The Fashion Statements of Dazai Osamu: Sartorial and Literary Expressions of Gender in Wartime Japan.

Japanese life changed dramatically from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries with the influx of western influences. As anthropologist Toby Slade explains, "the adjustment to mass, industrial, urban life was intensified in Japan because of its speed, with Japan starting to develop industrially much later than England, Germany, or America, and compounded by the perceived further alienation of modernity, which was seen as foreign, rapidly replacing traditional culture and identity. Throughout Japan's uniquely condensed and fraught modernization, clothing - a particularly intimate and visible aspect of quotidian life - was charged with symbolic weight. In addition to architecture and food, fashion was among the spheres of life that the Japanese state targeted for systematic updating. The Alliance to Reform Everyday Life took shape in 1920 as a conglomerate of government bureaucrats, educators, and leaders from various industries, and outlined a need to supply the populace with simpler, more functional, and more hygienic alternatives to traditional kimonos. The National Citizen Dress Decree that was passed in November 1940 under the auspices of the wartime government's Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of War stemmed from such earlier discussions.[UNC Library]