8/21/2006

This salaryman-gone-bad trend, choiwaru oyaji ( ちょい悪おやじ), is just a repackaging of the odd Japanese-English term “dandy” (ダンディ) which in Japanese is a positive compliment. Dressing like a peacock is normal for present-day yakuza and stretches back to the days of showy samurai in silks.

Japan’s Aging Salarymen Get Chic, Swap Suits for Trendy Blazers
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) …Japan’s growing band of “choiwaru oyaji,” or “middle-aged man who are a bit bad.” …
….fueled by an economic recovery, and the government urging men to lighten up on formal work attire to help prune summer air-conditioning bills. “Magazines these days are using the term choiwaru oyaji to describe an older guy who has something sexy about him,” said Saburo Makino, a fashion industry worker in the capital, who wore tight black jeans, a chest-baring white shirt and gold jewelry, and declined to give his age…more...

I couldn’t quite place it until my friend “Mulboyne” reminded that it was Ichiro Kishida, 55, the editor-in-chief of the popular fashion magazine for middle aged men, “Leon,” who created the term ‘choiwaru oyaji‘.

I was wondering what the connection was between the google search term ‘choiwaru oyaji‘ (ちょい悪おやじ) and the fashion magazine “Leon” (named after the character of the Luc Besson film) with the cover featuring the same “dandy” gaijin every month, hee, hee.

Hint: The first magazine cover with John Mark Karr is my Photoshop fake and the second one is a real “LEON” cover.