Harajuku: The Culture of Kawai
• Brian Reed Wood
Harajuku is virtually a character goods zoo. You cannot help but to participate in being a Kawai voyeur when you are part of this human current (sometimes flood) down Omote-Sando.

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The Design Feista Gallery

The stylish, trendy, and the same time gaudy burg of Harajuku is basically divided into three very distinct districts of my own taxonomy. I asked various Tokyoites what area they thought of when they heard the word "Harajuku". The area directly in front and left of the station was mentioned the most.

The main drag of this area is called Takeshita Dori (Takeshita Avenue) and personally my least favourite district. It is a purely pedestrian area with no room for cars (nor pedestrians for that matter) to manoeuvre through the throng of the same orange-tanned, 3cm long eyelash-ed youths inhabiting nearby Shibuya. Takeshita Dori is the garish, tacky side of Harajuku. The stores are not even appetizing to the eye – just gaudy and loud with their own version of what should be heard out along the street. It reminded me of the honky tonk boardwalks along the Northeast coast of the States. I told my partner I wanted to go to Harajuku (to him Takeshita Dori) to wander around. He told me to remind him to take a handful of Tylenol before entering (obviously not his favourite district either). Then I told him that I wanted to wander around the other parts of Harajuku. He felt much better.

After being pinballed down Takeshita Dori, a break of Meiji Dori appears with various shops and cafes. This major Tokyo artery is a nice limbo space to catch your breath and stretch the arms and maybe have a beer at Café Aux Bacchanales, a large, outside café wonderful for people watching. On the other side of this restful void is the second district - Harajuku St. The shops are small with imaginative exteriors even though what was sold inside was the usual fare of clothing and other goods you can find anywhere in Tokyo. The narrow side streets make it ideal for pedestrians having none of the crowds of Takeshita Dori and very little traffic. One of the monuments of this district is the Design Festa Gallery. You could not possibly miss this funky, neon kaleidoscope of a building in the cozy corners of Harajuku St. The gallery is a wonderfully quirky yet serious exhibition. The admission is free and local artists show their art work/designs for anybody who wants to look and/or buy. Design Festa Gallery is about as close as I have ever gotten to an artist commune before. It really brightened my day and gave me a break from the cuteness that permeates Harajuku.

Omote-Sando, the third and most obvious district of Harajuku, is the trendy and more up-scale quarter. It is named after the large and very busy boulevard that serves as the main artery through Harajuku. This is the most easily accessible district from the station for newcomers. In fact, when I first arrived in Japan and explored Harajuku, I thought Omote-Sando was Harajuku. Takeshita Dori and Harajuku St. are more hidden on the side streets to the left of the bustling avenue. They are like secrets that only the tried and true weekend patrons of Harajuku are let in on. Omote-Sando is home to the ever-popular brand name (a.k.a. incredibly over priced) boutiques. Names like Chanel, D’ior, and Yves St. Laurent line the street. Excitement is mounting for the fall opening of a new Louis Vuitton shop, the ubiquitous accessory of choice for many Tokyo men and women. The further down the avenue one strolls, the more expensive and exclusive the shops become. If it were not for the congestion of cars and people, this street could be a lovely walk. It is one of the very few tree-lined avenues in the city – the Champs-Elysee of Tokyo.

The culture of Harajuku is what I call Kawai culture. "Kawai" is Japanese for "cute" and Harajuku is the realm of Kawai in Tokyo and perhaps the world. The word is so omnipresent that if you were only in Tokyo for a day, you would encounter this word several hundred times from teenage and twenty-something females; the guardians of the realm of Kawai. It would seem that these gatekeepers mandate that the word be emitted in every sentence spoken by this age group. Not only incessantly repeated but with a specific shrill intonation and rhythm like this:
KAA-WAA-IIIIIII!
To me it is a war cry warning me to get the hell out of the way of some serious shoppers on their daily ceremonial buying spree.

The cultural products of Kawai come from the incredibly lucrative character goods industry. Harajuku is virtually a character goods zoo. You cannot help but to participate in being a Kawai voyeur when you are part of this human current (sometimes flood) down Omote-Sando. Once you leave the main exit of the station you are hit smack in the face with the first "exhibition" of the essence of Kawai – the giant Snoopy store. There, you can buy everything Snoopy or the rest of the Peanuts gang. If you go further down Omote-Sando, you will see everything from Hello Kitty (the absolute monarch of the realm of Kawai) to Sesame Street: from Pooh to the latest Disney animation/computerization movie with the required Kawai fortitude. Pic: Neko

A block and a half down Omote-Sando is an entire store dedicated to character goods. All five floors could possibly have every conceivable character ever made. The store is called Kiddy Land, but the majority of patrons are not kids nor their parents but young adults trying to stay in their world of cuteness; trying to forget their dull-as-dishwater working lives.

