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# 04 IDENTITY #
Myojo 2006.10



There's a closet in my room which holds everything I am up to now. Clothes I recently bought and like a lot, clothes I have since way back that are almost worn to shreds, clothes I have worn just a couple of times because I got fed up with them, I love clothes so much that I have bought quite a lot so far. And among those clothes in that closet is one veteran who has always won the battle among the western style clothing.

There's this one face that makes me happy by even looking at it. It has been victorious in the western clothing battle for a long time now, and I bought it when I went shopping together with Massu at the time I appeared in "3nen Bgumi Kinpachi-sensei" [Note: 2001-2002, Shige was 14]. It's a rock-style pair of jeans with paint on it. From when I was in second class of middle school, I continued to wear it regularly, and whenever I met Massu while wearing it, it was a sort of habit between us that he would always point at it and say "You're wearing it again!" It's a pair of pants that I just keep on loving even as my taste in clothes changes.

But it's not only that kind of clothes. There are also my silver shoes that I had finally gotten after having wanted them at any cost. The first time I was wearing them, I met a friend by coincidence and he made fun of me, saying "Wow, that's some shoes." I couldn't bear it and stowed them in the very back of the store room.

When I think back on it, the first time I developped an interest in clothes was in the first class of middle school [Note: Shige was 12]. When the Jimusho senpai were into a special brand featuring an ape, together with the senpai I admired I came to admire the brand [Note: "A bathing ape", there are paparazzi pics showing Koyama and Kusano wearing shirts of that brand too]. And so the boy who absolutely wasn't materialistic came to like dressing himself up bit by bit. My taste changed from street clothing to more adult clothes, and now I'm a fan of certain designers and wear a lot of punk style clothes. I came to choose my clothes being influenced by someone else.

But when I entered university, the way I thought about my clothes began to change. There's a good friend I have since middle school who has been into stylish clothes for a long time, and when we talked about what made a cool guy, we would frequently use the expression "someone with a sense of self". To have a sense of self. In other words, to wear clothes that one wants to wear, to express one's personality to other people, "this is me". Even though my close friend likes a completely different style of clothes, whenever we met a person like that we both felt "This is someone who has a sense of self!"

I got more opportunity to look at the private clothes of others at uni [Note: as opposed to middle and high school when you have to wear a school uniform] and started to want to be someone like that too, someone with a sense of self. It doesn't matter if it suits me or not. I thought I'm going to wear the clothes I want to wear. That is my individuality. Even so, it's not just wearing clothes that are different from anyone else's. Among many individualistic styles, the majority of what people are wearing becomes what is called fashion. Even if the clothes you pick are sometimes a part of that fashion, if you wear them not because you imitate someone, but because you want to, there exists individuality. People who aren't into clothes have individuality in their not dressing up. If different people wear the same clothes, they still look different depending on the person. Fashion is how people express their own ways of thinking in their outward appearance, and no one has the right to denounce them.

Some time ago I took out the silver shoes from the back of the store room. There was "me" in them, after all. Those shoes that I had given up on wearing after losing against the opinion of people around me, I think I'm going to try wearing them again. Because not wearing them is the same as denying myself to be me.

Someone said the following.
"With shoes, wear good ones. Because they are going to lead you to happy places."

The silver shoes lead me to the happiness that is my own individuality. I will become a man who will be able to wear strange shoes as if they weren't strange at all.

Translated by riccichan

* Do not repost/retranslate w/o permission *

Labels: Kato Shigeaki, ROCK STAR