Foreign Exchange
This is supposed to be the stuff of rarefied urban myth: the Japanese record collector who snaps up a rare Elvis Sun-label single for $1,500. The Tokyo store owner who brings home a suitcase of American thrift store sweaters for $7,000. The Japanese youth who picks up a pair of 2-year-old Nike Air Jordans at the flea market--for $600.
But it is reality. And it’s our stuff.
The Japanese are crazy for America’s hand-me-downs, from old, stinky shoes to ‘50s-era toys to high-end, used couture. Every month, hundreds of Japanese vintage-shop owners and their buyers fly into Los Angeles International Airport, fists full of cash, ready to comb through used clothing stores, rummage through thrift shops and, especially, dash through the Rose Bowl flea market like shoppers at an after-Christmas sale.
At the monthly Rose Bowl meet, buyers line up 10 wide and 100 deep at first light for first crack at the goods. When the turnstiles open at 6 a.m., Japanese shoppers, duffel bags at the ready, carts in tow, burst into the swap meet like horses from the gate. They scatter through the converted parking lot while many vendors still struggle to set up stands. They seek goods they can sell for at least three times what they paid to a quick-change Japanese market enamored with Americana and obsessed with authenticity.
“I sell to shops and flea markets in Japan,” says buyer Masaya Uchida, 28, as he flips through a rack of women’s ‘70s-era “baby Ts.” “I sell some stuff for 10 times what I pay.”
This drives some area thrift-store and flea-market prices higher than a Tokyo skyscraper ($30 for a very used T-shirt; $50 and even more for sweatshirts) and prompts the question of whether American discards are trash or treasure. Pop culture, some would argue, is the United States’ only true original art form.
“One of the problems we have in America is that when we find something new we tend to discard the old,” says Todd Boyd, a USC professor and popular culture expert. “We have to have a deeper appreciation for those things which belong to us . . . an appreciation for history.”
The Japanese have a history of coveting American pop artifacts, beginning in the ‘70s when aficionados began collecting classic jazz records of the ‘40s and ‘50s. In the ‘80s, they began importing classic American lowriders and muscle cars. The ‘90s have seen a new mining of stateside discards.
While the air has been let out of the booming Japanese economy of the ‘80s, the yen still pummels the dollar. Thus, healthy profits are guaranteed for these importers.
These days, Japanese record collectors have delved into almost every pre-1980 genre of pop, from girl groups to classic rock to ‘70s funk and early, “old school” hip-hop. While this means that some classic Coltrane and magnificent Miles records are hard to find, even vinyl editions of popular rap records are nearly impossible to locate. The Japanese are voracious, snapping up records in poorer conditions and paying top dollar without bargaining, says Jim Philbrook, editor and publisher of Record Convention News newsletter.
“It’s what I call vinyl drain,” he says. “There’s an upward trend in vinyl prices, and I’m sure it helps that the Japanese don’t blink when you name a price.”
Indeed, prices have climbed steadily in recent years as CDs have become the dominant format and vinyl has become a limited resource. The spring ’97 Rare Record Report newsletter says the last quarter of record trading saw three times as many rising prices as falling ones. Now, four-digit price tags for rare records are not so rare, says Editor Gordon Wrubel:
“It’s our own fault. There are no more of these records being made. What we have here is what we have.”
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In fashion, the fickle Japanese market has diversified from its famous appetite for vintage blue jeans (draining the U.S. of much of its cache of 19th century Levi’s) and Nike Air Jordans, and has waded into classic sweaters, sweatshirts and older sneakers.
“They certainly started by setting the pace for the vintage Levi’s market,” says Elizabeth Mason, publisher of the Rag Street Journal, a vintage clothing newsletter. “Then it moved into Nikes. And now they’ve moved into ‘40s and ‘50s sweaters and sweatshirts.”
And beyond.
“Somehow,” Mason says, “I wish some of it would stay in this country.”
Classic chrome Osterizers, Art Deco desks, old animation cels, big-finned toy cars from the ‘50s--all fetch top dollar from Japanese buyers at the Rose Bowl.
The flea market, held the second Sunday of each month, is a spectacle of cash flow. One Japanese man pays $550 for a beat up Langlitz biker jacket, while steps away another hands over $25 for a generic-looking pair of used baby Nike high tops.
Meanwhile, Hiroko Ishikawa angles for antique furniture and kitchenware to sell in her shop in Kyoto. “I carry everything from Victorian to ‘70s for the young people,” Ishikawa, 52, says. “This stuff is global. It’s now going all over the world.”
A few aisles over, a Japanese woman who will not give her name examines used toys, searching for something to take back to her store in Okinawa. She says she has $3,000 to spend--by lunchtime: “I’m looking for anything we feel is American.”
Nearby, Coco Nagayasu pays up to $40 for used handbags, usually woven, mainly from the ‘70s. She owns two stores in Japan that sell new clothes and says, “The vintage bags are an added attraction.”
But some Rose Bowl prices are so high, they represent clear attempts at gauging and even bring up the issue of discrimination. One Japanese man picks out a pair of undistinguished khakis from a pile of pants on the ground. They are clearly pinned with a price tag: $5. When he brings them up to a table to pay for them, the seller says they are $25.
At another table, brand-new replicas of vintage Levi’s sell for $350--while they can be had at retail shops for less than $200.
Why so much? “I don’t know,” says the salesman. “My boss sets the price.”
Many buyers know the prices are steep. They don’t care. Rose Bowl vendors tailor their wares for the Japanese, offering convenience for buyers with a lot of money but little time. Some buyers, however, have begun to scour thrift stores and swap meets from San Diego to Santa Barbara.
“I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” says toy buyer Tokihiki Takamatso, 40, of Osaka. “It’s gotten very expensive. So I also go to garage sales in Long Beach, Santa Monica and Pasadena.”
He clutches what appears to be an old Superman poster: “Young people dream about America. Japanese kids like American stuff.”
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Is it anything we’ll miss?
That’s an interesting question, since America has been importing culture from other countries for centuries, from our polyglot language to our confused cuisine to our international musical tastes.
Even today, cutting-edge youth culture appropriates Japanese animation styles (a la “Speed Racer”) for use on CD covers and night club advertisements. Chinese-style character fonts--by way of Japan--are hip in the world of graphic illustration too. Martial arts are all over the movies--and are even in rap songs. And our museums are filled with the art of Europe, Latin America and, yes, Asia.
Still, some lament that America has a disposable mentality, when pop culture, they argue, is all we have to hold on to our past. In some cases, what is pop today crosses into art tomorrow--such as a first-edition, pre-rock Harptones album from the early ‘50s. It will be cherished as an artifact. And probably never played again.
“We have a fast-food culture,” laments USC professor Boyd. “We buy quickly, eat on the run and move on. Soon we will have to buy back that which belongs to us--from somebody else.”
