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MY DEARBOMB

YOHJIYAMAMOTO

TexT by Yohji YAMAMoTo & Aï MiTSUDA

TraduiT du japonais par ????

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TabLe of conTenTs

inTroducTion

chapTer one: a man

i.

ii.

iii.

iV.

V.

Vi.

Vii.

chapTer Two: an arTisT

i.

ii.

iii.

iV.

V.

Vi.

Vii.

Viii.

ix.

x.

xi.

biography

essay by seigow matsuoka,

The Legend of Traces

crediTs & coLophon

7–9

11–48

15–18

19–21

23–32

33–38

39–41

43–46

47–48

51–141

53–58

61–65

66–69

71–81

82–89

91–97

99–109

110–117

118–127

128–133

134–141

142–167

169–189

190–191

5

A WoMAn, 3 A.M.

PArenTS DAY AT CAMP

The FACe oF A GobY

The nAkeD herMiT CrAb

DeATh AnD AzAleAS

nexT To MY heArT, CloSe To MY SToMACh

The CAFé in The MorninG

The PerSiMMon’S FrUiT

The TheATer oF liFe

A rAnDoM STrinG oF beADS

PAriS

The blACk STAr

GolDFiSh SCooPinG AnD

The joUrneY over SAnD DUneS

A DiTTY, DeDiCATeD To All Men,

All WoMen

UrbAn noMAD

SeTTlinG The SCore

The CoDe

STAllionS AnD CreATiviTY

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Berlin, 24 May 2010

Dear Yohji.

I write you today after having read in the press

about the financial troubles your companies have

encountered in the global economic crisis. I was

very troubled to hear that you lost ownership of

your firm, and that you have had to close some

of the stores.

I sincerely hope that you can overcome these dif-

ficulties, that you are in good health, and that

you are with your family. I hope, too, that you

can continue doing your amazing work!

I went through the same thing a while ago myself,

losing the rights to all the films I have pro-

duced to date, including “Notebook on Cities and

Clothes”, that adventure we shared.

Anyway, that’s life, I guess.

Please let Donata and me know that you are well!

We really love you very much and you are always

close to our hearts.

With all my best!

Your friend,

Ton ami,

Wim Wenders

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Tokyo, 28 May 2010

Dear Wim and Donata,

Thank you for your wonderful, heart-felt letter!

As you mentioned, we hit financial problems last

year, and in October 2009 our company filed in

court under the Civil Rehabilitation Law.1 Those

are the facts. At the same time, though, a very

high level investor appeared to fully back me

and by December we had already created the New

Yohji Yamamoto Company.

Around May to June of last year I was considering

retirement. But, as my new partner was not think-

ing in terms of mergers and acquisitions, we

ended up producing a twenty-year business plan

and I signed the contract.

I did lose ownership, but on the other hand,

I feel like I’ve been relieved of a heavy burden.

There won’t be any family battles over money

issues involving the inheritance or the stock.

Physically, too, I feel ten times better than I

did last year.

I consider this turning point the beginning of

my final chapter.

My one regret is that I’ll not be able to realize

the joint venture with Road Movies, which has

long been my dream.

I’m O.K. Wim ! Let’s make a film together in the

near future.

With all my best, your elder brother,

Yohji

9

note 1 : Loi sur les entreprises en difficulté.

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chapTer one

A MAN

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essentially, what a man seeks in the opposite sex is a warmreceptacle that will bring forth those things that most makehim a man. with an intelligent woman, he may occasion-ally find some faint indication that they are kindred spirits,but should he catch even a single glimpse of an inflatedego within her, he will begin to despise her as much as thewoman in whom he detects the kind of excessive feminin-ity that bores him. a desire to erase the traces of all suchwomen prompts him to turn to women he can manipulateand toy with more easily.

in short, a man cannot accept anything that surpasses him.he loves only himself, though he might experience the joyof living by exaggerating the instant in which he ex-changes a simple greeting with a complete and utterstranger passing by. such encounters, however, are basedon but the barest of social conventions, things designed toappease in some small way the alienation one feels in thecrush of the crowd. That being said, it might also be thecase that such conventions are the most beautiful manifes-tations of the conditioning that exists in this human world.

women will fall head over heels in love with this pitiablevulnerability pulsing through the creature known as man.where she is taken off-guard by a particularly woundedsoul, she may lose herself in her desire to nurture and carefor him, and therefore spend her life in tears. or, alterna-tively, she may place him in the palm of her hand and, with“my dog is working like a dog” as her highest words ofpraise for him, she may live out her life in his company.

what follows is the story of a man that i have loved.

***

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The call was from her.

according to the clock it was after 3 a.m., the dead ofnight. my body, lying in bed, was sluggish from the sleep-ing pills. from deep within it, like some unfortunate fishsnagged suddenly by a hook, my consciousness wasdragged to the surface, where it wandered in the artificialdarkness of the hotel room. i first hung up the phone butthen thought better of it and looked for her number.

“where are you?” i asked.

“how can you ask me that? you just sent me away a littlewhile ago.”

“never mind that. get over here.”

The doorbell rang. i dragged my heavy body out of bedand opened the door. hi, she said, and slipped past me intothe room.

“you’re sweet,” she said.

“i just thought you might be lonely,” i countered.

“not lonely, just bored.”

“bored, eh? i know how you feel.”

she took some tomato juice out of the refrigerator, dumpedit into a champagne glass, and drained it in one deliciousgulp. without a second’s pause she began frantically pa-

i. a woman, 3 a.m.

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cing the room. “it’s pretty hot in here.” “The windowswon’t open, will they?” “i’m so thirsty. Let me have aglass of water.” Then, before i knew it, she’d settled downin the bathtub, where she hummed to herself.

“you sounded angry on the phone a little while ago. it’sbecause you think of me as a human being. consider me awoman and you’ll have no reason to get angry.” Thewoman’s voice rang out from the bathroom.

“get over here, and not a word of complaint from you,” isaid.

“fine.” with that, she snuggled meekly into my arms – atleast on that day.

