午夜剧场

I was a child who loved looking through encyclopedias. In the entry for "French Cinema" under the letter "F," there was a still from "Breathless," Jean-Luc Godard's masterpiece. Jean Seberg in a "Herald Tribune" T-shirt and Jean-Paul Belmondo, looking like a hoodlum with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, walking down the Champs-?lysées. In an instant, I thought, "This is it!" That was my first encounter with the 1960s.

The name of my shop, "Anouchka," was taken from "Anouchka Films," the production company Godard founded with his wife and muse, actress Anna Karina. In "Pierrot le Fou," Anna delivers a monologue: "What should I do? What do I want to do?" She was me. I didn't know what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. After graduating from university, I started working as a writer, but there was a gap between what clients wanted and what I wanted to write. I wanted to move from an invisible service industry to a tangible business. I was also exhausted by life in the city center. It was then that a friend invited me to visit Kokubunji. In that casual town of Musashino, dripping with greenery, I took a deep breath. I caught a faint scent of the remnants of 1960s counterculture. In 1987, "Anouchka" opened in the Kokubunji Mansion (which, coincidentally, was completed in 1968). Since then, I have been dealing in British 1960s vintage clothing and accessories.

Why the 60s? The second reason is Twiggy. I saw her on TV when she came to Japan in 1967. A skinny model born in Britain. When Japanese women witnessed Twiggy in a miniskirt, they all shortened their hemlines at once. Twiggy was a social phenomenon.

And the Rolling Stones. In 1972, NHK's "Young Music Show" broadcast their 1969 Hyde Park concert. As a junior high school student, I was instantly captivated, and from that day on, my "pilgrimage" to the Stones began. I was also mesmerized by the fashion of their glamorous girlfriends. The magic cast by Godard, Twiggy, and the Stones has not yet worn off. This January, I published "Anouchka's '60s-'70s British Vintagetopia: Deciphering London Fashion through 31 A-to-Z Keywords and Visuals." It chronicles the path I have dedicated to 1960s fashion and culture. It is not mere nostalgia, but a journey to that era as a discovery.