Self-Expression Via Clothing Fashion on Social Media: Focus on Japanese Youth Culture

      This presentation examines platforms for self-expression via clothing fashion, using quantitative data from a 2014 survey conducted by the Japan Youth Study Group. In Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, just as Jean Baudrillard(1970) pointed out, fashion was closely related to the urban, consumer landscapes. A variety of fashion items was used in producing and displaying one’s image, while the individuals interacted with countless, nameless others even in the midst of their self-productions, thereby increasing their affinity for the urban space that functioned as the site for seeing and being seen. The city works as a stage for extending the displays of one’s own production. Yet as Japan entered the 2000s, the urban setting shed its role as stage(kitada 2002), and consumption that was once an urban experience no longer served as the space for fervently projecting one’s identity.

      My analysis results have not been able to confirm any correlation between self-expression through fashion and urban experiences and consumption spaces. This report examines whether, within contemporary Japanese youth culture, social media now serves as a stage for self-expression through fashion.