MORE THAN THIS

Influential fashion director Gene Krell relocated to Tokyo to help launch Vogue and GQ Japan.

Ihave been living with my wife Naoko in Japan for well over two decades and had visited for as many as five. I can say with all candour that in all that time Japan’s secrets have never truly been revealed to me. Its mystery and its enigma remain, with each day bringing new challenges and discoveries.

Japan keeps one both dazzled and fascinated yet never fully supplies the answers, because that would be asking far too much. It is without question that for many people since the late 1970s, their introduction to Japan was through fashion – no more, no less. Fashion from Issey Miyake, who is retired but his house remains vital, to Comme des Garçons, to Yohji Yamamoto and later Junya Watanabe.

The fatal mistake is to regard these creators as being “Japanese designers”, as opposed to designers who are Japanese. It plays to a misguided cliche of an approach that is considered shared because of their background. Yet it is only a simple common thread that binds them together. Painting with such a wide brush can only lead to a further manifestation or perpetuation of a stereotype – and who among us likes to be reduced to a stereotype? In short, there is no such as “the Japanese designer”.

An outsider must remain engaged with this country, consistently testing new muscles. Perhaps that is a fundamental part of Japan’s attraction: the fact that one is completely estranged and completely divorced from all that is familiar. It is a universe like no other, which is its virtue. Being in Japan brings into question your role here and thus, in a grander sense, your role in this world. It’s a journey into the unknown, the unrealised. The sensibility and the approach to even the most common daily routine must be learnt and respected. It is schooling of the highest order, where one’s greatest flaw would be to challenge the teacher – for their word is law and it’s not for us mortals to always make sense of or to determine what is wrong and what is right. The objective, I imagine, is on a higher level – to maintain the order of things. Those are the rules in this most orderly of societies.

While one might consider this approach as a collective mentality, one can be offered a great deal of latitude simply because the culture is so vast, and as a result it is a deep well to draw from. The calmness of Zen in Japan’s particular version of heavy metal is all part of the diversity; a dynamic that is both traditional and modern Japan.

So to what extent does the culture play into the formulation of design? The high regard for the artisan has helped to define the Japanese, where even tea has a master. It does cultivate a certain attitude that we find in so many corners of the culture, where the esoteric is the focus. It is a character trait that should be celebrated, not denied. The images are powerful and direct, a way to distil what has helped to shape the designer’s unique views, opinions and visions.

Like any creator, designers borrow influences and inspiration and they all see the world in a very particular way, which is evident and displays their diversity. [For example] Junya Watanabe’s punk rockers and African collections, and ‘Broken Bride’ by Rei Kawakubo, who more recently deals with stunning structure and form. We all travel to places that affect us in some way in an attempt to formulate our work and broaden its narrative; where the practical realities are not the motivating factors.

In this respect we must recognise the true commonality of Watanabe, Miyake, Kawakubo, Yamamoto and Undercover’s Jun Takahashi: all possess enormous talent and resolve with their own brand of idealism. This to me not a question of national identity but one of determination and perseverance, an idea that connects all honest forms of art and creation.

This is Japan, my home. It is a country of wonder, surprise and contradiction; a country that often finds me scratching my head. Rather than something I have learnt to live with, it is something I have come to welcome.