It makes the attraction of the characters more understandable when looking at the mundane working conditions Japanese have to endure daily. Many employees call themselves either office workers, office ladies (OL) or businessmen. You know that something is not quite right when people cannot even describe what they actually do at work. The culture of Kawai is a needed necessity and I dare say a positive thing in Tokyo. I must admit that I am an avid fan of her majesty Hello Kitty or affectionately Kitty-chan. I have the occasional Kitty-chan stuffed animal, notepads, pencils, pens, stickers, hand cloths, and various Kitty-chan trinkets that people give me from their McDonalds Kid’s Meals. It is rather addicting and a bit embarrassing but there is this mysterious sense of childlike comfort in being a fan of a particular character. Another character that is dear to my heart is Sesame Street’s own bumbling monster with endearing hang-ups – Grover. Unfortunately he has been eclipsed by the annoyingly cute, thus a national hero of the culture of Kawai, Elmo.

Another aspect of the culture of Kawai that Harajuku exudes is the human dimension. To me the most rewarding part of Harajuku, apart from the character goods, is the people. A random example of a real character was when I was meandering my way through Harajuku St. An elderly man, looking like what you might imagine a master of his arts in old Japan would look like; small, frail with a sage’s pointed, white beard. But unlike those stereotypes of old, this man was clad in a white wrap wearing a fishbowl on his head with live goldfish swimming inside. The entire headdress formed a peak making him a foot taller. It is people like him that make Harajuku famous and worth the repeated visits. The main human attraction is a group who calls Harajuku their capital; a twisted version of the same Kawai capital of the character goods and their worshippers. They call themselves Cos Play (short for Costume Play or Players).

From what I understand, Cos Play dress themselves up to resemble their favourite manga (Japanese comic) characters. For people who are not familiar with the panopoly of heroes and villains, like myself, the Cos Play fashion looks like a cross between Goth and Little House On The Prairie. I often see teenage girls walking down Omote-Sando wearing black, Victorian style dresses bordered with white lace. Their sometimes white, ghostly painted faces contrast and at the same time compliment the Prairie Goth garments.

I read an article last year about a Cos Play girl’s experiences on a train in full regalia. She was stared at very disapprovingly by older businessmen and sometimes even yelled at for looking so strange. She said she did Cos Play because she had to wear a school uniform everyday at school; the exact uniform that every other girl had to wear. She was starring in her own revolution by expressing her individuality. I could imagine what she thought of the businessmen’s suite. Was it strange to her because it was the same suite that all other businessmen wear to and from work? It certainly is strange to me. The unending silhouettes of dark blue or black business suites are very dull and depressing garbs indeed. Upon reading this I began to understand the Cos Play in a more complex way. I kept asking other Tokyoites about Cos Play but most of them just scoff and say they are weird and strange. That is about all they have to say about them.

Sundays in Harajuku are when the Cos Play mingle in large numbers. Many convene at the station near the entrance to Yoyogi Park. This little square is like a Cos Play museum with young heroes and heroines of animation fantasy making themselves up and posing for the many cameras and camcorders of curious onlookers.

Not all the Cos Play dress alike. Many of them are of the Goth/Little House genre, but many more are as diverse as their two dimensional counterparts. This Cos Play corner is a once a week community where they come from every direction and train line to sit on the ground, make themselves up, and talk. It is as if an improvisational theatre group was getting ready to perform, but with the performance being the getting ready.

The Cos Play world came into being about 25 years ago and seems to still be going strong. This leads me to think that it might someday become a subculture of their own, if not already. I often ask myself why they do this and why only here in Harajuku. I have not yet talked to a Cos Play, so I am just going on what I observe. The language barrier is a major reason, and I am a very shy person. I feel like I have to know someone before asking abut his/her life. I do not feel right, right now anyway, going up to someone and delving into his/her raison d’etre. I do believe there should be some sort of cultural research and learning about the Cos Play of Harajuku. Since I am going for my Ph.D. soon, maybe that researcher will be me after I get over my Grover-like hang-ups of being shy and nosey. Is Cos Play a fad or a birth of a real subculture? I don’t know, but it brings up the question of the fine line between the two. When does a fad become a subculture? Can a fad grow up to be the more respectable adult? These are interesting questions that come up from just wondering around places like Harajuku where things and ideas are just free to be.

Brian Reed Wood
Tokyo, Japan
31 March 2002

email: woodkoiwa@hotmail.com

Shibuya No Techno
... if I try to understand everything about Shibuya, then I would not be really experiencing something that, by nature, defies understanding.
• Brian R Wood in Tokyo

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