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What's this? Review of zyappu magazine.

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Impressions: The magazine's Editor-in-Chief, IZIMA Kaoru (see a bio in PhotoWho'sWho), is a well-established fashion photographer and TV commercial director. He is also out to change things in Japan's fashion scene. Just look at this magazine. You'll see something that you'll never see in any other magazine. The entire magazine is written in romanized Japanese or romaji.. It makes it mighty difficult to read the text for most Japanese. When the magazine first started, the text was in normal Japanese. But he later started incorporating more and more romanized text until the entire magazine's text (except advertisements) used romaji. Izima says that change is necessary for Japan to be a cultural leader and that Japan must find "threads to bind us together, and roman letters can be one of these threads."

Note the name of the magazine. He uses a derogatory term for Japanese and Japanese-Americans. First it was spelled "jap," and now it's "zyappu." The pronunciation remains the same in Japanese. The reasoning for this is that he wants to take something negative and turn it into something positive. He very well may have succeeded. After all, when I pick up the magazine these days, the name no longer reminds me of the derogatory term anymore.

In any case, we must credit Izima for being original, creative, and progressive. Qualities which most Japanese fashion magazines and editors lack. (They keep copying or imitating Western fashion magazines.) His photos are stunning and original. (Sometimes he uses the alias name "Arizona Goro" in the photo credits.) The magazine's format makes you forget that it's a fashion magazine. It looks more like a portrait photo book. It does not follow the conventional catalog format which most fashion magazines are based on. But as evident by the photo captions citing the brand and price of each piece of clothing worn by the model, it definitely is a fashion magazine, albeit a very unconventional one

One regular feature is the "Zyoyu Satuzin Ziken" (Serial Murders of Actresses) series. This series feature surrealistic photos of an imaginary murder of a famous Japanese actress who lies dead in a river, road, or elsewhere while wearing brand-name clothing which is cited in the text. Some digital retouching must have been used for these photos. I'm sure they didn't have Tomita Yasuko float in the dirty Meguro River! (Footnote: Kaoru Izima has told me that she indeed was floating in the river for this shoot. No digital retouching was done on any of the photos in this series.)*

The magazine also contains interviews, columns, and classified ads. I wonder who actually reads the text. Perhaps only the headlines, but surely no one reads the entire romanized text! (Reviewed by Philbert Ono)

* In early 1999, a photo book titled "Sitai no aru 20 no hûkei" showing 20 installments of this "Serial Murders of Actresses" series was published. See a review here.

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