“you’re tense, wound up tighter than a spring. you mustbe exhausted,” she said.

“well, there’s just been a lot going on, and i just can’tseem to unwind. There doesn’t seem to be any possibilityof really relaxing.”

“real relaxation? That’s just not possible while we’realive, you know. but at least you should try easing the ten-sion here in your belly.” she rolled the knuckles of her lefthand over my stomach and pressed her ear to it as if shewere listening to a seashell.

“so, will you keep at your creative work?”

i grabbed my cigarettes from next to the bed and lit one.“i’m not sure.”

“and now it’s raining.”

outside the window the cherry blossoms, soaked, wereholding up well in the rain, sturdier than one would havethought. on the branch all five petals of the blossomsreached up to the skies, forming a bowl.

“have you ever loved someone?” she asked.

“i’ve loved many.”

“hmm. i guess in my case there’s only been one. There’sonly one man i’ve ever loved.”

i took a puff of my cigarette. “Love, eh? well, i’ve neverfallen so madly in love with a woman that i would havesacrificed it all for her sake. That kind of passion neverlasts long anyway.”

“and you did say you’ve given up on your dream of run-ning off with a woman.”

“nope, haven’t given up on that yet.”

“The kind of thing i do for a living is different from thatof painters and novelists. in the animal kingdom it’s kindof like being the alpha male that leads the herd. The malesthat lead, shedding their horns time after time. i sometimesthink that when somebody like that is utterly exhaustedand says so, what they want is a person who will say, “oh,yohji, you’re so tired.” They want somebody soothing likea gentle pool of water. you can imagine, though, what hap-pens when you think you’ve found somebody like that.surely they’ll say something like ‘i’m not your mother,you know,’ or ‘i’ve got my hands full just living my ownlife.’”

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all men, essentially, feel the same way. without exceptionthey want to break free from the life they are living at themoment, somewhere find the right woman, and disappearwith her. The simple fact of the matter is, however, thatmost men do not act on that desire.

a man born into this world will agonize over things for atime, he will ponder things for a while. next his thoughtswill turn to the violent murder of his parents. Though hemay have a woman he loves, he will reject as absolutelyabsurd the idea of officially registering a marriage at cityhall. The question, then, is “why do men do preciselythese things?“ it is simply because they have made thesimple choice to refrain from disappointing their families,even if it means they must repress their egos and powerfuldesires. They dedicate themselves to continual restraint,and for that reason their simple choice might also be calleda foolish one.

as life goes on and one grows older, repeatedly there arisesituations that one cannot handle according to the princi-ples of life that one decided on in one’s youth. in my case,those principles included the decision to leave the mainthoroughfare and tread instead the side roads of life as wellas to accept the unspoken agreement to leave others alonein exchange for being granted my own independence. i de-cided to live my life according to those principles, and ihave always thought that i would do in life what neededto be done, and that would be it. i continue to believe thosethings today.

Life, however, confronts us with circumstances that wewould never have expected.

ii. parenTs day aT camp

18

The woman suddenly burst out laughing as she lay acrossmy chest. “you’ve never been involved with a goodwoman, have you?”

“you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“i do. no worthy woman would say anything like that.somewhere along the line you’ve lost your faith inwomen. There must have been a woman that drew you in,a woman you loved and who loved you, but in the endwould not embrace you.”

“yes, i hate women.”

“but that sort of feeling is mutual, i’m sure.”

The woman softly slid her left hand down past his navel,pulled back his pajamas in one deft move, and thenplunged into the delicate white sea.

“by the way, she did call you an insufferable egotist, youknow.” The woman looked toward me.

“she is the last person who should be making that kind ofaccusation.”

“but i’ve never thought of you as egotistical. not evenonce. you’re just faithfully pursuing what you’re meantto.”

“That’s another way of saying that i’m greedy.”

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21

when i had passed the age of fifty the woman who haddedicated long years of her life to me suddenly called meto her and told me she was determined to have a child. “i see,” i said.

she went on. “i am determined to have your child. i’msure you’ll be indecisive all your life, and that’s just finewith me. but, i want to have your child, so go to the hos-pital, first of all, and have yourself checked.” with thiscourse of action, i assume, she meant to put the finaltouches on her life as a woman.

i had no grounds for objection, so i met individually witheach and every other woman i had been seeing and care-fully explained the situation. The circumstances beingwhat they were, i said, it would be best if we no longersaw each other. They all readily agreed, and our relation-ships were ended. i next went to the hospital she had des-ignated, underwent the appropriate tests, and receivedofficial clearance. a few months later she conceived achild.

once, in the dead of summer, i was invited to an event asthe parent of that child. it was held deep in the mountainsof nagano prefecture at a weathered old hotel that hadbeen rented as a base for a summer camp. having finishedthe morning’s classes, the raucous children came pouringout over the schoolyard lawn. about the seventh one outthe door was my very own child. i felt my face brightenfor i was seeing him for the first time in a while. heseemed to notice me. i thought he glanced at me out of thecorner of his eye, but he then ran off with the other chil-dren, never to look back toward me again.

i don’t know whether he ignored me out of embarrassmentor anger. he was about four years old, and i watched froma distance of seventy or eighty meters as he struggled notto reveal his emotions in his face. i wondered if he realizedthat i was his father. if he did, and still feigned ignorance,it must mean that i had somehow made him very sad. atthat instant i felt paralyzed, as if some mysterious, power-ful drug had been injected into my system.

There is a time when a child is so adorable that they com-pensate entirely for the worries and troubles that they willcause their parents throughout their lives. i was determinedto make my child happy; i wanted nothing more than tobe sure my child never had to say “where has daddygone?” i was overwhelmed by the power of this type ofaffection, uncontrollable and rooted in the most primaldepths of the human condition.

Though the child had been conceived under duress, therewas something of me within him. There inside him wasme as i had been in my childhood.

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“They’ve issued me a summer uniform so i imagine i’llbe going to the south,” said the man himself. it was lateon a cold november night that we saw him off at mi-zonokuchi station. we never saw him again. i shook hishand when he went into the station.“

such is the scene as my mother has described it to me. Thereare three other moments that stand out in my memory.

The first took place at my mother’s home in oarai, ibarakiprefecture, where i’d been sent to live. i was about threeor four years old. my grandmother and great-grandmothertreated me with moxa, burning curative herbs on my skin;the scars it left around my navel are still clearly visibletoday. Though this is a period when children need no onemore than their mothers and are apt to cry from lonelinesswhen denied their company, with the doting affections ofmy grandmother and great-grandmother, i was a happy,mischievous child.

There were still wide-open beaches in oarai at that time,and i would often go to play by the sea. big granny wouldbe sitting on one of the small stools we used in the bath,watching me play on the shores. Little granny’s voicewould ring out. “don’t go so close, it’s dangerous.” sur-prisingly i did not particularly miss my mother or feel sad,but when she returned from Tokyo to see how i was gettingalong, she was almost too radiant to look at.

There is a second moment i recall. we had a photographof my father, his head shaved clean and clad in the samemilitary uniform he wore the day he left for the front. he

iii. The face of a goby

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is holding a child who, having been born on october 3,1943, was just one month past his first birthday. what yearwould my father have been drafted? counting the yearsand months, it seems it would have been but shortly beforethe war came to an end. he was thirty-six years old at thetime, and he had married late in life. i remember that atsome point after i entered elementary school, i think, mymother held a funeral for my father in spite of the fact thatnone of his remains had been returned to us. mother hadalways held out hope that he would someday come home,but she decided on the funeral as a means of consoling therelatives and neighbors. died in the line of duty duringfierce fighting in the mountainous region east of baguio,philippines said the notification of death. his remains haveyet to come home.

after the funeral, child that i was, i took my tricycle outon the pathways between the rice paddies and rode androde and rode until the sun went down.

my third memory dates to my days in junior high school.my mother worked hard as a dressmaker, and one day outof the blue i asked her. “why don’t i have a father?” hisabsence was not something that particularly saddened me,and i believe i asked the question essentially to irritate mymother. i was surely also motivated by the inconsolableanxieties that arise in puberty. i made her miserable, askingagain and again why i had no father.

i reached adulthood, in time, and took to guzzling whiskey,though i was not particularly fond of it. i deceitfully ma-nipulated woman, and night after night wandered thestreets of Tokyo before swallowing the pills that allowedme to sleep.

born in the heart of shinjuku, in the burnt-out plain thatwas Tokyo, my world did not include things like carryingthe floats from the shrines during festivals or even theshinto religion itself.

once, as a child, i was outside playing catch with a softwhite ball. a stray ball hit a car, leaving a slight mark onits polished black exterior. a second later somebodypunched me powerfully in the head.

on another day i was out swinging a wooden sword. iraised high it up over my head and heard a dull thump. iturned around to find a red-faced gi holding his head inhis hands. i cowered to think of the trouble i was in, butwithout uttering a word he walked on by. i rememberthinking that the american soldiers were the kinder sort.

To eke out a living as a war widow my mother workedfrom morning until night running a dressmaking shop inthe seedy Kabukicho area of shinjuku. her younger sister,my aunt, doted on me as if i were her own child. she hireda tutor for me and sent me for supplementary lessons at acram school. in the fifth grade i transferred from the pub-lic elementary school i had been attending to a privateschool called the gyōsei gakuen, or the school of themorning’s stars.

The school stood very close to the yasukuni shrine.Throughout junior and senior high school my commutewould take me on the number twelve line from shinjukuto the top of Kudan hill, where i got off and cut diagonallyacross the shrine precincts to enter the school groundsthrough the back gate. i never imagining that my very ownfather was enshrined at yasukuni along with the souls ofall other japanese military who had died in service to their

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country. my attention instead was on the crunching noisethat my feet made as i tread the gravel pathways of ya-sukuni. The sound of my footsteps on the gravel, the feel-ing that passed into my feet as i walked – these things,curiously, are what i remember fondly, even lovingly,about that commute. it was, after all, the route i took toschool at a time i was still pure. i remember it with affec-tion. i walked it daily, and with never an inkling that myfather was enshrined there.

reviewing the historical record i find that in those finaldays of the war there were no longer any transport shipsto move the troops to points in the south. They used in-stead modified fishing boats, which they equipped withround wooden pillars painted green and carved to look likeartillery. The troops would be squeezed below deck inrows of hammocks set up like the mulberry beds used inthe raising of silkworms. when u.s. submarines orbombers found these fishing boats, they sank them, oneright after the other and with the greatest of ease.

undoubtedly one of the men stuffed into those rows ofmulberry beds was my father, my one and only father. hisremains have not been repatriated. died in the line of dutyduring fierce fighting in the mountainous region east ofbaguio, philippines said the notification of death. in mo-ments of weakness i allow myself to think, “how can i ac-cept the absurdities that led to his death? how can ipossibly resign myself to it?”

i once commented to my mother on it. “whatever else youmay do, you are not to join The association of survivorsof the war dead.” she gave me a puzzled look and said,“why in the world would you say something like that?”

The best time catch them is after the autumn equinox

So it is a little too early, but…

I was invited to fish for goby.

Tokyo Bay was perfectly calm and the weather clear

The glare was intense, and the heat unbearable.

“Cook this guy up as tempura

and you’ll find him rather tasty.

But take a good, long look. The goby’s face

Looks a bit like a human’s, doesn’t it?”

The lively laughter of my buddy Namekata!

“It’s the same with the face of any fish.

They are, after all, the distant ancestors of man…”

Even I thought my response was rather trite,

so I started it,

Only to wrap the second half of it in spit

and swallow it down.

It was high noon on the day Japan lost the war,

And his mother had been listening to the emperor’s

radio broadcast.

She went into labor in the middle of it,

And he came into the world. For some reason

The story was one he told often, and was proud of.

Namekata’s grandmother, her roots in the old downtown

district

Of Kakigarachō in Tokyo, was a spirited soul.

