W. David Marx
@wdavidmarx
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Author of Status and Culture, Ametora, and an upcoming cultural history of the 21st century for Viking (Fall 2025). Newsletter at https://t.co/M0KE6eCmKM.
Tokyo, Japan
Joined May 2008
I wrote two books:. • Ametora, a cultural history of Japanese menswear.• Status and Culture, a general theory explaining how culture works, and how social competition leads to creativity, change, and stability (+ how the internet altered the entire model)
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HBO Girls doesn't feel *that* dated until this guy shows up
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Cool new trend in Japan is to wear vintage sweatshirts from summer camps for Orthodox Jewish girls in upstate New York. Here's Camp Spatt
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The 1999 film "Go" is not great cinema, due to its obvious ersatz Tarantino quality (i.e. monologues on pop culture, interweaving stories, dry humor about death/injury). BUT it's an interesting historical relic that reveals a few major turning points in culture.
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How A Single Bad Drug Trip Led to Japanese Technopop 🧵. In the early 1970s, bassist Haruomi Hosono of the band Happy End was jamming with his friends at a Tokyo studio, when someone passed around a joint. Hosono thought it would be very cool to take a double-sized hit.
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Japanese couples out on the town in 1974, some in "pair look" (aka "twinning"). #japanesefashion
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Once upon a time, there was an incredible bar near Ueno called Once Upon a Time, housed inside of a rare Meiji-era brick warehouse. The landowner long wanted to tear it down, and he finally got his wish this year.
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Vivienne Westwood had (at least) two extremely consequential influences on Japanese fashion: . (1) Masayuki Yamazaki's shop Cream Soda (which turned Harajuku into a youth fashion neighborhood) took its core ideas from Westwood and McLaren's shop Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die
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A great joy of walking Tokyo is hunting for the remaining buildings with patinaed copper façades — dōban kenchiku (銅板建築). The style was a fad in Eastern Japan during the early Shōwa Era.
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A lot of classic Tokyo establishments have been closing, including Tōnyūsha, a Ningyōchō eatery that opened in 1889. It's one of the city's best kanban kenchiku "billboard architecture" buildings.
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Orson Welles for Nikka whiskey, 1976. "ORSON WELLES, he is really a man". "The more I drink, the better it is.". "I am satisfied now."
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AMETORA MINI-STORIES #2.Why Japanese Fashion Magazines Look Like Catalogs. One of the most distinctive features of Japanese magazines is their similarity to catalogs: lots and lots of products laid out along with prices and retailers. The origin is, oddly, the US counterculture.
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AMETORA MINI-STORIES #3 🧵.Why Japanese Teenage Delinquents are Called Yankii. In Japanese, the word used for working-class teenage delinquents is "yankii" (ヤンキー), which seems to derive from Yankee. But stereotypical yankii style doesn't look very American. so why yankii?
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Popeye doing its first Seoul city guide issue feels like a positive step in Japan-Korea relations, or at least, a sign of the ongoing hybridization of Tokyo and Seoul culture
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I've found a new vibe, and it's Misha the bear mascot at the 1980 Moscow Olympics' opening ceremony
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Fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto passed away this week. He styled David Bowie, and with Kenzo and Issey Miyake, was among the first wave of Japanese designers to break through in the West. Yamamoto also played an indirect role in the rise of Japanese Fifties-revival style.
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I'm always interested in the question "What is culture?" and here's one answer. (Translation: "Gyoza with beer is culture.")
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The downstairs bar felt like a British or New England college clubhouse, and the upstairs loft space was filled with guitars, records, and old Macintoshes. There was nothing else like it in Tokyo. Now it's gone forever.
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Paris Hilton's Art Theory Tutorial (taken from her memoir)
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First it's an ultimately *uncool* movie that captures the awkward, adrift aesthetics of post-grunge America — e.g. the Fatboy Slim big beat "electronica" soundtrack. But since raves never nestled into American pop culture, the characters feel like they're cosplaying "rave".
