Seeking the Real in the False - Humor and Aesthetics of Kokeshi Dolls (November 1970)

Seeking the Real in the False - Humor and Aesthetics of Kokeshi Dolls (November 1970)

In 1970, at the height of Tokyo's rapid economic growth, the city was an experimental city where fashion, art and sexual expression intersected. Among them, the cross-dresser Kokeshi stands out as the originator of the Ginza "Yanagi" style. A graduate of the Nagasawa Setsu Mode Seminar, she dressed in a see-through white suit and laughed at her own humor, wondering if Elizabeth Taylor was in the mirror, giving a real image to an imaginary one. Her appearance at the store was called "one who makes the store as lively as a group," and her presence could be called an artistic phenomenon of the city. The same year also marked a turning point in culture that shook up conventional thinking, with Yukio Mishima committing ritual suicide, the rise of Tadanori Yokoo, and the restoration of folk performing arts by Ryo Takenaka, and the aesthetic of kokeshi cannot be separated from this urban context. The kokeshi is not mere cross-dressing, but cross-dressing as an act of expression, and
its attitude of approaching the truth of the self while clad in a false skin is a testimony that resonates with the spirit of the times.