Youth no longer bought things as an avenue towards new experiences—record players to listen to jazz LPs, suits to impress girls, mountain parkas for hiking. Youth fetishized goods as goods.

Popeye helped establish a true skate culture in Japan. Today, the All Japan Skateboard Association recognizes the magazine’s debut as a key moment in the sport’s local history.

Popeye’s focus on California also bolstered the Japanese surfing scene. Japan has dozens of decent beaches, but no one thought to ride the waves until Americans brought the sport to the Chiba and Shōnan beach areas after the war. In 1971, there were fifty thousand official members of Japan’s surfing clubs, but after Popeye turned its attention to s

Ishikawa wanted to call the new magazine “City Boys,” but rival subcultural magazine Takarajima already called itself “The Manual for Cityboys.” Weeks prior, Kinameri saw the cartoon character Popeye’s name written out in English for the first time, and realized that it split into “pop eye.” This would make the perfect magazine name—keeping an “eye

later, “We got the initial idea from the Whole

Made in U.S.A. included a signed blessing from John R. Malott, Economic/Commercial Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Japan, “I believe that this Made in U.S.A. Catalog will introduce America’s present life style, in all its various aspects, to Japan’s young people.”

The team set off to Colorado, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to take photos of three thousand different objects from every walk of American life: Madison Avenue repp ties, cowboys’ Pendleton knockabout cardigans, Jeff Ho’s Zephyr Production surfboards, and the generic shovels, rakes, plows, screwdrivers, and pliers that sat in suburban ga

The anti-materialist allegory Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a bestseller in 1974.

Japanese mass apparel maker Renown took the business suit market by storm in 1971 with seductive commercials for its new D’urban line starring French actor Alain Delon.