Harajuku Doesn’t Care

When I was a kid, I envied girls their wardrobes. They could wear anything—skirts, pants, layered tops, whatever. We were locked into jeans and t-shirts, and that was it. Anything else would’ve made you a freak in the small town where I grew up. Not even a debate.

Tokyo’s still like that in a lot of ways. Conservative, stuck in its categories. But Harajuku’s something else now. More and more kids there just don’t follow the rules.

I met a few of them walking around the ward. Satsuki in what you’d call women’s clothes. Yutaro in skirts. Ayumu just wearing whatever crossed his mind. They weren’t performing it, weren’t making a statement. Just dressed and didn’t care if the label said the clothes were supposed to be for someone else.

What got me was how simple it was to them. Clothes don’t have a gender. They just fit a body or they don’t. They don’t belong to anyone. When I asked if people gave them shit about it, they looked confused—like of course people did, but why would that matter? The gender thing is what’s weird, not the clothes.

It’s catching on. Kids all over Harajuku are like this now. Enough that it barely registers as rebellion anymore. That’s when you know something’s actually shifted.