“Goby caught after the equinox work best for palsy.”

This old saying was one familiar to me.

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“The very year I married, you know,

we had the Great Kanto Earthquake,

and I remember it well.

And the extended air raids on the Anniversary of Victory

in the Russo-Japanese War?

We scrambled and somehow managed to come out alive.

Both disasters left tens of thousands in the Sumida River,

Dying of burns or drowning in its waters.

Those goby in the Tokyo bay?

What is it, do you think, they’ve been eating to make

them so big?

There are people who refused to eat goby their whole

lives. 2

in my youth i wanted to become a painter. Thinking abouthow furiously my mother worked to support me, though,prevented me from choosing that path to certain destitu-tion. eventually, to please my mother, i studied to enterone of the prestigious universities that the rich boys at-tended. not surprisingly, about my third year there, it lostall meaning for me and i found myself despondent. i setoff on a journey to europe, traveling via the siberian rail-road.

The journey took me, eventually, to the city of rome.what i remember most vividly is the fact that the citymade me furious. any building found on any alley leadingoff any major avenue had a story behind it, an anecdoteconnected to it, or some sort of meaning associated withit. it made it impossible to relax and simply take in thesights. The entire city was itself a sort of museum, and itmade me sick to my stomach.

human beings, whether young or old, have an innate de-sire to be understood; they build things and they speak inorder to make their presence known. in this sense my workmight be considered the epitome of some gaudy attemptto attract attention. my thoughts that day as i explored thestreets of rome, however, were of a different sort. phrasedin terms of a reaction to the growing environmental crisis,i felt that screaming out for ecological solutions and vol-unteer work would not be nearly as effective as the com-plete disposal of all man-made edifices, all cobbled-together explanations, and all the mountains of garbage.or, to take it one step further, it seemed the best thing onecould do for the sake of the earth would be to die on thespot.

Though they pour toxic waste into the rivers, humans willonly pay attention to it on the day the dead fish rise to the

note 2 : A Short Tale of Tokyo Bay, lyrics by hitoshi anzai, music by chūei yoshikawa.included on yohji yamamoto’s album Well, I Gotta Go [Saa, ikanakya], emi music japan,1991.

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surface. i felt something akin to the desperation of that mo-ment, and it prompted me to place myself in a Vanity Fair

world where i made things that were anything but neces-sary. when i began to make clothing my single thoughtwas to have women wear what was thought of as men’sclothing. in those days japanese women wore, as a matterof course, imported, feminine clothing, and i simply hatethat fact.

after graduating university and finding myself without di-rection i casually suggested to my mother that i help herat the shop. she was furious. This reaction was only natu-ral as she had expected me to leave the university and tran-sition smoothly into a job at a fine company. she lecturedme, insisting that if i was serious about the work i shouldat least learn how to cut cloth. i enrolled in a vocationalschool for dressmaking and, jostled on all sides by womenacquiring the skill in order to improve their marriageprospects, i spent my days tediously pinning fabric whilepondering the question of what constitutes a proper pro-fession for a man.

i completed the course and began working at my mother’sdressmaking shop. elegant madams would come into theshop with magazine clippings, asking us to make them theoutfits they saw there. hourglass figures they had not, buti diligently took their measurements as i grumbled silentlyto myself about the impossibility of reproducing the mag-azine look. i hated it. intensifying my annoyance was thefact that the shop was in the Kabukicho area of shinjuku,a place overflowing with women whose job was to titillatemale customers. They had shaped my image of woman-hood since childhood, and i was therefore determined toat all costs avoid creating the cute, doll-like women thatsome men so adore.

suddenly the phone rang.

“hello.” said the voice on the line.“yes?”“you didn’t come into work yesterday.”“There wasn’t anything in particular that had to be done,so i decided to rest.”“was that it? anyway, i’ve been thinking about you livingin that hotel. are you eating properly?”“i am.”“well, that’s good to hear.”“and…”“and what about your hair? isn’t it getting a little long?maybe you should get it cut, get cleaned up.”

who in the world would be calling me this early in themorning? of course, it was my mother.

Leave me alone, mom, would you?and just let me say one thing, okay?mom, do me a favor, leave me alone.i’ve already survived twice as long as your husband did.

but, mom, There is one thing i want to say, okay? please, whatever you do, just don’t leave me behind. don’t leave me all alone.

i was just dead tired.

“well, then, i guess i’ll be going,” she said as she rolledup her flesh-colored stockings.

“hey, just a minute! you mean you’re going to just leaveme here like this?”

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“hey, mom, is there such a thing as a naked hermit crab?”“a naked hermit crab? hmm. well, i’ve never seen one.hermit crabs have a soft belly so they would die if theyweren’t living in the borrowed shell of a snail.”“but what if their shell cracks open? what happens then?”“in that case they just move into another snail’s shell.”

The rain fell in big drops that day. on the way home fromschool you turned your face to the sky, shouted out, andspun around in circles. you were ten years old. That’s theway to be. The only difference is that now you’re six timesolder. you know, i’ve forgotten what you look like thesedays. and now that i think about it, there was no moon onthat day.

when the desire to escape suddenly comes over you, besure to get in touch with me. when that happens, no matterwhat sort of life we’ve been living, we’ll make plans tomeet at gate 38, for sure.

That was what we said. Then there was the day that we ac-tually did fly off to the other side of the world. remem-ber?

when we arrive, the first thing that we’ll do is find a sunnyapartment. next we’ll look for a cozy bar. if there is awoman there that strikes your fancy, i’ll speak to her influent spanish and bring her over for you. That means weshould have a big sofa in our living room.

iV. The naKed hermiT crab“what else can i do? i’ve got to get to work.”

i know, i know, i know.

ah, in those days the seats on the aeroflot flights mademy ass hurt. and these days the ashtrays have disappearedfrom the seats in first class.

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ah, yes. and a bed, and about a hundred books. we couldhave a television. or not. either would be fine. we won’tneed a bath. we can get by with just a shower. Three daysworth of clothing and a single piece of luggage in theapartment. That would make it perfect.

