Fads and fashions are not, of course, exclusively Japanese. Still, the unself-conscious abandon with which fads and fashions are adopted in Japan assures that they are forever in one's face and that one is, therefore, compelled to respond to them. In Donald Richie's "The Image Factory: Fads & Fashions in Japan," we have the pleasure of seeing how the best writer on things Japanese offers his response. By no means does he serve up the typical curmudgeonly dudgeon of everything was better in the old days and the kids today are no darned good, etc.
This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Richie's work. He has always been less interested in judging what he is examining and drawing moral lessons from it than in simply seeing it. What he looks at are, to be sure, the same things the rest of us are looking at -- keitai denwa (mobile phones), the Hello Kitty character, pachinko, manga, and so on -- but the startling clarity of his vision and analyses reminds us that the ability to see the world around us, undistorted by facile judgments and parochial moralities, is neither easily done nor commonly attempted.
Richie notices, for example -- and this will be a revelation to many -- that far from being unique, Japan is a piece of the rest of the developed world. Differences that exist are not of kind but of degree. He explains throughout "The Image Factory," for example, that Japanese youth throw themselves into fads and fashions not in an effort to define themselves as individuals, but rather to define themselves as members of a group of similar individuals. "How different is this from other countries?" Richie asks. "Not much, but one difference is that no one [in Japan] denies the fact, unlike in such purportedly individualistic nations as the USA, where such denial is routine." Thus even as one may be bemused, befuddled, or, yes, irritated by this or that fad, one always respects the lack of pretense with which these crazes are embraced in Japan.