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

Hozumi secretly wrote the accompanying text, proclaiming the group to be “seven Ivy samurai.”

An early advertisement (left) and sales tag (right) for Big John jeans 1968. (©Big John)

Stewart Brand asked American youth to forget meaningless, fleeting trends of mass culture and go back to building civilization with their own hands.

Kensuke Ishizu in Ōsaka during the early years of VAN Jacket, 1954. (Courtesy of the Ishizu family)

From that point forward, Japanese law enforcement worried less about the menace of clean-cut American youth fashion. In fact, they were so impressed with Ivy style that they asked Ishizu to redesign their uniforms.

By the first decade of the twenty-first century, hip-hop lyrics referenced Japanese streetwear brands A Bathing Ape and Evisu as conspicuous accoutrements of a lavish lifestyle. Meanwhile, savvy shoppers in New York’s Soho or London’s West End came to prefer Japanese chain UNIQLO over the Gap.

The widespread adoption of American style in Japan took several decades, but the very beginning can be traced back to a single individual—Kensuke Ishizu. Ishizu was born on October 20, 1911, the second son of a prosperous paper wholesaler in the southwestern city of Okayama. 1911 happened to be the very last year of the Meiji Era, a period that mar

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.