At the meeting point of the painfully fashionable Omotesando street and the city-looping Yamanote train line, triangulated between Harajuku`s ultra-hip boutique fashion zone Takeshita street, the soaring lines of Kenzo Tange`s 1964 Olympic Gymnasium, and the giant red tori gate at the entrance to the 88 year old Meiji Jingu shrine, you`ll find the Harajuku cosplayers.
`Cosplay` is a Japanese popularization of a common concept: costume play. In other cultures such dressing-up has traditionally been reserved for Halloween parties, college toga parties, and masque balls. In Japan, cosplay is perennial- on the bridge outside Meiji Jingu they can be found ever Sunday come rain or shine.
Cosplay fashion has evolved over the past 10 years or so: when I first arrived in Japan over 5 years ago, `gyaru` or `yomamba` fashion was still popular- a range of bizarre and fetishized takes on a blank canvas of an ultra-dark tan, bleached hair, and intense black and white face-paint, as popularized by J-pop idol Namie Amuro in the 90`s. This style evolved through chic, gothic lolita, hawaiian, and many other permutations. Some of them looked elaborately beautiful, like the voodoo `Calypso` from Pirates of the Caribbean, while others were just the opposite, bordering on the disturbing.
Now gyaru (`girl`) fashion has morphed and been absorbed by the cosplayers, aficionados who dress up in the raiment of their favorite manga or anime character, with a fair mix of nose-bandaged mummies, goth loli`s, and hold-over vampiric gyarus.
On web pages and in common concensus, these creative dressers are often derided as ugly, pathetic, sad, or just plain ridiculous, dubbed victims of a Japanese kind of group-think and inability to individualize- such that their efforts to stand out and be different see them only taking on well-established and much-aped personas. Their colored contact lenses, lines of blood, studs, gems, and other bizarre accoutrements are judged and dismissed as only contrivances, as other ways to conform, as impediments to `true beauty`.
I don`t hold with those beliefs though. I look at how the cosplayers express themselves, how they creatively re-interpret their chosen mold, how they display themselves at once as their self and as their art, and I think- wow: that’s art, that’s empowered, and more often than not that’s downright beautiful.
I’m a sucker for this kind of contact lens- they really draw me in.
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Beautiful eyes- before donning cosplay gear.
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War-paint.
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Young Goth-Lolita waiting for something.
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Lolita.
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Awesome dude who posed for me.
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Glamorous gyaru, very soft image
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One of a noisy gang of red bunnies.
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Japanese/California vampire.
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Awesome mummy.
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Clean jazz style.
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Goth- the only person there to be showing a little skin (midriff)- she must’ve been freezing.
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Eyes, again.
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Ubiquitous nose-bandage, I don’t know what the meaning of this is, probably an anime character.
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Cheery panda girl, asking for her photo to be taken. That seems to be the natural outgrowth of the hobby- dress up, then get shots of yourself with the other cosplayers. Thus- some hobbyists pose for tourist’s cameras, while others turn their backs or hide their faces.
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Hiding.
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Contemplative.
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Makes me think of Final Fantasy.
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The emcee.
As you may imagine, I did a fair bit of cropping on these photos. I’ve never really tried that before, but with some advice from other photographer friends I’m beginning to see the value- especially in a crowded place like Harajuku where you can’t control either the background or foreground. Very few of these cosplayers were posing for me, and there was a constant stream of people moving all around. I felt like a sniper- which was pretty cool.
TOKYO
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