds of black music. The word “B” means “B-boy” so it’s a kind of hip hop cultures and it often stands for a dancer who dances a Breaking. Next, there is a specific style called “A-style” appeared recently. This style is liked by some particular people who really like to go Akihabara and called OTAKU. OTAKU means the people who specialize in the field of animations or plastic models or trains or something seemed strange by common people sometimes. They want to wear check shirts, T-shirts which have a print of animation character, chemical washed denims (kind of damaged denim but it’s really eccentrically) and a bandanna on their head. One important point of this style is that people should tuck in their shirts into pants. If you do so, you will become a real “A-boy”.
　　　　　　There are many ways to express the sense of the fashion, now. Young people try hard to become a great fashionable person and they have own sense of their fashion. Sometimes, it’s a strange to other people especially adults but they believe it is really fashionable and if they believe so, it is exactly fashionable. Therefore, they really enjoy coordinating their clothes and wearing their favorite clothes.

(579 words)