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The new faces, the old historical names, the remembered
biography of some hero who perhaps sits opposite to me in
gold-laced uniform calmly enjoying the foies-gras and champagne
as if there were never a blood-stained page in his
country’s history – all this appeals strongly to one’s dramatic
appreciations. 23
As I mentioned earlier, Western-style banquets were not only designed to
impress foreign dignitaries with Japan’s ability to become ‘civilized’, but
were also used to strengthen the authority of the new political leadership
in the domestic arena. Cultural conformity with the ‘West’ maintained by
the Japanese aristocracy and government officials was a method of acquiring
authority through the use of the powerful Western image. Members of
the elite became the creators of fashions, confirming their superior position
within Japanese society.
Based on the fashion theory of Kon Wajirō (1888–1973), the cultural
historian Kumakura Isao argues that the creators of fashions in premodern
Japan were not those closely associated with political power, but
wealthy urbanites with relatively low social status. New trends were created
Progressive Japanese at a Western table, from Seiyō ryōri seitsū (1901).
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