Japan’s Anything-Goes Mentality

Japan’s anything-goes mentality

As she wondered what to wear to a recent outdoor festival featuring rock, funk, reggae and rave artists, Ami Ishimatsu found something appropriate, for contemporary Japan at least. She matched funky Converse basketball shoes, blue jeans, and a Thai hill tribe jacket and handbag with her lip ring and a tattoo of a Buddhist lotus flower under her navel, all topped by clip-on dreadlocks imported from someone’s head in Jamaica and scrubbed clean for 8,000 yen, or about $65.