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【Brother Bao’s Take】In other articles about Yohji Yamamoto, you might see nothing but cool fashion. But in this piece, you’ll get an unfiltered glimpse into Yohji Yamamoto’s inner world—his lean-toward-emptiness philosophy. This article comes from “A Flower Tablet,” a WeChat account run byLENSa magazine that Brother Bao really, really likes.LENSWhat makes this visual magazine so unusual isn’t just its mind-blowingly cool images. It’s also the magazine’s heavy topics and delicate text, which, together with the visuals, often give Brother Bao a powerful feeling—as if God were watching the human world. Anyone who sharesLENSthis interest, please leave a message for Brother Bao in the comments.
Yohji Yamamoto smokes like a chimney, pretty much chain-smoking one cigarette after another. He speaks just as fiercely: “If my career doesn’t succeed, I guess crime is all that’s left for me.”
This old guy throws punches at the real world in his own way, and then, a bunch of people just go down.
“After my father’s funeral, as a child I rode my tricycle along the paths between the rice fields, pedaling and pedaling until the sun set.”
“Ancient Japanese culture found beauty in the exposed nape of the neck and the curve of the back. At some point, that sense of beauty faded and disappeared, and both men and women became numb to such aesthetics.”
“Just like people, fabric has its own life. When fabric is left alone for a year or two and goes through natural shrinkage, its true charm emerges. Every thread has its own life, maturing over the years. Only after going through such a process does the fabric reveal its once-hidden beauty.”
“When a man and woman spend the night together, in the morning the woman may say, ‘I’m going to take a shower, let me borrow this.’ Then she puts on a white fabric shirt that’s too big for her. The loose shirt unexpectedly complements the curves of her body, and its sheen seems to glide along her décolletage... When making clothes, I’ve always been fascinated by this kind of unintentional charm.”
At the 25th anniversary party of Pina Bausch’s dance company, Yohji Yamamoto held a fashion show.
Takeshi Kitano invited Yohji Yamamoto to design costumes for films like “Brother” and “Dolls.”
“I chase a woman from behind. If she turns around, it’s all over. That’s precisely why I just keep pursuing—pursuing her back.”
“What could be more luxurious than solitude?”
“I have zero sexual interest in women who flaunt their charms. On the contrary, the back of a woman focused on working the sewing machine, or the side profile of one intently sewing clothes—those things stir intense desire in me. I deeply crave to respect, to help those women who hold their place in society and fight for their livelihoods.”
“I remember once, my then-girlfriend went out for work. When she came home, I had fallen asleep on the sofa because I was so tired. That’s the kind of man I was—someone who paid attention to her. After midnight, when she got home and saw I was still waiting for her, she muttered, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever understood how cute men can be.’” And what she said has stayed in my mind ever since.
“There are some women who’ve lived through hellish lives, tasted every flavor of human existence. Sometimes, their sorrow rises from their bodies like incense smoke, then vanishes into ash. But the scent of sorrow never clings to them. These are the well-educated, noble women.”
“The most fundamental sorrow of humanity is forgetting to doubt the meaning of existence, blindly following the footsteps of modernism.”
“The thing I hate most is those people or things that seem great.”
“They’ve already been tamed by the world—their consciousness isn’t much different from that of pigs.”
“I don’t like pyramids, and I don’t believe in so-called enlightenment. What exists in this world is a bunch of people giving their all to create something flawless. In contrast, there are those who fully understand human limitations and the inevitability of imperfection, yet bravely struggle against everything reality forces upon them—and only such people can understand the beauty in shame.”
“People are obsessed with the progress of civilization, but I’m not just skeptical—I feel an overwhelming disgust toward it. No matter how much society advances, how much it progresses, humans can never escape their destiny as humans.”
“Life, in the end, is nothing more than a tear-jerking farce. How many literary classics are there that you’ll never have to read in your whole life? Will I die without even experiencing an affair with a married woman?”
“How I long to finish what I need to do and go back quickly. Back to the loneliness I know so well, back to my mother’s womb.”
“Getting older, I can now clearly hear the sound of my cells dying off, one by one… When the heavy iron door of the crematorium closes, I think, next will be me.”