Friends:

The Kansai Modern Japan Group is pleased to host a talk by Michael Furmanovsky (Ryukoku University), entitled,

“Pop Culture and the Europeanization of Japanese Women’s Fashion, 1955-1965."

Popular culture had a major influence on the development of mainstream women’s fashion in the Showa 30s (1955-65). During these years, significant elements among the ranks of urbanized upper middle-class women, like their male counterparts, looked to Europe, and especially Paris and London, as the source of all that was modern and sophisticated. This presentation describes how pre-war European cultural preferences and post-war American popular-culture influences combined with domestic economic and socio-cultural movements during the late 1950s to shape the fashion styles adopted by middle-class Japanese women of the1960s.
Analyzing 1950s Western and Japanese films, fashion magazines, dress-making schools and, mass media images of early-1960s female pop icons managed by the all-powerful Watanabe production company, this presentation provides insight into the aspirational, female-driven consumer boom of the the post-occupation decade, which allowed Japan’s fashion industry to emerge from American cultural domination and develop a European-focused fashion sensibility that would contribute to its emergence as a world-wide style-maker.

Presenter Bio: Michael Furmanovsky is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Intercultural Communication at Ryukoku University. His published work includes articles on the postwar history of Japanese popular music, especially country, rokabiri and Group Sounds.
He is currently studying the impact of movies and popular music on the formation of urban women’s fashion and identity from 1950 to 1965.

Date: Friday, May 25, 2012
Time: 6:30-8:00PM, followed by the usual conviviality at a nearby izakaya.
Venue: Takatsuki Shimin Kaikan (Takatsuki Gendai Gekijyo), Room 403.

http://www.city.takatsuki.osaka.jp/bunka/theater/access
/index.html

The Takatsuki Shimin Kaikan is located a short walk from Hankyu Takatsuki Station (take Exit #7), 20 minutes by express train from either Hankyu Umeda or Shijyou Kawaramachi.
It is said to take 12 minutes to get there on foot from JR Takatsuki Station.

Questions? Contact: Scott North
north@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp