Footnotes to Chapter Two
Gakuran uniforms (p.23): Elite students in the 1950s, like Toshiyuki Kurosu at Keiō University, were supposed to wear their gakuran (学ラン) not just to school but for all serious occasions such as job interviews. When they got home, students would put on a few bland shirts, slacks, and sweaters to play around in, but owned nothing with any sense of style. And almost none of them owned suits.
Besides creating a sense of social order, the gakuran helped ease parents’ economic burden of buying clothes. Most families struggled to make ends meet in the early postwar, and with the gakuran, parents only needed to buy a single tailored jacket and pants when the boy reached high school. He would then wear that outfit every day until entering the workforce at 22, when he bought a suit with his first paycheck.
Danshi Senka (p. 23): Danshi Senka — meaning something like “A Special Course for Men” — started in 1950 as an occasionally-publishing spinoff of women’s fashion title Style. Where Otoko no Fukushoku (i.e. Men’s Club) was all about ready-to-wear, Danshi Senka focused on tailoring. In the 1960s, Danshi Senka drew a new line against Men’s Club by focusing on “continental” suits rather than Ivy. And then in the 1970s, the magazine rebranded as Dansen before folding in 1993.
“Cutter” shirts (p. 23): In Japanese, simple white button-up shirts worn by students (rather than businessmen) are called “cutter” (kattā). The name comes from the brand name of a sports shirt first made in 1918 by Mizuno. The company’s founder invented the name as a play on the word katta (“I won”). According to Gogen Allguide, kattā today is used more widely in Western Japan (i.e. Osaka), compared to the use of “wai-shatsu” (“white shirt”) in Eastern Japan (i.e. Tokyo).
But since the high-collar of the gakuran hid the shirt underneath, a lot of kids just threw the jacket over an undershirt. And some secretly wore their pajamas under it.
Parents bought kids clothing (p. 24): In the 1950s, parents took the responsibility of buying their children’s clothing. Teens at this point did not generally work part-time jobs, so they had no money to buy clothing of their own.
The allure of “pure wool” (p. 25): The arrested man in the “Oh mistake!” Incident thought it was very important that he bought himself “pure wool” socks. In the 1950s, the prominence of blended materials created a prestige for “pure wool” and “pure cotton” goods.
unique suit style on African-American soldiers (p. 27): Kurosu and company later realized that the suit style they saw on African-American soldiers was not so much Ivy as “Jivey Ivy” — a flashier African-American take on the Ivy jacket style.
Aivii vs. aibii (p. 27): The “v” sound is not native to Japanese, so the English term “Ivy” eventually became rooted as aibii (アイビー). That being said, there is a way of writing a “v” even if it’s difficult to pronounce it, and so as late as 1957, Ivy style was written as aivii (アイヴィー). By the 1960s, however, it was almost always written as aibii.
Setsu Nagasawa (p. 28): Besides Kensuke Ishizu, Setsu Nagasawa was one of the most important figures in the development of Japanese fashion media. An early fashion illustrator and mentor to Kazuo Hozumi, Nagasawa ran a small illustration class that eventually became the full-time fashion school Setsu Mode Seminar. (Both Keigō Oyamada [aka Cornelius] and Hiroshi Fujiwara were students in the 1980s.)
And much like Kensuke Ishizu, Nagasawa was an early advocate for Western fashion and culture. People often said he “smelled like butter” for having art look too Western. He spent the early postwar hunting for scraps of magazines discarded by G.I.s to find reference materials for his art. And he wore a golden-gray tweed suit made from materials someone bought him at PX.
Nagasawa passed away in 1999 at the age of 82.
Buying fabric in Tokyo (p. 28): Toshiyuki Kurosu bought fabric for his first button-down shirt at a store called Cotton in the Shimokitazawa neighborhood which sold leftovers of export-quality cloth.
Kurosu on shopping in Ameyoko: Kurosu often went to the Ameyoko black markets to buy American imports. He says, “We listened to American jazz, drank Coca-Cola, wore Ivy.” But none of these items came cheaply. The yen was already pegged to be staggeringly low ¥360 to the dollar, less than one-third the current value, and Ameyoko merchants would add at 10–15% premium on top of that. A pair of Raybans cost as much as a young worker’s monthly salary.
Traditional Ivy Leaguers (p. 29): Hozumi came up with the club name “Traditional Ivy Leaguers” after learning that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton students were known as “Ivy Leaguers.” One of the other members attended Setsu Nagasawa’s seminar, but the other four were just Keiō students who had only the most vague interest in fashion or Ivy. Despite the club having seven people, this was still Kurosu and Hozumi’s show. “We would lecture, and everyone else would just listen,” explains Hozumi. They worked closely with the tailor at Shakkan Tailoring to study Ivy techniques, making him the first qualified practitioner of Ivy suit making.
Once Kurosu joined VAN Jacket, the Traditional Ivy Leaguers Club went from being a small collective of tailoring nerds to a crack party squad. They threw shindigs at big hotel ballrooms, greeting their guests in their matching custom-made red Ivy blazers. They held a 1920s party at a major hotel with a real Model T on display and everyone dancing the Charleston.
Kurosu’s post-college jobs (p. 30): Kurosu wanted to become a “graphic designer,” but the profession was still in its nascency. At his Ginza tailor job, he sketched suits as part of the customer’s order. Unfortunately most everyone who came in to the shop was an old-timer and did not need to see anything drawn out.
Shōsuke Ishizu’s background (p. 31): Shōsuke grew up in Osaka but eventually came to Tokyo to attend his father’s alma mater Meiji University. After breaking his leg in a ski accident and failing to show up for a final exam, he decided to transfer to art school Kuwasawa Design.
When Kensuke became involved with Otoko no Fukushoku, Shōsuke was encouraged to do part-time work for the magazine. This eventually turned into a full-time job. He was an editor at Otoko no Fukushoku until joining VAN in 1961, although his hand could often be seen on the cover of Men’s Club in the early 1960s as the anonymous cover model.
VAN’s move to Ivy (p. 33): In 1961, VAN’s business still revolved around selling high-end garments to an older clientele. Kensuke meant Ivy to merely be an expansion into the youth market, imagining a slow and measured transition. Kurosu and Shōsuke, however, had different plans for the company. Both pestered the elder Ishizu to make VAN an exclusively Ivy brand. Kazuo Hozumi, who was always hanging around the office at the time, recalls, “At the beginning, it was us who really wanted to do Ivy — much more than Kensuke.” The VAN founder relented, especially when the Ivy League product sold well. Every time Kurosu and Shōsuke achieved a small success with the American college styles, Kensuke let them allocate more resources to the Ivy line. By 1966, the brand was 100% Ivy.
The VAN logo (p. 34): Kensuke Ishizu apparently designed the basic stencil logo himself. The phrase “for the young and young at heart” was inspired by the 1954 Frank Sinatra film Young at Heart but perhaps also an Ivy clothing ad for Big U at the time, “for the University young… the Universally young.”
Department stores hated brands (p. 34): More than just not understanding the Ivy aesthetic, department stores had no interest in promoting “clothing brands.” As Kurosu explains, “In that era, shoppers only cared about where something was bought, not what brand. Anything was fine as long as they bought it at somewhere like Mitsukoshi. So the department stores didn’t want to be selling some piece of clothing with a VAN brand label stuck on it.”
The Ivy Boy illustration (p. 36): In 1963, Hozumi was invited with a few other men’s fashion illustrators to join a group exhibition. Finding inspiration from traditional Japanese kites, he decided to make a parody of old Japanese woodblock prints that replaced a line-up of samurai with 14 different Ivy Leaguers in a range of clothing styles. Each character had a name humorously overwrought Chinese characters as if it were a samurai name— for example, 婆嶋短ずぼん (literally “Bermuda short pants).
In the original poster, there is a boy in an Indian madras jacket and a boater hat, a Princeton cheerleader in all white, a football player geared up to hit the field, and a Harvard fan in a raccoon coat and long scarf. All of the characters have identical faces — a round head, rosy red cheeks, and giant smile. Why is the Ivy boy so happy? Hozumi says, “It’s my personality. I don’t like contemporary nervous, neurotic, scary pictures. I like simple, healthy, happy characters. You can also use them for advertisements. I can draw horrible things, but I hate that sense that art has to be strange and gross.”
After the exhibition ended, Hozumi presented the work to Kensuke Ishizu as a gift. The next day Shōsuke called Hozumi and said that VAN wanted to turn it into a poster. Shōsuke stuck the VAN logo and catchphrase at the bottom and printed it up. “It felt wrong to get paid for it, so they let me go to the VAN warehouse and pick anything out I wanted. I got myself a double-breasted black blazer.” From here, Hozumi’s “Ivy boy” constantly graced VAN ads and Men’s Club pictorials, and the character would define the next 50 years of Hozumi’s career. Even in 2013, Hozumi admits, “More than half of my work is still doing that character.”
VAN sales staff (p. 38): Beyond just Teijin Men’s Shop, Ishizu encouraged his store staff to always wear the latest VAN clothing. VAN salesmen thought of their jobs as something beyond simple clerks and more like account executives. Each member of the floor staff would have a specific roster of customers to attend to, and they would also go out on the town with them off the clock to deepen the relationship.
As sales got better, however, the stores could not keep up with demand. At the Nihonbashi store businessmen would all rush in to buy the new VAN products the first half of the month, and by the second half of the month, there was essentially no stock left. Former workers at VAN have always complained throughout the years that they could never get their hands on the clothing they wanted; everything sold out too quickly.
Teijin Men’s Shop (p. 43): Teijin Men’s Shop acted as the VAN Jacket flagship in Tokyo. Part of the store’s appeal was the location in the modern and fashionable neighborhood Ginza. The other was the shop manager, Mr. Takahata, who became a fashion guru to the customers thanks to his quirky dressed-down version of business style.
Men’s Club mail order: Ishizu also quietly created a line of less expensive clothing called Men’s Club that was sold mail order out of the back of the magazine.
Ishizu’s gift of naming: Ishizu came up with many of the names for American items still in use today. Thinking “sweatshirt” was too long and carrying a negative image of sweat, he rechristened the collegiate sweatshirt a “trainer.” He sold golf jackets as “swing tops,” shearling cowboy coats as “ranch coats,” adult athletic tops as “coacher jackets,” long warm jackets worn to watch sporting events as “spectator coats,” and white cotton V-necks as “Tilden sweaters” after the tennis star Bill Tilden.
“Ivy believers in the VAN religion” (p. 37): Readers loved Men’s Club’s easy-to-understand introductions on Ivy coordination, but retailers also loved them to help them merchandise VAN goods in their stores. Kensuke Ishizu would call upon the owners of VAN stores once in a while and give them lectures on how to put the clothing together. Shōzō Izuishi told a great anecdote: “Once Ishizu went out to visit a store called Captain Tamaki in the small town of Himeji. Ishizu asked what they would eat for lunch, and Tamaki replied, ‘We must eat hamburger steaks! Ivy means hamburger steaks!’”
Men’s Club international edition (p. 38): In Fall 1963, Men’s Club relaunched as a larger-format “International Edition,” marking a formal transition into a magazine for campus fashion. This modern look and deeper coverage of Ivy enabled the magazine to leap from specialist trade journal for clothing enthusiasts and retailers to the first true fashion magazine for young men.
For almost all the issues in the mid-1960s, the cover photographer would primarily take the shots from a POV angle, so that readers could imagine themselves getting up to exciting things like typing, driving, or playing chess. (And the hand shown was mostly Shosuke Ishizu.)
Ishizu’s TPO book (p. 41): In his book “When, Where, What to Wear,” Kensuke Ishizu explained not just how to dress for work — but things such as, what to wear after being promoted to CEO. When traveling to the U.S., Ishizu warned that “If you start your business dealings in European-style tailoring or eccentric clothing, you will have already have failed. Yet , at the same time, when Americans step away from business, their clothing becomes incredibly spontaneous — no form, no affectations — they just wear whatever they please.”
Relationship between Men’s Club editors and readers: The teacher-student relationship between Men’s Club writers and their readers created a hierarchy that put the magazine people on a much higher plane than their readers. Kensuke Ishizu and his team at VAN ruled as an Ivy pantheon, bestowing wisdom from high above. They had a paternal responsibility to shape and mold readers into true Ivy Leaguers. And they did not trust readers to extrapolate from general style principles. Yoshio Sadasue echoes the sentiment of VAN employees at the time: “If you didn’t teach young people how to wear Ivy piece by piece, they would all go off into some crazy direction.” Japanese Ivy took on a conservative nature — being too creative or having too many choices somehow became anathema to proper style. Yet with the Japanese desire for propriety, the more stern that Kurosu and the Men’s Club team preached to readers, the stronger their message became. As Hozumi plaintively admitted in a Men’s Club roundtable at the time, “The Japanese are said to bow down to authority.”