That’s the way we talked about it, and we did find a littleapartment with a shared kitchen, didn’t we? The phone inthe hallway on the ground floor would ring in the middleof the night, and i’d always be called to come and get youat the corner bar.

i wanted to be with you, even as the years passed and youwere reduced to skin and bones, but before this could cometo pass, you took your own life.

and so, as you had always wanted, i spread your ashes inthe sea. The sea was emerald green and its perfect bluestretched on forever. The cluster of gray particles from theurn was stolen by the roaring surf, and in the wink of aneye it drifted away.

This sea was not one with any particular significance foreither of us. still, it is linked to the sea where you onceplayed so innocently. it is linked, too, to the sea that robbedyou of the man so dear to you.

i wanted the chance to one day speak to a perfect strangerwho just happened to sit nearby as i drank in a bar. yet iknow perfectly well that as long as i might wait, your callwill never come.

I’ll set off on a journey, I’ve got the money

I’ll buy what I dream of, I’ve got the money

I can buy a life for her, too.

But why, why, do I feel a chill?

I’ve run and run, forever.

I’ve run to the finish, always.

There has been nothing to make me sad.

I do, though, feel the cold.

I was too serious a sort to live for the day

I was unable to live for the day

Well, I gotta go, it’s time.

The scenery outside the window is familiar

But it has been a long time since I’ve seen it like this

Beyond the glass, stained and dusty like me

The greenery that I love looks nothing but black

It sends forth new buds, bright with yellow and green

It seems I’ve been perhaps too lazy

It seems I’ve worried perhaps too much

Do not complain, you’ll be laughed at

Stand firm

To live for the day means

One can’t live for the day

Well, I gotta go, it’s time.

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note 3 : Well, I Gotta Go, lyrics by shion, music by shion. included on yohji yamamoto’salbum Well, I Gotta Go [Saa, ikanakya], emi music japan, 1991.

I’ve run and run, forever.

I’ve run to the finish, always.

There has been nothing to make me sad.

I do, though, feel the cold.

I was too serious a sort to live for the day

I was unable to life for the day

Well, I gotta go, it’s time. 3

To you the taste of a beer bought with your last few coinswhen you are down and out, and the chilled champagneyou drink wrapped in your fluffy robe in a suite at thepeninsula taste essentially the same. and today, again, thesun rises.

and so i don’t have the slightest intention of exposing thatside of your nature that drives you to transgress conventionbased on your personal principles. you’re just you. and ilove you. it’s as simple as that.

i dragged my sluggish body out of bed and tried smilinginto the mirror. it reflected a mere shell of a man. Thewoman’s words echoed brightly in the recesses of my hungover brain. she talks too much. how could she possiblythink she understands me? in the beginning women are al-ways as calm and still as an unknown lake in the forest.Then, bit by bit, yellow birds begin to reproduce and soonthe surface of the lake is covered by them. Living with ayoung woman is probably more than i can manage any-more.

The dissonance increases with age. we begin to hear quiteclearly the sounds of our cells as, one by one, they die.when this happens that creature known as man begins toseek the final stage of that growing dissonance. Theprocess is all the more troubling for one who has lived hislife in the key of a minor for he will begin to search for asolution.

“what ‘solution’?” The woman questions me again.

a way to die. your way to die.

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The azaleas, which i hate, bloomed, and it was may.

she told me that she was going to her hometown to visither father, whose condition had taken a turn for the worse.i decided to go with her, and we took our son. The threeof us boarded the bullet train and headed west. The triphappened to coincide with a string of national holidays andthe world was overflowing with people on the move.

at this time of year, around the guardrails built beside theroadways that criss-cross the japanese archipelago (whoin the world built them?), grow massive beds of azaleas,and they bloom in wild profusion. just thinking about themturned my mood sour, for no particular reason.

we arrived at the hospital to find that the relatives had got-ten there before us. my wife’s father was already con-nected to three tubes and every time the nurses sat him upin the bed we could see countless bruises left by internalhemorrhaging. he had been a strong, dependable fellow,but now he could do nothing but accept the situation inwhich he had been placed. i was overcome with a suddenexhaustion and left the hospital alone.

out on the street the azaleas remained the same, bloomingverdantly, the flowers opened wide like some womanspreading her legs. There were thousands of them, theblossoms colored somewhere between a light purple andpink. illuminated by the white light of the streetlamps,their colors seemed even more artificial. The fresh green-ery of the new buds pushed forth the petals in a daringcompetition to see which would blossom first.

V. deaTh and azaLeas“To collapse right in the middle of work, be carried to thehospital, to be diagnosed with some grave illness, and passinto the beyond a few days later. That would be the ideal.”

“really? That would be like sacrificing yourself for somefeudal lord.” again, the woman questions me.

sacrificing myself? it would be nothing as dashing as that.it would be more like dying on the run. i’ve always es-caped into my work, so i’d like to meet my end while i’mfleeing the world and burying myself in my work. well,i’ve got to be going. i’ve got work to do. i’m going towork, but we’ll get together again soon. i got a suddenwork order so i’ve just got to go. sorry, honey.

The moment the heavy iron door to the crematory’s fur-nace slammed shut i thought, “next one in will be me.”

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Yellow sweatshirt sleeping on the bench

Khaki trousers folded back

On a young forehead deep wrinkles sleep

The morning is cold in a park left behind

Between the buildings, a timid striped sky

Nestled deeply in his arms

The thin bridge of a nose and a gaping mouth,

Both child-like

Soon the detested azaleas will bloom

Does someone as young as you think this means the end?

With a heart full of ambition, and indifference, and with

tattered shoes

Clearing his throat self-consciously

An old man and dog slowly pass by

A disgruntled taxi slams on its brakes

Spring, come too late and too slowly

Spring comes again, will you survive?

