2024/11/09 by Camila Gutiérrez, Kendra McDuffie · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Digital Games and Media #Fashion and Cultural Textiles #Japanese History and Culture
paper · doi:10.1080/1362704x.2024.2418167
openalex publication_date 2024/11/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13
This article consists of a translation and contextualizing essay which brings the research of Japanese fashion illustrator and scholar of fashion illustration Nagasawa Sachiko to an English-language audience for the first time. The preceding contextualizing essay gives background information on Nagasawa and the period of fashion history when this article emerged, and argues for the importance of Nagasawa’s fashion research to scholars of visual studies and fashion studies. Nagasawa’s article “The Transition of Fashion Illustration in Japan” posits a genealogy of fashion illustration, locating the origins of this genealogy in Edo period (1601–1868) ukiyo-e woodblock prints. She proposes that there are many analogous terms within the broad sense of “fashion illustration,” but that they can be categorized into three streams which have been discussed separately until this study: “lyrical pictures,” “fashion illustration (narrow sense),” and “style pictures or fashion design pictures.” Nagasawa summarizes existing scholarship, identifying important gaps, and investigates the relationships between these streams. In order to familiarize English-language readers with a style of scholarly writing that is underrepresented in anglophone contexts, the contextualizing essay also provides background on the expository prose and rhetoric of Japanese academic articles.