They gather in Tokyo's Shibuya district—teenage girls
with unnaturally dark tans, hair streaked with gray, cell phones
dangling like charms from chains, schoolgirl uniforms shortened up
to there. Or they're wearing Hawaiian prints and cork wedgies,
hair bleached blonde. Or next week—well, that's too far
away to guess what the world's trendiest teens will be
donning.
But why should you care? Because not only do these harbingers of
hip affect trends in their native Tokyo, but their last-minute
decisions on the next "kawaii" thing (think obnoxiously
cute) often show up here. Take a look at many of the trends from
the past 10 years, and you'll see "Made in Japan"
stamped underneath—Tamagotchi, Pokémon, Hello Kitty,
photo sticker machines, sushi and sake, Zen-inspired
décor.
"[Japanese consumers] seem to be more fickle [than
Americans] and have an incredibly short attention span when it
comes to consumer products, thus creating constant pressure on
companies to come up with a 'new' product-any
product," says Ken Matsuno, a marketing professor and the
regional director of the Asia Institute at Babson College in
Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Content Continues Below
Matsuno says the ubiquitous adolescent girls are the ones to
watch. Sarah
Lonsdale, author of Japanese Design (Carlton Books), noticed
that was the case with the recent popularity of NTT DoCoMo's
i-mode, a wireless Internet-enabled phone that has 26 million
Japanese subscribers. "These girls wore the phones around
their necks. They were more like accessories, and that really
helped fuel the development of Internet telephones."
Teen girls aren't the only ones making trends. Foot-stomping
video game Dance Dance Revolution is turning out scores of
adolescent boys with happy feet. And the Japanese have long aired
reality TV, points out Mark
Schilling, author of The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture
(Weatherhill). The gaman taikai (endurance contests)
don't seem so strange now that people regularly eat live bugs
in prime time. And all Japanese generations enjoy anime and manga
(animation and comics), which have steadily gained popularity here,
due to Princess Mononoke, Pokémon and Cartoon
Network's Toonami animation block.
"I felt good content—meaning great story and
characters—would work in any industrialized nation,"
says Gen Fukunaga, 40, who co-founded Funimation Productions Ltd., the
North American master licensee of Dragon Ball and Dragon
Ball Z, two Japanese hits currently shown on the Cartoon
Network. Fukunaga first viewed anime while living in Japan in
eighth grade and always wondered why such good content wasn't
being shown in the United States. In 1994, he asked his uncle, who
works at a major Tokyo studio, exactly that, and soon found himself
in business with wife Cindy and one of his angel investors, Daniel
Cocanougher. Since then, he's gained the licenses to several
other properties and has built a $35 million business.
"For Americans, the appeal of Japanese comics, animation
and toys—often all part of the same marketing
machine—comes from a creative freedom harder to find in U.S.
products," says Schilling. "Japanese animation can be
sexy and violent in ways that are taboo in the U.S. Or it can be
wildly imaginative in ways that American adults, raised on blander
fare, consider off-puttingly bizarre, but that American kids, with
fewer cultural blinders, find fresh and exciting."
But don't think U.S. adults are the only fuddy-duddies.
There are reasons tech trends start with Japanese youth.
"Japanese [adults] are generally more risk-averse and [want
to] understand technology first," says Fukunaga, "hardly
a qualifying attribute to be an innovating consumer
segment."
For risk-taking entrepreneurs, Japanese hits are ripe for the
picking. "Many large American corporations tend to shy away
from those new and trendy Japanese consumer products," says
Matsuno. "In many cases, Japanese companies had [to] bring
products here themselves due to the lack of interest among
potential U.S. partners of a large scale."
Like Japanese youth who grasp a product's worth before their
parents even realize it exists, you have an obvious advantage over
big corporations. Look at Fukunaga: He jumped on a property that,
while enormous in Japan, was nonexistent here, likely because
companies were loath to license an animated hit so unlike American
cartoons. Open your own eyes—and mind—and you, too, may
find the next big (Japanese) thing.