tiistai 31. tammikuuta 2012

Nazi military fashion and swastikas


This is not something one might see while walking down a street in Japan, and is only encountered in some anime and subcultures. One subculture that used to have members dressing up in Nazi-inspired clothing was a subgenre of J-rock called visual-kei. During the 80’s and 90’s visual-kei was all about big hair, theatrical clothing and outrageous makeup, but some bands felt the desire to increase their shock value further and so opted to dress up in controversial outfits such as pvc Nazi uniforms with swastikas on it.


                                                 Gothic rock band Syndrome.



                                           Die from Dir en grey.


                       Dir en grey's pv showing Die's Nazi outfit.

As already stated, this act was not done in order to support the Nazi ideology in any particular way, but to stir up emotions in people (positive as well as negative).
The Nazi-theme can be seen sometimes in anime as well, and while most of these stories use Nazi-characters as the bad guys and portray them in a very unappealing way (ex. The Millenium-organization in Hellsing), there are also some works that try to depict the more “sexy” side of Nazis à http://www.japanator.com/nazis-moe-equals-wait-what--14699.phtml
The reason why Nazi-inspired clothing and the use of swastika are not that frowned upon in Japan might be found in their education.  World War II is not discussed in school the same way as it is in the West. Hitler was not described as a monster, but as a powerful leader and therefore the utilization of Nazi symbols in fashion might not feel as abominating as it does for many westerners. Also the mere fact that japan was not directly affected by the acts of Nazi Germany would make it easier to insert some symbols of it to popular culture.


Works Cited

-Seraphim Visual-kei.  Naziploitation in Visual-kei. August 11th 2011. 
<http://seraphimvisualkei.blogspot.com/2011/08/naziploitation-in-visual-kei.html>

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