Sometime in July
It’s a particularly busy month as three books I've been involved in are published around the same time. Following the "Daichi wo mamoru techo (The fruits of the Earth )" that I introduced here last time, there are two publications I would file under "lifestyle".
The first one, "Hatake no aru seikatsu" (Asahi Press, 1,200 yen), is the first book by Ito Shiho, who runs the "Yasai-gurashi" online shop selling products from selected organic farmers. Organic farming is a hot topic among young people these days, and now that restaurants and supermarkets have come to treat producers' names like famous food brands, the number of farmers who offer their product via the Internet and deliver directly to the customer is rapidly increasing. The author introduces these next-generation peasants, and portrays the modern, self-supporting style of eco farm life from its most attractive side. The book also includes a guide for aspiring young farmers. As more and more young people seem to be attracted to a "life in the fields", as the book’s title loosely translates, it’s a very timely publication that illustrates well the combination of innovative eating habits and a new kind of lifestyle.
The other book is "Yoga kara hajimaru" (Asahi Press, 1,200 yen) by Ken Harakuma, Japan’s leading yoga master. It portrays at once the eventful life of the head of the International Yoga Center in Ogikubo, who has so far trained more than one thousand yoga instructors, and introduces the unique yoga philosophy the master developed during his own training. According to the program "Yoga is not a matter of training, it’s a lifestyle," the book is not designed as a guide to physical exercise, but it aims to communicate the idea of yoga. In other words, after reading it you're more likely to have a flexible mind than a pliant body. The illustration of basic yoga poses (each with explanation) are by 100% orange, who previously worked on Shincho Bunko’s popular "Yonda? " campaign among others.
Up to now, people have been introducing me as an editor involved with culture-related publications, and that’s how I'm seeing myself, but I'm working a lot recently on books like these that deal in one way or another with lifestyle, and that’s where I'm seeing the future of myself as an editor. Not that there is no future for culture of course, but while working on these two books, I've come to believe that it’s such issues directly related to the human body and food where a new kind of lifestyle culture emerges from. It’s been only a week since they went on sale, and I must say that both are selling exceptionally well. They're already printing new copies of Harakuma’s yoga book.
Later in July
We're doing a Nozomi Ishiguro special for the H.P. France website I'm working on as a director. For the article, we gathered Ishiguro himself and a bunch of his most enthusiastic fans in the "Destination Tokyo", a shop in Shinjuku’s Lumine department store that sells the most Ishiguro items in Japan, and took a series of "Ishiguromania" sort of photos.
We asked Shito Rei, a former editor/photographer for "Street", "Fruits" and "Tune" magazines who just embarked on a career as a freelancer, to do both the photo shooting and the interview with Ishiguro. Shito has gained some popularity as a fashion model recently as well, and as chance would have it, she appeared in Ishiguro’s first ever runway show.
For the pictures we asked Ishiguro and his "followers" to parade through the streets of Shinjuku, sporting items from Ishiguro’s newest fall/winter collection. Shito captured the scenery with nifty footwork. Nevertheless, wearing winter clothes under the blazing summer sun must have been pure hell (Being the one who gave instructions, I can only imagine how the models must have felt under their fur coats…) But they all seemed to have a lot of fun, and their collective sweat was for me a proof that I was working with some genuine fashion chumps.
Several days later we recorded the conversation between Ishiguro and Shito at Macchinesti Coffee in Daikanyama. "Clothes alone don't interest me." "Presenting only dresses is boring." "But I think these are proper clothes, even if they seem rather punkish!" "Because there’s absolutely no unnecessary ornamentation." Not exactly fluently but eloquently, he explains the peculiar Ishiguro aesthetic. "I'm making clothes for the people of Tokyo" he further claims, but there aren't that many people here that these energetic garments really look good on. I guess Ishiguro is kind of testing the seriousness of Tokyo’s fashion chumps…