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Jesse Jackson '88 campaign T-shirts are the hottest shirts in Asia at the moment.
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But in looking not so dated, "Go" reveals the exact moment where culture reached a stability point that has stretched out to today. And since culture was already slowing down in 1999, when the internet was still niche, stasis can't all be technology's fault.
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Japanese art director Mitsuo Shindō, the man most responsible for the "look" of Shibuya-kei, has passed away at 75
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"Go" also shows you why The Strokes arrived in 2001 like gods: while electronica seemed to be "in," downtown NYC desired something more raw. Everyone sold their turntables for guitars. "Go" is represents the last moment where "maybe turntables are the future".
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A new updated version of Ametora will be on sale September 26. I'm going to be in NYC, Milan, Paris, and London for book talks. More details soon.
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Stylist Akio Hasegawa (who jumpstarted the big silhouette/ chino trend at Popeye 6+ years ago) has a store called andreM hoffwann in a reformed factory space in the old Kuramae warehousing district of East Tokyo. Here's the door.
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Legendary Japanese illustrator Kazuo Hozumi has passed away at the age of 94. Hozumi was the first Japanese menswear illustrator, most famous for his "Ivy Boy" cartoon character, but he had a huge range. He also was the cover model for Japanese Dandy.
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In parallel to the late 1970s Ivy revival and Preppy boom in Japanese menswear, women's fashion focused on a homegrown posh style called Hamatora (Yokohama Traditional) based on crewneck sweatshirts and clothing sold at Yokohama boutiques patronized by wealthy families.
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The abandoned luxury hotel Hachijō Oriental Resort on Hachijōjima island is one of the creepiest places I've ever visited
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Wong Kar-wai's "Days of Being Wild" still wins for the most inexplicable ending of any film: a three-minute introduction to a brand new character played by Tony Leung, with zero context, who doesn't do anything
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I agree that we have to counter the motivated parties seeking to devalue cultural invention, and a big part of that starts with rejecting the bizarre 21st century ideological commitment to worshipping openly commercial pop culture as the ultimate expression of the zeitgeist.
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Yasuhiko Kobayashi cover illustrations for the 1980s' Japanese pub Skier Magazine
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The five eras of art-versus-commerce:. 1. Avant-garde: True art can’t be commercial.2. Indie: True art shouldn’t be commercial.3. Poptimism: Art can still be good even if it’s commercial.4. Ultra-poptimism: Commercial art is the best art.5. NFT era: Commerce is art.
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Scott Wolf's jacket and Jay Mohr's hair are very, very 1999, but people today still sort of look like the people in the movie. This makes the movie not quite strange enough to be full camp/kitsch retro. The Nineties-ness of aesthetic is subtle.
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NEW BOOK ON SALE. Shōwa Guide Tokyo, a 320pp independently published hardcover catalog of the remaining Japanese establishments founded in the Shōwa Period (1926-1989): yōshoku, kissaten, cocktail bars, curry, and machichūka. Buy at
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More interestingly: There are a ton of mediocre 1960s movies (e.g., The Trip, The Wild Angels) that became cult classics because they so embody the specific Sixties vibe. But "Go" only barely represents a unique set of styles compared to today — and it's 25 years old!.
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To describe Japanese newspapers and TV as a cartel sounds like conspiracy-thinking, but obviously they're all aware that the "specific group" Abe's assassin felt animosity toward was the Unification Church. They're just coordinating to withhold that information: i.e. a cartel.
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Hot Yuppie date spots in Tokyo, 1989: . GIGER BAR . Bring your date to the Tokyo bar designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger of "Alien" fame, where "the atmosphere differs from the usual.". "Alien eggs" on the menu at ¥1200, and something called "sexual communion" for ¥1500.
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Pretty sure this Tokyo scooter store is making a reference to legendary NYC record shop Other Music?
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Announcement: I'm joining the Board of Directors of NIGO's company Otsumo (maker of HUMAN MADE and more) as an Outside Director. 🦆🐯🐻. お知らせ: NIGO様の手掛けるライフスタイルブランド「HUMAN MADE」を運営するオツモ株式会社で社外取締役に選任されました。
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On Sukajan: . This image of "Yokosuka jumpers" in the Mar '68 issue of Men's Club is maybe first time the jackets were treated as "fashion"
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I've now lived long enough to see Rage Against the Machine used as the pumped-fist hell-yeah song closer for a mergers and acquisitions scene in a TV show glorifying finance capitalism #IndustryHBO.
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Marshall McLuhan predicted newspapers' current crisis back in 1964: "The classified ads (and stock-market quotations) are the bedrock of the press. Should an alternative source of easy access to such diverse daily information be found, the press will fold.".
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The café Blue Train in Toyama, Japan is obsessed with Japanese trains. Little model trains run on a track around you as you drink Dutch coffee and eat "three-color" toast. #kissa #喫茶店
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The city emblem of Otaru, Hokkaido makes it look like they're really into Jewish baseball.
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Shōsuke Ishizu, "Take Ivy" author, son of VAN Jacket founder Kensuke Ishizu, and part of the core group who brought Ivy League fashion to Japan at Men's Club and then VAN, has passed away at 88.
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Hosono's drug-trip recovery music inspired his next three albums — Tropical Dandy, Bon Voyage Co., and Paraiso — all rooted in exotica.
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@Noahpinion @MikeySunnergren I'm writing a whole book about this so hard to summarize but: liberalism succeeded so much by the late '90s that there was less need for the detachment and defiance that powered coolness; then the alt-right stole the idea of opposition as personality.
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This essay has a compelling thesis: the internet is like music and SNL seasons, where we love the net-culture we grew up with and disparage subsequent generations' versions. But there are few other factors that made many ex-young people so vocal about "decline" this year:.
My grand unifying theory of why [some of us think] the internet sucks now
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I made a supercut of the guy rave dancing from the 808 State's "Cubik"
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Akiko Yano's album "Iroha ni konpeitou" 『いろはにこんぺいとう』from 1977 is arguably the first Japanese synth-pop record and maybe has the greatest album cover of all time
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I published my second book "Status and Culture" today from @VikingBooks. If you're interested in learning how culture works (and how status leads to its creation and transformation), please give it a read.
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Live life with the same intensity as the apologetic demeanor of illustrated avatars inside Japanese ATM cancellation screens
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AMETORA MINI-STORIES #1.The Little-Known Origin of A BATHING APE's Brand Name. In 1993, NIGO® and Jun Takahashi opened their boutique NOWHERE in the backstreets of Harajuku under the tutelage of Hiroshi Fujiwara.
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Today I learned that the Japanese name of "Caddyshack" is. "Balls Balls"
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It's September 1. That means only two more months of summer in Tokyo.
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I saw this movie on opening night and even then it felt a bit ersatz/uncool. (And I liked Doug Liman!) . "Go"'s opening credits scream 1999 to me, but I don't think this aesthetic was ever truly a major and rooted part of American youth culture.
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”Firecracker” didn't sell 4 mil copies worldwide, but in their global success, YMO influenced the Belleville Three and Michael Jackson. And back home, the frenzy around YMO caused nearly every Japanese '80s pop single to abandon live instrumentation for synthesized backtracks.
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(2) Hiroshi Fujiwara, the godfather of Harajuku street fashion, was obsessed with Westwood's Seditionaries as a teen, visited London, and hung out at Westwood's World's End shop. McLaren told him to go to NY to see hiphop and he brought the first hiphop 12"s back to Japan.
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The first recording of "Firecracker" used live instruments and didn't work. It needed electronic elements. Sakamoto programmed the song into a Roland MC-8, and the resulting technopop inspired them to record an entire album as Yellow Magic Orchestra.
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A brief history of Kazuo Hozumi's Ivy Boy illustrations:.
