Momus is in Japan now.

Momus is in Japan right now, which means that there’s a lot of good Japan-related writing on his website. He wrote a really fascinating article on Tokyo's Parco / Saison culture where I just learned a lot about who owns the big companies and chain stores in Shibuya. I think Momus is a gorgeous writer, so I’m just going to include a part of the article for you so that you’ll just go read it instead of reading me trying to tell you about what he wrote.

“I didn't know it at the time, but my first Japan visit was circumscribed almost entirely by a world conceived and invented by one man, Seiji Tsutsumi. A novelist, award-winning poet, and one-time member of the Japanese communist party, the young Seiji inherited the department store business from his father. Yasujiro Tsutsumi founded the Seibu empire in 1912. Typically for Japan, it consisted of a department store (Seibu) and a railway line to bring people to it (the Seibu line). Seiji's half-brother Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a much tougher cookie, inherited ten times as much as Seiji did when the old man died in 1964, and by 1990 Yoshiaki was estimated by Forbes magazine to be the richest man in the world, thanks to property and transport holdings in bubble-era Tokyo. But Seiji was the artistic one. He retired in 1991, but the Japan I first encountered bore his mark the way quattrocento Florence bore the imprint of the renaissance princes.”

Here’s another piece Momus wrote about Tokyo street fashion and street fashion in general, where he remarks that:

a) most street fashion from Tokyo is shot within cat-swinging radius of Cat Street, and

b) clever retailers dress their staff up and send them out to get photographed as a kind of free advertising, and

c) all you need to do to find a street fashion photographer is go to the corner of Meiji Dori and Omote Sando.

This is basically true. The only times I’ve ever been photographed by street fashion photographers in Tokyo were on Omotesando near Cat street. In Osaka, Orange Street (Minami Horie) during the day (near APC) is where all the photographers are. That’s where I got photographed for Soup and Nonno. It’s funny. Some people dress up and go to these places specifically to get photographed. I know one guy in Tokyo who does it almost every weekend.

Momus also writes about a children’s street fashion blog, Milk Magazine's Look De Rue. I actually love this blog. These kids are walking around Paris far better dressed than 99% of adults. His comments make me laugh:

“When it comes to expressing their individuality through clothes, children are quite possibly the least creative, least empowered consumer group known to man. How the hell can you use clothes to "say who you are" when you've just been born, have a different shape of body from month to month, don't make your own purchasing decisions, aren't considered legally or financially responsible in any way, and basically trail alongside your parents wearing whatever they pull over your head? Childhood is certainly a problematical area for cherished Western notions of individuality.”