Film and Fashion in Japan, 1923-39: Consuming the 'West'

by Lois Barnett

Overview

The book examines the interaction between the audience member and Japan's film and fashion industries between 1923 and 1939, focusing on Western-inspired fashion objects (as opposed to indigenous Japanese items, such as the kimono). This interdisciplinary book examines the semiotics of dress onscreen within Japan’s transcultural media climate, consulting not only film- or fashion-related theoretical bases but also historical and gender-based approaches. The work consults surviving films, print media and advertising materials, allowing insights into lost films and the period's commercial context.

The book discusses the role of fashion consumption in defining emergent modern identities and their relationships with new spaces, questioning their arising in Japan and worldwide. Key areas include the expressive Modern Girl image (the Japanese equivalent of the Hollywood flapper); the relationship between the body and sportswear and hybridised dress styles (which combined Japanese and Western-influenced aesthetics); and menswear in the early work of director Ozu Yasujirō.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474497718
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2025
Series:	Film and Fashions
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Lois J. E. Barnett is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Defining, Theorising and Approaching Japanese Film, Fashion and Modernity

Part 1 - On Sartoriality and Speaking: ‘Expressive’ Women and Western Attire

1.1 - Fashionable female imagery between media formats: Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Naomi (1924) and the concept of marketable female star "types"

1.2 - Sartoriality and Expressivity Pre- and Post- Sound: The Vernacular Voice, The Western-Attired Woman and the City

1.3 - Fashion Commodities Onscreen:the Modern Housewife in Naruse Mikio’s No Blood Relation (Nasanu Naka, 1932) and Masculine Female Attire in Ozu Yasujirō’s Dragnet Girl (Hijōsen no onna, 1933)

Part 2 - Sportswear and Hybridity: The National Body and Gender

2.1 - Sportswear and Hybridity: The Middle-Class Housewife as Hybridised Consumer Archetype

2.2 - Women and the Sporting Body

2.3 - Men and the Sporting Body

Part 3 - Menswear and the Modern Boy: Ozu Yasujirō and Western Style for Men

3.1 - Historically Contextualising Japanese Male Fashion: Western-style Menswear, the Cinema and Space

3.2 - Opposition to Western-style Menswear and the Desire for "Authentic" Japanese Male Commercial Identity Archetypes:Shōchiku’s shōshimin eiga and Ozu’s commercially augmented everyday male life onscreen

3.3 – Was Ozu a "Modern Boy"? Negotiating Related Sartorial Archetypes

Book Conclusion

Reference List

Filmography

Editorial Reviews

This book is a fascinating examination of the market condition for Japanese cinema in a major period of transition. Through detailed historical research it pays attention to the intersection of the film and fashion industries to excavate a vital story of changing sartorial styles and their cultural and social meanings.

Julian Stringer