East Asian inter-city cultural flows transmitted streetwear across the region

Evidence

Wong Kar-wai was a fan of Japanese surrealist romantic author Haruki Murakami, and perhaps the similarity in sentiment is what attracted Japanese audiences in the late 1990s to his films Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, and Happy Together. Among his admirers was Nigo, founder of the Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape. Frequent visits to Hong Kong deepened Nigo’s connection to the city and to local comedian-actor Eric Kot, who had collaborated on the 1998 Wong tribute film First Love: The Litter on the Breeze. Kot convinced Nigo to bring BAPE to Hong Kong, leading to the 1999 opening of the brand’s first international boutique—accessible only to members with a Hong Kong passport and a scheduled appointment. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 753

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the book’s argument about regional cultural circulation preceding and feeding the global omnivore monoculture.