袴 and the justice of fashion

We were at the department store today and I picked up a catalog for women’s hakama rental (I could only get this site to work in the quite dated Internet Explorer, so those with other browsers follow along with the excerpts sub.)

Hakama are a sort of pleated skirt worn by men and by women over kimono. In certain incarnations, particularly for women, they represent the height of world fashion. What’s preciously modern about the combinations being peddled by these merchants is the pairings with boots. There’s something so singularly classy about this look, and the attached instructions for how to sit and navigate stairs properly, that makes one yearn for the 明治時代, when Japan was still on the cusp of acculturating to European modi operandi.

But if Japan has so consistently and ably adopted the European habit, why does the opposite seem so ridiculous. Any immigrant arrayed in kimono or hakama would be struck plumb center with the label “gone native.” This isn’t to say there aren’t appropriate functions: e.g., Sarah wears a kimono while performing tea ceremony because it’s the only appropriate thing to wear; I also own a yukata, but I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never had occasion to wear it. Back home these would be great at the costume ball but ridiculous at any other time. There is a hidden injustice here; the same injustice that prevents a boy from wearing a skirt to school.* So perhaps my real complaint to this: namely, why don’t I get to wear these?

* See David Foster Wallace’s Authority and American Usage on this point.