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To heal himself, Hosono read New Age tome "The Human Miracle: Transcendent Psychology" and listened exclusively to birdsong and other tranquil music. In particular he relied on exotica musician Martin Denny's "jungle sound" records, which he knew from post-war AM radio.
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Scenes from the lost 1980 NHK documentary "Wakai Hiroba Harajuku 24 Jikan" (若い広場「原宿24時間」) about the Takenokozoku and Roller-zoku youth tribes who danced every Sunday in Harajuku. #harajuku
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This very cool new book Crafted with Pride lists out 750 apparel and footwear brands made in the U.S.A. (extremely reminiscent of Japanese guides).
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These are generally excellent rules and this one about Japanese denim is very funny
very stoked this big, unwieldy, extremely fun @GQMagazine package on the dos and don'ts of style is finally live. huge team effort w some great guest bits from @NifMuhammad, @ilariaurbinati, and more. plz read it, debate it, learn from it, hate on it, etc
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I wrote a cultural history of American fashion in Japan called "Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style". English (2015): .日本語 (2017):
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My new book Status and Culture (on sale 8/30) synthesizes what we know about status and social behavior to explain taste, fashion, art, and other common cultural phenomenon. I thought it would be helpful to list out the classic books for understanding how culture works (1/n):
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NEW BOOK NEWS: I am writing my third book for @VikingBooks — a cultural history of the 21st century — to be published in late 2025. It will bring the narrative storytelling of Ametora together with the theory of Status and Culture to explain what happened over the last 25 years.
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Hosono asked drummer Tatsuo Hayashi and guitarist Hiroshi Sato to help record the disco cover of "Firecracker." They declined. In Feb '78 Hosono called his B-team: keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto and drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. Over onigiri, he showed them his "4 million" note.
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On walks in Tokyo, you often encounter enormous gated compounds in the middle of the city with very little explanation. Here's one in Shirokane.
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Cream Soda, the Harajuku store that kicked off Japan's Fifties boom, in 1978. Caption says they are selling imported American shirts.
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Artist Toshiko Okanoue (岡上淑子)'s surrealist collages from the 1950s
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In case you missed it, this was an incredible @amandamull story in The Atlantic about the direct effects of lighting-fast fashion cycles on creating our current joyless aesthetics in clothing.
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Westwood, punk, and hip-hop (+ Stüssy) were the foundational influences on what became the Ura-Harajuku scene. Fujiwara and his two disciples, NIGO and Jun Takahashi of Under Cover, ended up setting the template for what we call "streetwear" today.
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Further Japanification of American style: youth embracing once meaningful signifiers as fashion without any pretense of trying to root oneself in an "authentic" community (aka postmodernism). By @beccpicc.
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The joint was laced or tainted, and Hosono went into a serious panic attack. He thought he was going to die and begged his friends to call an ambulance. They told him to chill out. Hosono managed to get home the next day, but the panic attacks started again and wouldn't go away.
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OMG this is going to sound sorta crazy but the plot of George Orwell's kids book "Animal Farm" is like an eeriely perfect allegory for Soviet Communism. Let me explain:. (1/16).
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30 years ago today the son of mainstay Hollywood arranger/composer David Campbell won over America after posing like a homeless L.A. folkie weirdo who couldn't speak in complete sentences.
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1. The internet isn't just entertainment but is supposed to be useful, so the decay of many core platforms creates real efficiency losses for people used to specific ways of retrieving information online — e.g. X is harder to use now for breaking news.
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2. The internet's overall shift towards talk-to-camera short video made for openly commercial reasons has created a major *taste* rift between current users and the initial batch of net-native users. The TikTok vision of the internet has "won" this conflict. We can't go back.
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Japanese menswear, 1926, modeled by mystery writer Edogawa Ranpo (second from left). A big era for bow ties. (h/t @oldpicture1900)
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But even after Martin Denny still haunted Hosono. He wrote down a genius idea on a piece of paper: A disco arrangement of Denny's "Firecracker" that would sell 4 million copies worldwide. (The note apparently also showed a drawing of Mt. Fuji erupting.) .
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