Japan is to crazy what the Middle East is to oil: sitting on quantities that can supply the rest of the world for decades. Of course, we say that with nothing but admiration. Their mind-blowing and often unsettling subcultures have faced the pressure of high expectations and stifling social codes, and responded by taking rebellion to new, terrifying places.
#6.
Dekotora
But unlike American truckers, who spend their off hours doing meth and hiring inexpensive prostitutes, Japanese truckers spend their free time--and thousands of their yen--turning their trucks into something out of an extremely flamboyant, musical version of The Road Warrior.
Source.
A dekotora truck can have a Cadillac bumper, illuminated chrome side-running boards, paper lanterns, luggage racks that light up like Christmas trees, detailed murals featuring dragons, samurai and cartoon characters, and even metal tubes shooting off the front that serve no purpose at all.
Source.
#5.
Gyaru
There are all sorts of subgroups of gyaru, and each successive generation gets weirder than the last.
First came the kogyaru, high school girls who wore sexualized versions of their school uniforms (supershort skirts and incredibly saggy socks) and dyed their hair blond. Once that style peaked, some girls started to go off the rails. Known as ganguro, they slathered dark makeup on their faces, painted their lips white and attached shiny stickers to their faces.
Don't look it in the eyes!
#4.
Lolita
Clad in petticoats, high-collared dresses, bonnets and wielding fluffy parasols, they walk the Bladerunner streets of Tokyo looking like graduates of The Tim Burton School for Girls. There are all kinds of lolita's, each with their own variation on the theme, but they all share a love of women's fashions that died out before their grandmothers were born.
And these aren't just outfits they wear to special clubs or garden parties. You can see grown women in these full Victorian doll costumes on trains, in book stores and wolfing down cheeseburgers at McDonald's.
Why, you may ask? It has something to do with the rejection of male-created beauty standards and sexualized dress. Yes. In Japan, to express their rejection of oppressive cultural stereotypes and proclaim their independence, women dress like creepy school girls from 200 years ago. That sounds about right.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Culture and Nonverbal Communication: A Comparative Study of Japanese and North American Body Language (socyberty.com)
- Japanese Reggae? (tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Drainspotting: Japan's Unique Visual Subculture | Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org)
This post first appeared on Big Trouble Little Nippon: Big Trouble Little Nippon, please read the originial post: here