Judson Evans

Japan Journal

Near the Kyoto railroad station, two women in such short skirts they seem almost naked, and such high heels they are hobbled in the awkward struggle to wrestle a neon sandwich board over the threshold of a chain restaurant. An old man with a cane stops to watch. Strikingly determined, powerfully coordinated despite the self-imposed impediments, they wear their sexy outfits like construction-worker's uniforms. In this culture of the geisha, where manga and school-girl porn froth over into street-styles of thirty year old women and even, yesterday, a sixty year old man in school-girl drag, female sexuality remains difficult for an outsider to decipher. But, here, style is at stake, which is always a kind of oppression. More hair-shirt than Victoria's Secret, those skirts and heels are brands of a fiendishly modern self-control.

training the bonsai / with copper wire / windswept style