January 28th, 2008 12:49 PM
By JOHN JAY
This week’s guest blogger is John Jay, the Executive Creative Director and Partner of the Wieden + Kennedy advertising agency which includes Nike among its clients. Now based in Portland, Ore., Jay works in Asia once a month. In addition to helping to open W+K’s Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and New Delhi offices, he also founded W+K Tokyo Lab (an independent DVD music label) and Studio J, a private creative consultancy in Portland’s Chinatown. Jay writes a blog for Honeyee.com in Tokyo and is a contributor to magazines in Tokyo and the U.S. on creativity and pop culture, including Tokion Japan, Giant Robot, Theme and Spread magazine. This week, Jay will be posting from Tokyo on the commodification of Japanese youth culture.
By JOHN JAY
This week’s guest blogger is John Jay, the Executive Creative Director and Partner of the Wieden + Kennedy advertising agency which includes Nike among its clients. Now based in Portland, Ore., Jay works in Asia once a month. In addition to helping to open W+K’s Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and New Delhi offices, he also founded W+K Tokyo Lab (an independent DVD music label) and Studio J, a private creative consultancy in Portland’s Chinatown. Jay writes a blog for Honeyee.com in Tokyo and is a contributor to magazines in Tokyo and the U.S. on creativity and pop culture, including Tokion Japan, Giant Robot, Theme and Spread magazine. This week, Jay will be posting from Tokyo on the commodification of Japanese youth culture.
Tokyo is in global demand. The city’s pop culture continues to stimulate the outside world, its influence played out in everything from urban hipster wear to the suburban sprawling of Cosplay, and this has led to a previously unthinkable reversal of roles: the West is now in the role of copier.
While undeniable, this cultural transfer raises some interesting questions. Why does Tokyo, and by extension Japan, have such a hold on our imagination? Will the Tokyo creative bubble mimic the economic downturn of the early 1990s and burst? Has the insatiable appetite for what’s next sapped the best ideas out of Tokyo’s creative class?
The Internet has certainly diminished the time lag between subcultures and their global massification into consumable bite-sized trends. Surely, even Tokyo can’t keep it up forever.
Or can it? From 1998, this was my home for six exciting years. Now I return to Asia and Tokyo almost every month and as I watch the amazing transformation, I am reminded just how unique Tokyo is. It’s also impossible not to notice the effects of globalization: the new Admiral Perry has arrived in Tokyo Bay, but this time the resistance will be more formidable.
In the coming week, I will be sharing my thoughts fresh from the streets of Tokyo, as well as the ideas of some of the city’s new sources of creativity. I hope that you will find these musings to be of interest and that you will leave comments with your opinions. In the meantime, however, a little background:
As I mentioned earlier, I lived in Tokyo for six years, having opened the Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo office in 1998. (I worked on many clients but I guess I am most associated with Nike.) But my love affair with this city began in my previous career as Creative Director at Bloomingdale’s in the mid-80s, the time of Japan’s intellectual fashion conquering of Paris and then the world. It was a different retail climate and Bloomingdale’s, under the direction of Marvin S. Traub, was a post-graduate school for cultural authenticity, routinely sending its buyers and marketers around the world to bring back inspiration from other societies. For instance, one of my most rewarding assignments was to mount an exhibition of contemporary Tokyo design and creativity in the Manhattan store.
Ridley Scott’s still-relevant “Blade Runner” captured the techno-beat and look of ancient modernism and Tokyo was permanently etched in our minds. We naively believed that the bubble of exuberance and money was going to be eternal. How wrong we were.
But the implosion of the economy that followed cleared the way for a new generation of influencers who shunned the business card uniformity of Japan Inc. and instead proudly wore the badge of independence. As true outsiders successful on their own terms, they did what was considered previously impossible.
Now, the world is ready for the next injection of freshness and again looking to Tokyo as the anti-body for a viral malaise born of 24/7 marketing and hype. Our world cities have been affected by the consolidation caused by mergers and acquisitions under the guise of efficiency. We are in need for a haven from such productivity and just maybe the island mentality of Japan is where we need to go.
So this is the third chapter in my relationship with Tokyo. As an observer and hopefully contributor to the city’s business and culture, I return each time in awe. Wieden + Kennedy’s 25-year relationship with Nike has offered me a vital creative life here (the Nike Tokyo lab we created is an unrivaled incubator of new ideas). I have been encouraged to overlook the runways of the elite for inspiration, and was instead given the gift of global youth. My responsibilities continue to be a sociologist’s dream, a constant challenge to keep up with the rapid changes created by a youth culture empowered by the reach of technology, the bravado of hip hop and the angst of punk.
I LAND AT TOKYO’S NARITA AIRPORT from Portland on Saturday and check into the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Japan’s newest consumer temple, Tokyo Midtown, a tower of shops and restaurants that also houses the Suntory Museum, and the 21-21 Museum by creative greats Tadao Ando, Issey Miyake and Naoto Fukasawa. I am here this time specifically to do final research for an upcoming creative immersion trip for a client.
I spend the first night in Tokyo’s latest creative refuge, Le Baron, a club and private karaoke speakeasy beneath a dark alley of Aoyama with interiors by Marc Newson, a celebrated member of design aristocracy who began his career in Tokyo after leaving his native shores of Australia.
One of the guest DJ’s for the evening, Fraser Cooke, had been sitting on my office sofa in Portland less than 24 hours earlier. Cooke is a multi-tasking talent from London who is now working in Nike’s Tokyo Design Studio in the emerging neighborhood of Nakameguro. His knowledge of music is inspirational and his long-standing contributions to the London club scene have earned him a unique place as a creator, merchandiser and opinion leader of street style.
The night at Le Baron was one for reunions. Editors, stylists, producers and designers who are a part of a global creative clan, old and new, friends gathered around our tables. All through the evening, the conversation danced around creativity and what was influencing us. It was the start of yet another week in what I would still describe as the world’s most influential city. Being in this cultural vortex is a privilege some would call a job. But or me, work, play and learning is all wrapped up in a constant search for inspiration, which I can share with my friends and clients who in truth are more like creative partners — and, this week, with you. Read More......
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