Soon the azaleas I detest will bloom

Soon the spring I detest will arrive

Soon the azaleas I detest will bloom 4

The family conference began sometime past midnight.Those present included one who was about to completehis life’s mission in the hospital bed; the generation of hischildren, who had recently fulfilled their duties as parents;a newly-wed grandchild who was about to set out to builda life for the future. my son, who had been born after i hadreached fifty, belonged to none of these generations. hisposition, however, was that of grandchild.

This eccentric configuration of a family’s various genera-tions continued the conference for one hour, then two. be-fore one issue was concluded a second would be raised,and even at its end there was no sign that any conclusionswould be reached.

a week later my father-in-law left this world, never to re-turn. it may have been his final remonstration. i neverknew my own father. while i was still an infant he wasconscripted and served, and his remains were never re-turned to us. buried in his grave is the Leica camera thathe so adored.

will there someday come a time when my anger dissipatesas well? will there come a day when my mouth dropsopen, i forget my resistance to all things and accept theminstead, when i no longer distinguish between men andwomen, when i transcend all of the artifice that i spread?will there come a day when, on that distant horizon, imerge with the surface of that pulsating space? will therecome a day when i begin to draw my breath in such aworld, so faint and indistinct?

note 4 : Azaleas, a Dog, and a Yellow Sweatshirt, lyrics by yohji yamamoto, music byyohji yamamoto. included on yohji yamamoto’s album Hem: Handful, Empty Mood, agentconsipio, 1997.

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in the depths of my soul, since childhood, a persistentsense that something is missing. more than anything it isthis feeling of an absence that has been my most intimatefriend. it is the root of my clownish, buffoonish desire tobe close to people, to be liked by them, to be of some ser-vice to them. it would be no exaggeration to say that thissense of something missing has been what has driven meto where i am today.

i chase the woman from behind. it would all end if sheturned around. if it ends, it ends. and for that very reason,i pursue her. i chase the woman from behind.

i cherish the emotions that arise in each and every situa-tion, even if they last but an instant. i respond wholeheart-edly, holding nothing back, regardless of whether i amengaged with someone important, a complete stranger, awoman i love, or anybody else. women describe this as-pect of my personality as “sweet.” i don’t deserve suchpraise. it is simply that i cannot do otherwise, plagued asi am by anxiety. i am, in fact, a man who may turn heart-less in an instant; i desire only to settle each and everyscore immediately.

anyone born into this world must at some point considerthe nature of things. They begin to feel an intense irritationtoward commonplace questions such as the reasons fortheir presence in the world. The irritation cannot be eased.appearing first in one’s early teens, in time this irritationleads one to think, “i know it’s not right, mom, but i wishyou were dead! why did things have to turn out this way?”it is the punk mentality. These are the angry youth, the

Vi. nexT To my hearT, cLose To my sTomach

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Missing somebody

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nasty, aggressive kids of punk. and these punks will for-ever be just that nasty, angry kids.

next, as more years pass, they reach the point where livingitself is a bother and they begin to think of how they willdie. from some corner they hear the folktale obasute-yama, the story of how the inhabitants of a rural villagewould leave their elderly on deserted mountaintops tostarve to death once they were no longer able to contributeto the wellbeing of the community. “what could be wrongwith discarding an old woman once she is no longer ofuse,” they say, “it is all perfectly logical, isn’t it?”

at this point, however, there emerges another self in thesoul, a new character that clings there tenaciously. This al-ternative self, one day, jots down some song lyrics and,with a guitar in hand, begins to sing. The people aroundhim, being who they are, to a man are held prisoner bytheir misunderstandings, and they begin to refer to him asa beat poet. it is quite a predicament. Life, though, in theend, is so comical that it makes one want to cry.

how many literary classics can we get through life withoutreading? will i die before i have had an affair with an-other’s wife? wherever i look i find nothing of which ican be proud, so i will take what is there for the taking,and gratefully accept the gifts granted by the heavens.Then, calmly acknowledging that at some point my timewill come, i will simply live.

now, right before my eyes, you drift by on a raft. a raftwithout oars.

a man floats by, alone, bobbing and swaying, bobbing andswaying.

Time has passed.

Yes, time has passed.

For now, that’s it.

I can find no other way to say it.

In a corner of my heart, close to my chest

The reason for that sadness remains.

Back then, when they called us young,

I liked myself a little better,

Perhaps because I was searching madly for something

When I looked in the mirror and tried to smile

I saw the reflection of a shell of a man

If the body alone was always healthy,

It would be, I imagine, unbearable

If my hair was always soft and flowing

I don’t think I could stand it.

Powerless, like a boy

Somehow lonely, somehow funny

Grown old, like a boy,

Somehow sad, somehow appealing

Next to my heart, close to my stomach

There is still a reason to weep.

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i often wake up early these days. when the weather is nicei take my breakfast at the same café, just a short walkaway. The morning sun feels good when the sycamoresgrow fragrant. my table on the terrace, the garcon, hisgreeting, our clipped conversation – these things are al-ways the same. everyday i order a café au lait and anomelet. across the terrace sits the same gentleman readingthe same newspaper. The morning sunlight shines, eachday its angle changing subtly. always the same couplepasses as they walk their dog. an elderly gentleman, atilted beret on his head and a cane in one hand strolls by.

“sightseeing?” asks the elderly gentleman over his shoulder.

i smile. ah, nothing better than the first smoke in themorning!

***

Vii. The café in The morning

note 5 : Next to my Heart, Close to my Stomach, lyrics by yohji yamamoto, music by yohjiyamamoto. included on yohji yamamoto’s album Well, I Gotta Go [Saa, ikanakya], emimusic japan, 1991.

Perhaps it is because I feel some remorse towards

Thing around me which I’ve sullied in life

And those whom I’ve hurt.

Will having lived doing my best

Somehow make it all alright?

Or will having exhausted myself in selfish pursuits

Leave me the laughing stock of all?

I realize these things only just now,

Having travelled all these miles.

Powerless, like a boy

Somehow lonely, somehow funny

Grown old, like a boy,

Somehow sad, somehow appealing 5

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i guess i love this man even now. There were five us onceat a dinner party, my husband, two women who had comefrom overseas on business, this man and me. i seem to re-member it being chinese food. it was a rather muggy day.The members of the dinner party arrived separately, eacha little late, and by the time all were gathered it was al-ready after ten.

