Youth Culture
Youth culture: Youth culture is very much about rebelling most times against their parents.
- Through the years since the youth culture movement all began there has always been one consistent factor and that is that each generation copied the one before it. Adopting the previous movements characteristics and goals. One of which was rebelling against their parents.
- The current generation however, my generation is the first in its history to adopt different wants. As we have grown up in a technology driven world, where from a young age for the first time we worked on computers spoke on mobile phones and had all of these factors that potentially could make our lives better and more knowledgeable about the changes ahead. We can find anything out that we want to in a split second using a search engine opposed to learning it, by reading books or word of mouth. This means as a generation we strive for more we want to better ourselves, so we do go out and get a better education and get the job we want and we work for, with more technology became more jobs, newer and of the age jobs. As a generation we also have a lot more money than previous generations, more than any infact. We have more disposable income than any before us. This is another factor that plays into us wanting more for ourselves because we strive for better we expect better also.
Japan's Youth Culture
- Unlike the more westernised countries, the Japanese youth culture didn't come around until later most real youth movements came around in the 40's-50's, and since has been described as a phenomenon. Affecting lots of the Japanese fashion capital.
- There are a lot of style varieties in the Japanese youth movement and they all come under a wide variety of names. However many stem from anime and music references.
- A youth movement is more often than not referred to as tribes due to their similarities. Certain groups in the youth movement all have a certain look, dressing the same, acting the same and they all tend to have specific music they will listen to. kind of like mods would listen to northern soul, grunge kids would listen to grunge music and teenage girls will listen to pop and boy bands.
- Japan's youth movement are seen as cute and are quite often celebrated for experimenting and being open in who they are.
Different Japanese subcultures:
In the Japanese youth movement there isn't just one specific look their movement splits of into many different subcultures i have listed the main ones below.
- Decora
- Kawaii
- Lolita
- Goth Lolita
- Aristocrat Lolita
- Ganguro/Yamonba
- Cyber Punk
- Visual Kei
- Oshare Kei
- Cosplay
- Shironuri
Harajuku
- Known as the youth movements fashion capital in Japan. This is a city in which you can see in person thousands of people dressed in the different types of subcultures listed above.
- Every year in this fashion capital there is a fashion walk. This is where everyone dresses to impress and walk the streets of the city showcasing their looks.
- As well as just looking the part a lot if not all of the subcultures use religiously various hand movements and sounds to make them look more cute etc just adding to their characters.
Musics influence in the youth movement
The Kei system:
- There are a lot of bands trying to make it into the mainstream limelight, which would make you believe that there are a lot of bands that are struggling to make it, getting paid next to nothing. Despite this assumption less known bands can still sell millions of records through the Asian market.
- One of the most popular styles of music is 'alternative visual kei'
Gender ambiguous
In music videos to the most popular bands around it is often very hard to identify the gender of the band members, Japan is recognised for being very gender ambiguous. The country does tend to be very accepting of this and also to everybodies own individuality be that with partners, clothes, hair. Anything goes.
A saying that fits this way of life is the quote that follows: "Not male, not female, but perfection."