Ayumi Ōhashi (p. 42): The rise of illustrator Ayumi Ōhashi shows how small the world of men’s fashion was in the 1960s. Shōsuke discovered her, and she soon started to do art for Men’s Club under her real name Kumiko Ōhashi. When Heibon Publishing was thinking about the cover of Punch, Jirō Ishikawa (later of Popeye) helped editor-in-chief Tatsuo Shimizu decide on using her on the cover. She ended up doing the next decade of Punch. She later drew the cover of Takarajima, and self-parodied herself with the Bokutachi no sedai issue (see left).
Men’s Club and music: At first, MC focused on jazz, but with the shift to American campus fashion, the magazine started to cover the folk scene as well. The famed Japanese pop group Folk Crusaders actually formed after meeting through a classified ad in Men’s Club.
Regal: VAN helped out the Japanese subsidiary of the obscure Boston shoe brand Regal sell their plain toe bluchers, wingtips, and penny loafers by marketing them along with other VAN Ivy goods. VAN started selling Regal loafers in 1963 at ¥3,800. Miyuki Tribe kids ended up wearing making them their shoes of choice. They would often buy a new pair of wingtips or penny loafers from Teijin’s Men Shop and immediately put them on to prance around Ginza. Regal is still a major shoe brand in Japan today, with its Japan Ivy roots more famous than its original American ones.
VAN staff from wealthy families: If VAN’s early customers were all privileged sons of well-to-do families, so were VAN’s employees. The top bosses Kensuke Ishizu and Teruo Ōkawa certainly fit that description, but as the brand grew, it attracted wealthy, cultured young men who did not want to spend their lives as faceless drones in normal Japanese companies. One of these such young men was Takeyoshi Hayashida, who joined in 1963. Hayashida had attended elite school Seijō Gakuen, where he was captain of the ice hockey team. He worked part time for VAN’s rival JUN during college, but a chance encounter with Ishizu secured his future fate; “Ishizu told me, since you went to Seijo Gakuen, you look great in a suit.” He became Ishizu’s personal secretary for the next 15 years and went on to see more and more people like him join the company. Hayashida recalls, “Prospective VAN employees at that time would always say, I don’t need a salary, just let me work here. They were all rich kids from good families. They just liked clothes and all the other Japanese companies were very strict. You weren’t allowed to think differently or be interested in fashion.”
Miyuki Tribe and class: Men’s Club avoided talking about class issues — the importation process mostly removed the American class issues around Ivy — but most adults saw the massing of kids in pristine outfits on the streets of Ginza as a flaunting of wealth. Kensuke Ishizu came from old money, started his career making clothes for wealthy men, and intentionally targeted the sons of wealthy families. Men’s Club told young people that Ivy was a “basic” style that everyone should wear — but few could afford it.
The social critique of Ivy then was not limited to parents’ moral panic about delinquency. Many adults regretted that Ivy would replace standard school uniforms, which conveniently hid class distinctions among youth. With everyone in gakuran, no one knew who was rich or poor. Ivy meanwhile put wealthy youth in flashy, expensive outfits that marked them off from their peers. Kensuke Ishizu never intended Ivy to become conspicuous consumption, but VAN was so expensive that only the very rich could afford it. Former VAN employee Yoshio Sadasue explains his feelings at the time, “The Miyuki-zoku kids were all spoiled rich kids. They had money, ate good food, and could buy clothing. Only rich people could go to Ginza cafés and drink tea. When the normal kid saw that, he aspired to become part of the Miyuki-zoku. These new kids who weren’t rich would save up their money to buy VAN and then be accepted into the group. Wearing VAN became a ticket to hang out with the young rich crowd.”
Ivy became [Punch]’s house style: In Ametora, I mention that Ivy became Heibon Punch’s main style but it’s actually a bit more complicated. When the editors asked Kensuke Ishizu to do a fashion column, they requested topics other than Ivy in order to differentiate from Men’s Club. But kids still obsessed over Punch’s Ivy-inflected art style as well as the June 15, 1964 article “Are you pro-VAN or pro-JUN?” Heibon rode both sides for a while, but by 1965, the editors very consciously started to focus much more on European “continental” style.
Zoku derivation (p. 43): Although “tribe” is the best translation, see my piece here on the actual roots of the word.
“Splash of Vitalis or MG5 hair liquid” (p.45): You can still buy both hair liquids today in Japan, and perhaps as a sign of the average age of the clientele, hair liquid and hair tonic are offered in almost every men’s grooming corner at onsen hot springs.
