青出于蓝胜于蓝 日本成功复制美国文化

Shirts
衬衫

A Japanese company called Kama-kura Shirts opened on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in 2012, just blocks from Brooks Brothers and J. Press, the icons of American preppy wear, what cognoscenti call "trad"and the Japanese call "Ivy style." (Never mind that Brooks Brothers is owned by the Italians, J. Press by the Japanese.) I track down Kamakura’s founder, Yoshio Sadasue, at his headquarters in Tokyo, above a Kamakura Shirts in Ebisu. He is sharply dressed in his trademark style: a button-down shirt with a distinctive collar roll, what Sadasue considers the essential feature of his design. I ask why a Japanese manufacturer opened a New York store to sell American-style shirts to Americans.
一家名为kamakura的生产衬衫的日本公司2012年在曼哈顿的麦迪逊广场开业了。距离布鲁克斯兄弟和普莱斯店面只有几个街区之远。这两家公司是美国生产毕业生礼服的代表性企业，行家们把这种服装称为“传统式”，而日本人称作“艾维式”。（不用说布鲁克斯兄弟公司老板是意大利人，而普莱斯的老板是日本人。）我在位于东京ebisu的公司总部找到了kamakura的创始人，sadasue。他笔挺地穿着该公司标志性产品，领尖带有纽扣的衬衫以及独特的领口设计——sadasue认为这是该公司产品的重要特征。我问到为何日本公司会在纽约开店，售卖美式的衬衫给美国人。

"This style originated in America, of course," Sadasue says. "But there was a period of time when Americans forgot their own style."
他说“这种式样确实产生于美国，但美国人忘记了他们自己的这种样式已经很久了。”

Kamakura Shirts are made in Japan. Sadasue doesn’t sell them through department stores or other retailers because he wants to keep prices low and profits high, particularly for the independent factories that produce for him. As with Tateno at Workers, there is an undercurrent of respect for what those factories do and a strong desire to make sure that they can keep doing it in Japan.
kamakura衬衫在日本制造。sadasue并没有通过百货商店或者其他零售商出售，因为他想保持低价，获取高利润，特别是要让为他们生产产品的工厂获得低价和高利润。就像Workers品牌创始人Tateno一样，这些企业家对日本工厂总是充满敬意，并且强烈的希望这些日本工厂可以继续坚持下去。

This movement of American style across the ocean to Japan and back to America with a Japanese twist is happening more frequently. The most famous example is probably Daiki Suzuki, who was design director for the quintessentially American brand Woolrich Woolen Mills and now produces his own menswear line—Engineered Garments, a Japanese-run American brand that manufactures its unique take on vintage Americana in New York and sells it in both Japan and the U.S. One of his former employees, Shinya Hasegawa, now has a Brooklyn-based line called Battenwear that offers his interpretation of American outdoor wear from the ’60s to the ’80s. I had never encountered the brand in the States, but I found it in Kyoto.
美国风格漂洋过海来到日本，再经过日本改造后返回美国，这样的情景屡见不鲜。最著名的例子或许是suzki，他曾是经典的美国品牌Wolrich woolen mills的总设计师，目前建立了自己的男装企业——工程用服装公司——这是在纽约的一个日本人经营的美国企业，产品采用独特的老款美国设计，向日本和美国出售。曾经的职员hasegawa现在也在布鲁克林拥有了一家名为battenwear的工厂，对60到80年代的美国户外服装进行自己的诠释和生产。我从未在美国见过这个品牌，但我在东京发现了它。

Part of what’s going on is simply the globalization of taste, culture, cuisine and the way that, in the modern world, you can get almost anything everywhere. But Japanese Americana is more than that. There’s a special way that the Japanese sensibility has focused on what is great, distinctive and worthy of protection in American culture, even when Americans have not realized the same thing. It isn’t a passing fad. It’s a long-standing part of Japanese culture, and, come to think of it, as more Americans are exposed to U.S. products revived or reinterpreted by Japanese designers, the aesthetic is becoming part of American culture, too. If you ever wonder which of the reigning American tastes, sounds, designs or styles will last into the future, there’s no better place to answer that question than in the stores and restaurants, the bars and studios of Japan. They often know us better than we know ourselves.
在现代，品味，文化，美食和烹饪方式正在发生全球化， 你几乎可以在任何地方获得任何东西。但是日本人对美国文化的应用并非如此而已。当美国人自身还未察觉的时候，日本人却能凭借敏感的审美找到美国文化中那些好的，独特的，有保护价值的精华。这并非是他们一时的兴趣，而是一种长久以来就存在的日本文化。而且，想想看，当更多美国人接触到了被日本设计师们复兴并重新诠释的的美国商品时，这种日本的审美也逐渐变成了美国文化的一部分。如果你还想知道哪些地方将会在未来引领美国人的味觉、听觉、设计以及风格样式的潮流， 那最好的答案就是日本的商店、餐馆、酒吧和工作室，因为他们通常比我们更加了解我们自己。