The dishes were placed on the rotating surface in the cen-ter of the table. we spun it round and round; we drankround after round. suddenly the man spoke.

“hey, do you remember the song that bob dylan wrote forus, that famous song for the two of us?”

There had never been any such a song. but in a gesture un-usual for me, i giggled and we exchanged glances. Then,with my chopsticks, i reached for my favorite, the prawnsin chili sauce.

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biography

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i was born, a breech birth, in the 1940s, in the shinjukudistrict of Tokyo. and then there i was – watching thepeople lined up to pay their respects at a funeral i’dcome across while pedaling along on my tricycle.

The funeral seemed to be one held by a war widow, awoman who’d given up hope that her husband might yetreturn from the war. as he watched the adults conducttheir sad ceremony, the boy experienced anger andemptiness for the first time.

i’m a rebellious sort, and that’s how my life began.

1966 graduated from Keiō university, Tokyo 1969 graduated from the bunka fashion college, Tokyo

The lost decade, a decade in which i worked harder than i ever have before or sincea decade in which i suffered more than i ever have before or sinceabsorbed in my work,… and with no recollection of the time.

1981 The first yohji yamamoto collection in paris.

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1989 The release of Notebook on Cities and Clothes, a film directed by Wim Wenders

i was born in the ruins of postwar Tokyo and met wimwenders in paris some decades later. by some bizarretwist of fate we both spoke of the same memories, andfrom that instant on we were bound by the deepest offriendships.

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1993 Costume design for the Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde in the bayreuth Festival

The person i respected most in the entire world is heinermüller. one day my extension rang, and i was informedthat a visitor had arrived. i went to the press room tofind a man sitting quietly its large table.

mumbling in english, he began to speak.

“my name is heiner müller and i’m a playwright. i’verecently been commissioned to do a wagnerian opera.i’m in trouble and i need your help.”

“well…”

“i want to smash the wagnerian tradition.”

“smash it? in that case, you can count on me.”

That evening we found ourselves in 1999, a membersonly club in aoyama that i frequented in those days. wegot thoroughly drunk and i remember thinking that thisguy was ten times nastier than me. i knew i couldn’tcompete with him. on the very first day we met weshared raunchy stories deep into the night.

some months later the wagners expressed an interest inpaying me a formal visit. They arrived together, husbandand wife.

“we appreciate your official agreement to do the costu-ming for the upcoming wagner opera.”

what? had i agreed to that?

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müller had really gotten the better of me. my theory isthat wim wenders was involved from the very begin-ning, telling müller to come to me.

heiner müller.

born in east germany, he first made a name for himselfwith the radical play titled The Hamlet Machine. he waspraised as a genius on a par with brecht. he was alsoconstantly monitored as a dangerous, subversive thinker.

since the wagners had come themselves on a formalvisit i didn’t see any way i could wiggle out of the pro-ject. i’d been duped, and so for three years, as soon asi’d finished my paris collection, i’d be off to bayreuth.

Though he would refer to them as consultations, thatman named heiner müller never once spoke to me aboutopera. over vodka and cigars he would instead spin talesabout the various misdeeds of his checkered past whileinsisting that the human body needed meat.

i’d just finished the paris collection and, entirelydrained, had boarded a airplane bound for bayreuthwhen it struck me.“why in the world am i doing this?”

Truth be told, my mother was for some unknown reasona big fan of the bolshoi ballet and crazy about all the traditional arts of europe. so that must have been it – i did the costuming work as a way of showing my respect for her.

That’s what i told myself as i bounced back and forth between paris and bayreuth, enduring the three years of

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ups and downs until i finally arrived at the evening ofthe premier.

both mikail and raisa gorbachev were in attendance, aswere a long list of other dazzling dignitaries.

The overture began. The curtain remained lowered whilethis splendid piece of music rang out, and before it wasover my mother had fallen fast asleep.

i can’t really say whether my mother saw this opera ornot, but i do remember what she said when it was over.

“wasn’t that lovely!”

“hmm…”

from the costumes and the make-up to the shoes and thewigs, every last thing had been left to me. i worked on itfor three years, my compensation was just 3 million yen.“so this is what ‘culture’ is all about,” i thought.

“has it ever been done with an all nude cast?” i’d asked,hopefully. The answer was in the affirmative, so i knew i was going to have to do the costuming. it was a terribledisappointment.

in spite of the tradition behind it, the monumental workof wagner from the classical canon has invited a widevariety of interpretations, including one in which the“costuming” had presented an all nude cast for the per-formance. i had to admit – that was impressive.

my mother got invited to the wagner estate, where shewas treated so majestically that in her elated state she donated 5 million yen to the wagner society!

i guess this is just the perfect example of the designer’ssad fate.

heiner müller. whatever bad luck i may have had, get-ting to know this man has been a great blessing. meetinghim infused me with a poison more powerful than anyi’d ever had before.

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1998 Collaboration in the celebrations for the 25th Anniversary of the Pina bausch Company,Tanztheater Wupperthal

one day a fax arrived. “come to wupperthal and dosomething for our 25th anniversary.” it was from pinabausch. i’d been deeply impressed by pina and soreplied that i’d contribute, though i had no idea what i should do.

Then, before i knew it, the pamphlet for the occasion announced my participation. The theater was at full ca-pacity for the evening.

first, i had four or five dancers in a circle at the entranceto the opera house. They were all frozen in their poses,welcoming the audience.

once a spectator entered the theater itself, they were metwith another sight. in the first row in front of the large,curved stage i’d lined up dancers, tall and short, men andwomen, all in a random arrangement that left an unevenimpression. i’d dressed them in costumes that didn’t fitthem, and the zippers had been left unzipped. Thesedancers, too, remained frozen in their poses.

