(Coyner’s Comment:  This article hardly comes as a surprise to me.  Although I didn’t initially recognize the signs, 35 years ago while living with Tokyo families, the writing was on the wall.  And I should hasten to say a delayed parallel may well be under way here in Korea.

That is, back in the early ‘70’s, Japanese urban dogs were pitiful creatures, typically kept on one-meter ropes, tied to the vicinity of the front doors to bark at possible intruders in exchange for dinner scraps.  Most of these pathetic creatures had short life spans, but no matter, there was little physical or emotional investment made in them by their masters.

When I returned to live for a full decade in the ‘90’s, my goodness! What a difference.  Home security systems had gone electronic and most of the dogs I saw were of toy breed varieties, and oh so pampered, and so very disgustingly kawaii.

So, if you are still reading this, you may ask, what in blazes does this have to do with Japanese men’s fashions?

I’m getting to that.  The operative word is kawaii -- or “cute.”  Dogs had belatedly found their way into the Japanese cultural sweet spot of kawaii-ness.  Which meant they were pampered, particularly by girls and women – very much like Japanese mothers spoil their sons.  And that relationship, by the way, remains to be the strongest emotional relationship in Japanese families – the mother and son thing.

Now please stick with me on this:  With the shrinking size of Japanese households, pet pooches have become very much like surrogate children.  The Japanese are hardly alone, but their diminishing demographics really exaggerate this phenomenon.  In the process, Japanese girls grow up watching okaa-san smothering the family pooch with love and affection, such as mama-san once may have done had the family produced a son.

So, let’s call our Japanese girl example Emiko.  Emiko-chan grows up and takes on an interest in boys.  But what is her role model for dealing with boys while growing up at home?  Too often it seems to be the family dog – and her mother’s dotting behavior over that canine.

Emiko would very much like to go out and get her own cutesy puppy, but alas! the little creatures cost a bunch – and certainly they are much more expensive than having a boyfriend.  And, if you come to get tired of wan-wan-chan [bowser], you can’t simply dump him.  But you can do so with a boifurendo [boyfriend].

The natural evolution[?] has been for many young, single Japanese girls to go after younger and cute Japanese boys who have subconsciously – or so I assume it to be the case – become surrogate pet dogs.  And for those Japanese boys who come from a long, long tradition of being spoiled by their mothers, the case can only be worse today with fewer boys being born.  And those dudes’ relationships with women, of course, are based on their experiences with Mom.

So, as you will read below, it is hardly surprising younger Japanese guys are dating older girls and in many ways acting out their girlfriends’ expectations to be the perfect, two-legged Pekinese.

Now, if that is weird, consider what could be scary:  The Korean average number of children per household has plummeted in the past 50 years from 6 to 1.1 kids.  And more dogs appear to be in line for getting cute apparel than ending up in the soup pot.  Furthermore, whether they admit or not, Korean youngsters often ape Japanese trends.  The major mitigating factor, of course, is compulsory military service – but even that is much less compulsory than most foreigners may be aware.

 
While hardly certain, I believe in the coming decade there is a very good possibility of what you read below will be appearing in places such as Hongdae, Apkujeong, and later throughout urban Korea.  I could be all wet about all of this, of course.  But if I’m not, please try to remember that you read it first on the KER.)

TOKYO:

There was a time when slimness was the absolute prerequisite for urban Japanese women, when designers like Shinichiro Arakawa and Yohji Yamamoto professed a flat refusal to make clothes for women who weren't fragile and thin, whose chests and hips were barely discernable through the fabric.

That aesthetic went out when the health and exercise boom came in about seven years ago - the new Japanese woman, according to the fashion critic Ikuko Hirayama, is: "strong, robust, bursting with energy. She takes care of her body but is not obsessed with being thin. She's proud of her biceps and also proud of her sexuality." Accordingly, the most popular relaxation sport for single working women nowadays is "boxercising," or the combination of boxing moves plus aerobics, which is said to increase adrenaline flow by 80 percent and is an ideal way to blow off aggression and stress.

