How Japan Beat America At Its Own Style Game

An interview with author W. David Marx, whose new book outlines the rich, complex, and straight-up wacky history of Japan's relationship with American style

Right now, the men's fashion scene is a diverse zone of awesomeness. Labels from around the world create new spins on classic menswear, or forward-thinking designers just invent new visions of what men can and should wear. And one place in the world that's definitely happening right now is Japan. The country hosts some of the most cutting-edge labels and ones that produce the most traditional menswear pieces. But for much of its sartorial history, the way Japanese men dressed was set by what Americans had worn years prior. 

 

From perfect replicas of military jackets to denim made on old-school shuttle looms, the men's style scene in Japan was, at one point, a time capsule of classic Americana. But what caused that shift post-WWII? And how did it come to be that Japan often produces better versions of distinctly American designs (see: the bomber jacket, all forms of denim) than we do? A new book, titled Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style, answers these questions while unpacking this fascinating relationship between these two far-flung cultures. We spoke to the book's author, W. David Marx, about the early days of Japan's fetishization of Americana style, its influence on modern-day streetwear culture, and how Japanese and American men's fashion magazines (like, say, GQ) are still worlds apart. 

 

Let's start with the title. What is Ametora?
The word “Ametora” means “American traditional” and started in the ’80s in Japan. But it generally means American East Coast, classic, elite clothing. It’s a combination of Ivy style as well as British items like fisherman's sweaters. It’s anything you’d see on East Coast campuses in the U.S. But I kind of want to reframe the word in this context of, anytime a Japanese product or brand makes American clothing or makes something new, it becomes Ametora. The word “tradition” is too linked to just East Coast style, but now things like hip-hop style and California surfer style are also in some way traditional American style. 

 

In the book, you introduce [the book] Take Ivy as one of the first major influences on Japanese style.
Ivy started it. And you’re starting from scratch. At the time, Japan wasn’t getting much influence from America, because it was so closed off to the world. After [World War II], you couldn’t go overseas very easily for about 20 years, until around 1964. And even then, it was super expensive until the late ’80s. Take Ivy was one of the first books that brought American style to Japan. After that, the commercial world started picking up on hippie style and outdoor style, but Ivy is really where the system starts, and I think that’s why Ivy League style has become so venerated. It’s not just a certain style of the ’60s, but it was the start of the men’s style in Japan.

I think a common perception is that Japanese men, post–World War II, simply wanted to dress like Americans they saw, but your book says it’s not that clear-cut.
There were tons of American soldiers in Japan from about 1945 to 1950, but they were always in uniform, and that made an impact on people, but it wasn’t something that could be easily replicated. Jeans were showing up in certain markets, but they were incredibly expensive. So even if you thought Americans were cool, it was really hard to dress like them. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Japanese brands started making versions of everyday American clothing. But until Japanese brands made the products themselves, and put them in a Japanese context like magazines with Japanese models, did those clothes really pick up. 

 

The book also seems to reframe the relationship between American and Japanese style less as a one-way influence, but more as a dialogue. Is that right?
I would actually say that until recently it wasn’t a dialogue. It was mostly one way in the sense that Japan got very into it, and when Americans would see that Japanese men were into it, they would get a little weirded out. The clearest example of this is in the 1980s movie Mystery Train. The first part has these Japanese kids wearing all of these Teddy Boy clothes, and they come to Memphis and they want to see the glory of Rock ‘n’ Roll Memphis and are disappointed when it’s not what they expected. And the movie kind of makes fun of that, but Americans have always been uncomfortable because they think it feels forced. I think a lot of Americans were dismissive of it because they thought Japanese men didn’t understand it. But around eight years ago, with the rise of menswear blogs, American men started to include these versions of American gear, and it became a dialogue. And often now, Japanese brands might not be considered superior, but are doing something interesting. And Japanese labels have even become a standard, in a way—for instance, if a stylish American guy is looking for dress shirts, he might go to Kamakura. I also think it started with A Bathing Ape, when you actually had a Japanese brand in the American pop-culture consciousness.

So it was Harajuku culture that led to Japanese brands being judged on their own merits?
Yeah, especially once Bape opened its own New York store in, like, 2003 or 2004. But the whole culture of reselling, and this is nothing against James Jebbia [owner of Supreme], but that whole reselling culture really started in Japan in the ’90s. A lot of what we’re seeing now is very much based on the Japanese model. That goes everywhere, from menswear blogs showing guys how to clean garments to order a bespoke suit to the sort of manual aspects you never used to get out of American fashion magazines, to just waiting 14 hours to get products. These things were all super normal in Japan, but weren’t in the United States until recently. But there’s just more stuff in Japan today. Fashion is just more important to the average man. 

