[Post by Lelangir]

So you read it – there is an implicit cultural emulation within the inundation of Western fashion in Japan. To the Black-Face (Ganguro), Western fashion serves as a counter hegemony against the traditional and conservative past Japanese masculine ideology that has been imposed upon women. While the past is usually associated with national identity, these new trends also serve to reconstitute the national imagination – there is a dialectical relationship between the economic base (people) and the ideological structure.

Pretty interesting.