In stark contrast, it's the men who want to be slender, vulnerable and protected. Young males between the ages of 18 and 30 make up the slimmest segment of the population and the ideal fashion weight as decreed by the apparel industry is 57 kilograms, or about 125 pounds, for a height of 175 centimeters, or 5 feet 8 inches. Many men try to adhere to that figure and some claim they want to be even skinnier.

Twenty-five-year-old Junichi Shirakawa, who works at the denim boutique 45 RPM, said that his goal is to get his weight down from 57 to 55 kilograms, although his height is 182 centimeters. "Being really skinny is essential, not just for fashion and work purposes but also because girls seem to go for thin guys," he said.

Both Shirakawa and his girlfriend like the fact that she weighs more than he does, and is the leader of the couple. "She's a lot stronger than I am, can lift heavy things and go drinking until dawn. I admire that about her, and feel protected when I'm around her," he said. Older than he by five years, it was Shirakawa's girlfriend who made the approach, started the dating process and decided what course their relationship would take.

"Frankly, I think women should be in the driver's seat. Society and relationships work better that way," he said. Shirakawa likes to wear his girlfriend's clothes and often shows up for work wearing her blouse and jeans, to the general approval of his co-workers.

Hirayama said: "For young men, wearing women's clothes has almost become a status symbol - a confirmation of being slim and pretty and, therefore, desirable. Young women, on the other hand, are less interested now in looking beautiful for the benefit of young men. They dress up for themselves, for their own satisfaction."

This seeming reversal of traditional gender roles has spawned such interesting fashion items as the "unsexy miniskirt," a term coined by the TV commentator Ryuichi Fujita. All the rage this autumn is the short, short skirt combined with boots or ballet shoes - the salient feature of this look is that it shows a lot but says nothing and is consequently "apolitical and not sexy at all," according to Fujita. Indeed, it seems that Japanese women have reclaimed sexuality as their very own and now dress to enhance their self-esteem rather than to please the male gaze, which was what a big part of street fashion had been about. Now that the male gaze is focused primarily on the men themselves, the equation of short skirts and wolf whistles just doesn't work anymore.

As Hirayama said, "The term kawaii [cute] used to be something that described women, or female attributes. Now women are more likely to use that to talk about men and what they're wearing. As a result, more young men aspire to be cute."

Indeed, young men claim to want to be pursued and then nurtured - they often hate to make the first move and often shy away from conflict. "I never fight with my girlfriend because I know I'll lose," is how Shirakawa put it. "It's just a lot more comfortable for me if I go along with everything she says."

That mind-set is reflected in men's fashion and fashion design. The trend now is for men to look like they want to be fed and/or devoured by women. One of the pioneering brands for that is Lad Musician, headed by the designer Yuichi Kuroda. Lad Musician burst onto the Tokyo fashion scene in 1995 in a glam-rock/low-slung-guitar kind of way, espousing an emaciated, tragic sexiness enhanced by clinging silhouetted tops and slim, revealing pants with no pockets and very little breathing space. Lad Musician aesthetics has grown thanks to the general weight loss among young men, and the silhouettes (especially for long-sleeved T-shirts, polo shirts and sweaters) are tighter than ever before. Young men will combine these tops with baggy jeans that are suspended 8 centimeters below the navel on terrifically flat stomachs, subconsciously channeling, perhaps, the Kate Moss look of the late 1990s. Kuroda's designs are famed for being extremely selective, shunning those who weigh more than 63 kilograms or are overly muscular.

Other brands are following suit, so that men's sizes are steadily diminishing while women's clothing sizes are getting distinctly roomier. To Nigo, who directs A Bathing Ape, Tokyo's most successful and visible street brand, this makes sense: men's designer clothes should target the thin and seemingly unfit. "Designer clothes look best on men whose bodies don't do the talking, that are silent, slim, practically invisible," said Nigo, a waif-like figure with slender, girlish wrists. "Because the clothes should do all the talking, right?

"That's why men pay money for clothes, so they won't have to say anything. Otherwise, why bother?"