 

In general, how do Japanese men consume men’s fashion differently than we do in America?
I think, at the very beginning in the ’60s, if you wanted to wear Ivy League clothing in Japan, none of your elders would have it or wear it. So you relied on these magazines to tell you the right way to wear it. So men used media to tell them what to buy. In the ’70s, you start to get these magazines that have 20 pages of Red Wing boots in them, and into the ’80s it continued. Today, the older the magazine skews, the less manual aspects there are to them, they’re more just general ideas. For instance, Popeye [one of Japan’s most popular men’s fashion magazines] is much less prescriptive these days as Japanese men have much more confidence in what to wear and how to wear it. 

 

What’s always stuck out to me is just how product-heavy Japanese magazines are. Just pages and pages of laydown shots, which makes them fun to look at even for someone who doesn’t speak Japanese.
Well, what’s great is that they allow you to shop before you get to the store. You pick up the magazine and see, oh, Visvim or Junya Watanabe did a cool jacket, so you call the store and ask, and then you go to the store to get it. So having your product in the magazine is extremely important in Japan. The speed at which things sell out in Japan is incredible, because people across the country are picking up the same magazines and everyone wants the stuff in the magazines rather than the stuff not in the magazines. And it’s to the degree that I’ve heard multiple times, whether it’s Jun Takahashi [of Undercover] or Nigo [of Bape], complaining about the fact that kids would only buy the color of the tee they were selling if it was in the magazine. But there are also a lot of Japanese guys who don’t want to just follow instructions. 

At the end of the book, I make the point that the whole menswear-blog scene of seven or eight years ago started because the whole culture of dressing up has sort of disappeared for American men. So young guys couldn’t just go to their dad and ask, “What’s the best suit to buy?” because their dads don’t know. So they had to start from basics the same way Japanese men did in the 1960s. 

 

Is the online-shopping and social-media world less important to Japanese men than it is to Americans?
I would definitely say so, and I would also say that these Japanese magazines have done way less about moving online. A lot of the best GQ content today can be found both online and in the magazine. And there’s a lot of content that’s just online and not in the magazine. But in Japan, print is really the culture that matters.

As for online shopping, it’s gotten a big boost recently. [Japanese department store] Beams has basically all of their stock online. Zozotown also sells tons of brands that you can buy online, with pretty good return policies. But for a long time, the reason the reseller scene was so big in Japan was that there were these little shops in the middle of nowhere that would travel to the big cities, buy the stuff, and sell it back in their small towns. But though e-commerce has taken off, I think the reseller scene is still insane. As for social media, it’s important, but hasn’t taken over the way that the magazines have control over what people buy. 

 

Do you think that American men’s newfound interest in clothes over the past few years is in some ways related to the fact that Japanese labels have made great American products, like jeans?
Well, Thom Browne didn’t need to look to Japan to make his suits. But once American men saw how much was going on in Japan, it was more a catalyst for that interest in clothing. When American men wanted to look at pictures of Aldens or Red Wings back in 2007 or 2008, those pictures were in Japanese magazines. If you wanted to see a military jacket from the ’60s, you were more likely to find a real McCoy’s replica of the jacket than the actual vintage one. Or, like, if you wanted to see what Levi’s looked like in 1955, that was in a Japanese magazine. So I just think that when Americans became interested in their own heritage, the resources they needed to learn about it were in Japan. And Take Ivy is the perfect example of that, as it’s a book made by Japanese people about American style.

Also, it seems the best American-inspired products, like military jackets or North Face parkas, were and are only available to buy in Japan.
Absolutely. I guess I’m also taking for granted the fact that America has really caught up in terms of certain products. Like, you don’t have to buy Japanese denim if you want quality raw, unsanforized denim. A lot of American brands make them. But Japanese denim did sort of take over in terms of being the most reliable vintage-y-feeling selvedge denim, but also Cone Mills would have never started making their selvedge again had they not seen Japanese brands pulling their selvedge looms. The whole Levi’s Vintage Clothing brand started in Japan before the United States, about two years prior. At first the idea of raw selvedge was seen as a crazy Japan thing, but then they realized they could do it in the U.S. But I don’t want to take anything away from the U.S. and say that Japan caused this revival. There was also a large influence from Hong Kong, specifically Hypebeast, which created a bridge between products coming from Japan and the United States.

Where do you see the relationship between American and Japanese style going in the future?
At the end of the book, I talk about people who are taking this relationship in whole new directions. The beginning of the book is about Japanese men copying American style, the second part is the massive importation of American clothing into Japan, but the new brands now, like Visvim and Engineered Garments, are designers who understand the history and understand the references, but are trying to make something new. When you see a Visvim shoe, it looks like a Visvim shoe. So there will always be brands just making replica versions of old American products. I think the next step is this whole new wave of creativity.