Naked in Harajuku and Other Successful Communication Strategies

Tokyo has a relationship with English that I find genuinely charming and slightly clarifying. The kids in Harajuku wear T-shirts that say things like WONDERDRUG or BEAGLE or NAKED in capital letters across the chest, and the meaning is entirely beside the point—what matters is the visual register of Western signifiers, which confer a particular kind of cool regardless of whether any actual communication is occurring. Language as texture. Punctuation as decoration.

A Japanese TV program went to the streets of Harajuku, Akihabara, and Shimokitazawa—Tokyo’s centers of youth fashion, electronics-and-anime culture, and indie bohemia respectively—to ask the kids what their shirts actually said. The answers ranged from rough approximations to cheerful incomprehension. The girl wearing NAKED knew the word. She did not appear to be troubled by it.

The funny thing is that Western kids do the exact same thing with Japanese characters. I’ve seen people with tattoos that supposedly said "warrior" or "serenity" that by all available evidence probably said "beef noodle soup." The difference is that I’d feel humiliated discovering my shirt said something wrong. The Japanese kids seemed entirely unbothered—the text is texture, the visual rhythm is the point, and meaning is optional. Maybe that’s the more functional philosophy.