Western fashion has been widely appreciated and consumed in Tokyo for decades, but since the mid-1990s Japanese youth have been playing a crucial role in forming their own unique fashion communities and producing creative styles which have had a major impact on fashion globally.Geographically and stylistically defined, subcultures such as Lolita in Harajuku, Gyaru and Gyaru-o in Shibuya, Age-jo in Shinjuku, and Mori Girl in Kouenji, reflect the affiliation and identities of their members, and have often blurred the boundary between professionals and amateurs for models, photographers, merchandisers and designers.Based on insightful ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, Fashioning Japanese Subcultures is the first theoretical and analytical study on Japan's contemporary youth subcultures and their stylistic expressions. It is essential reading for students, scholars and anyone interested in fashion, sociology and subcultures.

Product Description: An important center of dancehall reggae performance, sound clashes are contests between rival sound systems: groups of emcees, tune selectors, and sound engineers. In World Clash 1999, held in Brooklyn, Mighty Crown, a Japanese sound system and the only non-Jamaican competitor, stunned the international dancehall community by winning the event...read more

Product Description: Tokyo Rock Catwalk is the first English book ever to fully introduce the made-in-Japan youth culture of Visual Kei, a pop music movement characterized by eccentric, flamboyant looks, striking make-up, unusual hair styles and elaborate costumes...read more

Gothic & Lolita charts the current trend of Gothic street fashion that has swept Japan over the last decade. Influenced by Western fashion trends from the mid 1980s, young teenagers, predominately adolescent girls, congregate in the urban centres of Harajuku, Akihabara and a number of underground clubs in and around Tokyo, dressed head-to-toe in gothic costumes and late-Victorian dress. The psychological characteristics of the average Japanese Goth is one of introversion and exclusivity. The majority of girls in the scene are teenagers and most usually stop by the age of eighteen. The origin of the movement was in Osaka in the mid 1990s when young teenagers adopted Gothic fashion in response to the clothes worn and promoted by Japanese Gothic rock bands.

Product Description: Bosozoku is the secret world of Japanese bike gangs, who gather every week in their thousands for rallies in the major urban areas of the country. Shot by a leading fashion and reportage photographer, himself a member of one of the gangs, this is a colourful look at the strange and often violent subculture that takes its lead from the Hells Angels, and is linked to the Japanese mafia...read more

In this firsthand account of high-risk car and motorcycle racing in Japan, Ikuya Sato shows how affluence and consumerism have spawned various experimental and deviant life-styles among youth. Kamikaze Biker offers an intriguing look at a form of delinquency in a country traditionally thought to be devoid of social problems."Ikuya Sato's Kamikaze Biker is an exceptionally fine ethnographic analysis of a recurrent form of Japanese collective youth deviance. . . . Sato has contributed a work of value to a wide range of scholarly audiences."—Jack Katz, Contemporary Sociology"A must for anyone interested in Japan, juvenile delinquency and/or youth behavior in general, or the impact of affluence on society."—Choice"The volume provides a sophisticated . . . discussion of changes happening in Japanese society in the early 1980s. As such, it serves as a window on the 1990s and beyond."—Ross Mouer, Asian Studies Review"Kamikaze Biker is a superlative study, one that might help liberate American social science from the simplistic notion that behavior not directly contributing to economic productivity should be summarily dismissed as 'dangerous' and 'deviant.' "—Los Angeles Times Book Review (view table of contents)