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Ametora
- How Japan Saved American Style
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Look closely at any typically "American" article of clothing these days, and you may be surprised to see a Japanese label inside. From high-end denim to oxford button-downs, Japanese designers have taken the classic American look - known as ametora, or "American traditional" - and turned it into a huge business for companies like Uniqlo, Kamakura Shirts, Evisu, and Kapital.
This phenomenon is part of a long dialogue between Japanese and American fashion; in fact many of the basic items and traditions of the modern American wardrobe are alive and well today thanks to the stewardship of Japanese consumers and fashion cognoscenti, who ritualized and preserved these American styles during periods when they were out of vogue in their native land.
In Ametora, cultural historian W. David Marx traces the Japanese assimilation of American fashion over the past 150 years, showing how Japanese trendsetters and entrepreneurs mimicked, adapted, imported, and ultimately perfected American style, dramatically reshaping not only Japan's culture but also our own in the process.
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What listeners say about Ametora
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Spencer Jackson
- 01-23-22
You must read for anyone interested in Japanese and American style
While I hoped that this book would go into more detail on contemporary Japanese americana like Kapital and Visvim, Improvided every step of the way to the foundations of these brands that we know and love today. This book highlights so many key players who pushed the American aesthetic in Japan, and worked to develop the Japanese Fashion industry we love today. There are wonderful passages about finding vintage Levi’s in cellars of stores in American west. They discuss the Japanese obsession with how to guides and catalogs. The book shares information on how selvage denim came to Japan. As a fashion enthusiast I find myself pulling information from this book out of my brain on a weekly basis.
1 person found this helpful
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- André
- 01-04-21
Must read for anyone who’s into fashion
What a book. This book nicely tells the story of why Japanese fashion and craftsmenship came about and why its world class. I especially loved the chapter where the book talks about Nigo and Hiroshi Fujiwara. Great read for anyone who loves fashion in a deeper level.
1 person found this helpful
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- Marian
- 05-06-17
Great story but terrible narrator.
Is there anything you would change about this book?
The narrator.
What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)
Weak.
How could the performance have been better?
As a professional Japanese linguist I felt the narrator should have used the Japanese order of last name/first name instead of following the western style of first name/last name. Why follow the western style in names when he pronounces Japanese words as a Japanese speaker would while speaking English? At some level pronouncing Japanese words with English inflections is okay - the narration sounds stilted and unnatural when he switches back and forth from English to pronouncing Japanese words as a Japanese native speaker would. Don't mean to be pedantic but linguists will know what I am referring to. The narrator's narration is not smooth plus monotone - which makes for dull listening.
Was Ametora worth the listening time?
No. I should have gotten the hard cover book.
Any additional comments?
I was tempted to return the book based on the narration but enjoyed the content so decided not to.
1 person found this helpful
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- real_goku
- 01-15-23
Absolutely Fantastic!
Ametora is easily the best book I’ve ever read about Japanese Americana. The book has a fantastic pace to it and packs so much education within each chapter.
10/10 would recommend.
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- MikePrimeD
- 10-15-19
Fantastic, fascinating book. Great narrator.
The book itself is a fascinating and colorful topic. If you're into menswear you will love it. I also found the narrator to be very easy to listen to. He did a great job of infusing the words with the right emotions.
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Story
In February 2011 John Galliano, the lauded head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women's wear show. Both were casualties of the war between art and commerce that has raged within fashion for the last two decades.
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Captivating
- By kpaige on 04-15-15
By: Dana Thomas
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Emperor of Japan
- Meiji and His World, 1852-1912
- By: Donald Keene
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 38 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Little has been written about the strangely obscured figure of Meiji himself, the first Japanese emperor ever to meet a European. But now, Donald Keene sifts the available evidence to present a rich portrait not only of Meiji but also of rapid and sometimes violent change during this pivotal period in Japan's history. Emperor of Japan conveys in sparkling prose the complexity of the man and offers an unrivaled portrait of Japan in a period of unique interest.
By: Donald Keene
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The Beautiful Fall
- Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris
- By: Alicia Drake
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, Paris fashion exploded like a champagne bottle left out in the sun. Amid sequins and longing, celebrities and aspirants flocked to the heart of chic, and Paris became a hothouse of revelry, intrigue, and searing ambition. At the center of it all were fashion’s most beloved luminaries - Yves Saint Laurent, the reclusive enfant terrible, and Karl Lagerfeld, the flamboyant freelancer with a talent for reinvention - and they divided Paris into two fabulous halves.
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Fun and immersive -- despite the narrator
- By SBG on 01-10-21
By: Alicia Drake
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Retribution
- The Battle for Japan, 1944 - 45
- By: Max Hastings
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 27 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained unclear. The ensuing drama - that ended in Japan's utter devastation - was acted out across the vast theater of Asia in massive clashes between army, air, and naval forces. In recounting these extraordinary events, Max Hastings draws incisive portraits of MacArthur, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and other key figures of the war in the East.
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A superb study by one of the world's finest histor
- By Easton Reader on 12-22-16
By: Max Hastings
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Worn
- A People's History of Clothing
- By: Sofi Thanhauser
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire.
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Horrors of the industrial revolution Continued
- By Susan on 01-28-22
By: Sofi Thanhauser
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This Is Not a T-Shirt
- A Brand, a Culture, a Community - a Life in Streetwear
- By: Bobby Hundreds
- Narrated by: Bobby Hundreds
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of The Hundreds and the precepts that made it an iconic streetwear brand. The creative force behind the brand, Bobby Kim, a.k.a. Bobby Hundreds, has emerged as a prominent face and voice in streetwear. In telling the story of his formative years, he reminds us that The Hundreds was started by outsiders; and this is truly the story of streetwear culture.
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Bitter sweet
- By Daniel B. on 10-25-19
By: Bobby Hundreds
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Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated
- The Collapse and Revival of American Community
- By: Robert D. Putnam
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures - whether they be PTA, church, or political parties - have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.
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Long Long book
- By William S. Gross on 11-13-17
By: Robert D. Putnam
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Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem
- A Memoir
- By: Daniel R. Day
- Narrated by: Omari Hardwick, Daniel R. Day
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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With his now-legendary store on 125th Street in Harlem, Dapper Dan pioneered high-end streetwear in the 1980s, remixing classic luxury-brand logos into his own innovative, glamorous designs. But before he reinvented haute couture, he was a hungry boy with holes in his shoes, a teen who daringly gambled drug dealers out of their money, and a young man in a prison cell who found nourishment in books. In this remarkable memoir, he tells his full story for the first time.
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Textbook for the Ages
- By Joël j. Sylvain on 07-13-19
By: Daniel R. Day
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Slouching Towards Utopia
- An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
- By: J. Bradford DeLong
- Narrated by: Allan Aquino
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870-2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo.
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Take a tour of Brad DeLong’s mind palace
- By Owen Davis on 10-08-22
Related to this topic
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Overdressed
- The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion
- By: Elizabeth L. Cline
- Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Cheap fashion has fundamentally changed the way most Americans dress. Stores ranging from discounters like Target to fast fashion chains like H&M now offer the newest trends at unprecedentedly low prices. Retailers are producing clothes at enormous volumes in order to drive prices down and profits up, and they've turned clothing into a disposable good.
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Very informative and worth a listen.
- By Suuki on 12-06-18
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The Glitter Plan
- How We Started Juicy Couture for $200 and Turned It into a Global Brand
- By: Pamela Skaist-Levy, Booth Moore, Gela Nash-Taylor
- Narrated by: Rose Itzcovitz
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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While working together at a Los Angeles boutique, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor became fast and furious friends over the impossibility of finding the perfect T-shirt. Following their vision of comfortable, fitted T-shirts, they set up shop in Gela’s one-bedroom Hollywood apartment with $200 and one rule: Whatever they did, they both had to be obsessed by it. Pam and Gela eventually sold their company to Liz Claiborne for $50 million, but not before they created a whole new genre of casual clothing that came to define California cool.
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Elementary, at best
- By Laura Posterick on 09-19-14
By: Pamela Skaist-Levy, and others
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Wild Company
- The Untold Story of Banana Republic
- By: Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler
- Narrated by: George Newbern, Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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With $1,500 and no business experience, Mel and Patricia Ziegler turned a wild idea into a company that would become the international retail colossus Banana Republic. Reimagining military surplus as safari and expedition wear, the former journalist and artist created a world that captured the zeitgeist for a generation and spoke to the creativity, adventure, and independence in everyone.
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Inspiring story
- By Jean on 04-01-16
By: Mel Ziegler, and others