Negotiating Gendered Identities Through Dress: Kimono at the Coming-of-age Day in Contemporary Japan

This thesis is a study of kimono in contemporary Japan. It builds on and extends the literature on kimono by evaluating the garment’s role at the coming-of-age day. The coming-of-age day is a significant celebration aiming to inspire young women and men to become ‘good and upright adult citizen[s]‘ (Hendry 1981: 206). Being of immense importance to the construction of Japanese identity and culture, this thesis aims to explore how normative ideas, values and meanings surrounding coming-of-age dress are negotiated and (re)framed in a contemporary setting. The data for this project was generated during six months of fieldwork in Japan. I conducted interviews with kimono professionals and young adults, engaged in participants observations, and collected a wide range of different media texts. My findings demonstrate that coming-of-age dress is strongly gendered; young women are normatively considered to wear a koten design furisode kimono, maintaining an idealised image of a Japanese woman, a ‘Yamato Nadeshiko’. Young men on the other hand are expected to wear business suits to recreate an impression of a reliant and self-sufficient white-collar worker, a ‘proper’ shakaijin. Cultural norms and values are not passively and uncritically accepted, however, and I demonstrate how these normative ideals are negotiated in different ways. I discuss the ways in which parts of the kimono industry now reframe furisode as fashion by encouraging young women to express their self through their coming-of-age kimono. I explore how young women from a middle-class background aim to balance an expression of personal taste with the maintenance of family relations. I further consider subcultural communities in suburban, working-class areas which have created a hade (meaning ‘flash’ and ‘over-the-top’) style that challenges established conventions in relation to coming-of-age dress, and, with it, normative ideas of masculinity and femininity. This thesis ultimately argues for an understanding of kimono as a versatile garment which is used by individuals as a vehicle to negotiate different aspects of their cultural and gendered identities in complex ways.