That was the fashion show that i offered that evening.

on the stage itself dancers who knew nothing of karatewere attempting to learn the series of karate movesknown as Heian Nidan. They were learning it on thespot, as a performance in its own right.

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and i’d made a request of pina. “i’ll design a garmentfor you, pina,” i said, “and i’d like you to dance in it,even if you do it simply as a favor to me.”

pina would dance, her ribs moving elegantly, and thepowerful men would confront her as she danced. Thesupple movements of pina’s body would easily absorbeven the kicks and punches of the men who had beentrained to kill their opponents with a single strike. pinahad only to dance, alone and in the dark, with a disinter-ested look on her face, absorbed in her own movements.

as things evolved the dancers on the stage began to master the karate movements, and the audience burstinto applause.

at one corner of the stage a large, comical man spokeinto a microphone, providing the dancers with anoverblown explanation of the breathing techniques involved.

“okay. now take a deep breathe and… attack!”

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The performance offered none of the conventional cueson when to applaud, and at first the audience was con-fused about how they should react. in time, though, theybegan to enjoy themselves.

for the finale i took the stage myself, performed thekarate pattern Heian Nidan, and in the process toppledfour of the powerful men. i then exited the stage.

it had all been improvised.

pina, i thoroughly enjoyed it.

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1999 Costume design for the film Brother, by director Takeshi kitano2002 Costume design for the film Dolls, by the director Takeshi kitano

after wim enjoyed such great success with Wings of

Desire, he attracted various sponsors and decided tomake the film Until the End of the World.

The project started to get more and more ambitious, ex-panding like a bubble. when it reached the point whereit seemed they were going to have wim film in hi-vision,i took him for advice from nhK, japan’s national broad-casting station.

we arrived, the two of us, but couldn’t sit still.

wim ended up grabbing a box of tissues that was in theroom and began arranging it to look like a certain femalebody part. “no, no, that’s not how it’s shaped!” i said.for what seem like an eternity in that office at the national broadcasting station we played around with that box of tissues… at least that’s how i remember it.

on the way home, just as we drove onto the ramp lead-ing off the elevated highway, wim blurted out,”hey,yohji, do you have something like this – some work youknow won’t be a success but that you just have to seethrough to the end?”

i was speechless for a second. Then, with my eyes stilltrained straight ahead, i answered, “i do have somethinglike that.”

sometimes a project starts to inflate, like a bubble, andtake on a life of its own.

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once Takeshi Kitano said, “in hollywood movies theyeven spend a fortune on the costumes for the minor char-acters.” he was probably jealous and wanted to use meto see what he might be able to do. i think Brother

turned out better than Dolls in terms of the relationshipbetween the costumes and the film.

even though i’ve done it, i have some rather seriousdoubts about fashion designers doing the costumes forfilms. it is really very difficult to decide the limits onhow far one should go with it. That’s what makes cos-tume design for films such challenging work.

The costumes for a film have to be subordinate to the vision as it appears in the script. They must never look tooutshine the script. i’ve kept those ideas in mind withmy costumes, and in the work i’ve done with Takeshi,Zatoichi (The blind swordsman) has actually been themost successful. for that project we had a specialist infilm costumes join us, and after i came up with the con-cept i left the rest to her.

if they aren’t handled carefully, the costumes for a filmcan overshadow the hero. so, in my case, it would pro-bably be better to have me doing the film score instead.

The japanese film director yasujirō ozu treats everydaysorts of topics from a disinterested perspective. usinghis distinctive camera angles he doggedly pursues hissubject, leaving the viewers heartbroken. he’s not stuckin that claustrophobic worldview that comes fromjapan’s island mentality, treating always the clash between human emotions and the sense of duty. ozu’sthemes have a universality that speaks to the wholeworld.

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Takeshi Kitano, though, i think is closer to akira Kuro-sawa. Kurosawa did grand epics, and he had some fail-ures, too. he would just forge ahead, making the movieshe had to before he could proceed to the next level.

The Takeshi films i like best are ones for which i didn’tdo the costuming, like Sonatine and Hana-Bi (fire-works). in these especially he shows a unique sense ofma, the empty gaps in time and space. in the placeswhere he wants a message to get across, he intentionallydoes not insert that message. i also like those pointswhere his “dignity of violence” emerges.

not so much as a creator of films, but as a friend, i worry a little about him these days.

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surprise prizes?

1994

awarded french chevalier de L’ordre des arts et des Lettres

2004

awarded japanese government’s medal with purple ribbon (spring)

2005

awarded french national order of merit, officer

2006

awarded british royal society of arts’ honorary royal designer of industry

2008

awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the university of the arts, London

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p1

p73

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yohji yamamoto

nick Knight

nick Knight

donata wenders

yohji yamamoto

yohji yamamoto

yohji yamamoto

nick Knight

yohji yamamoto

yohji yamamoto

yutaka yamamoto

donata wenders

alice springs

yutaka yamamoto

yutaka yamamoto

yutaka yamamoto

bernd hartung

bernd hartung

courtesy office Kitano inc.

yohji yamamoto inc.

yohji yamamoto

donata wenders

191190

auThors

Yohji YAMAMoTo & Aï MiTSUDA

conTribuTors

SeiGoW MATSUokA & irène SilvAGni

TransLaTion

jAMeS DorSeY

graphic design

PAUl boUDenS

phoTograVure

STeUrS, anTwerp

prinTing

ProoST, TurnhouT

copyright © 2010 The authors and the contributors

copyright © 2010 Ludion and yohji yamamoto inc.

copyright © 2010 yohji yamamoto drawings copyright

© 2010 nick Knight photography copyright

© 2010 bernd hartung photography copyright

© 2010 donata wenders photography

copyright © 2010 yutaka yamamoto photography

www.ludion.be

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isbn 978-90-5544-983-5 | d/2010/6328/77

coLophon

issues of technique and craftsmanship as addressed in this chapter are also expounded inyohji yamamoto’s Theory of Fashion Evolution [Yohji Yamamoto no fashion shinkaron],

a series of articles published in the magazine High Fashion in 1986 and 1987.

crediTs

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