Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2012
Refracted through an outsider’s lens, places appear different. At Frenchman Adrien le Danois’s Tokyo Decadance events, competing Japanese pop memes are thrown together willy-nilly. Cosplay meets goth-loli meets gyaru, yamambaru and fashionista.
“They tend to stick to their own kind,” le Danois confides at his Shinjuku Decabar about starting the night a few years ago. “So I lied. I didn’t tell them I was going to invite people from different scenes. And it worked. We had hundreds people at the first Tokyo Decadance. It was a crazy scene with all the different subcultures, but it was a blast.”
Nodding occasionally to outlandishly garbed staff who flit in and out, le Danois relates how his interest in Japan—like that of sizable numbers of Frenchmen—began as a kid. “The American Dream faded and was replaced by the Japanese Dream—people realized they were looking for something different,” he recalls. “People were into judo for example, but at first they didn’t even know it was Japanese.”
Le Danois was transfixed by Japanese fashions early on and notes that “French people love Japan in general—the Japan Expo is the biggest Japanese culture event in the world.”
After a few years in events production—and a stint as David Guetta’s assistant—le Danois arrived in Tokyo at 21. Tokyo Decadance has gathered more steam than he possibly could have imagined for an event that he launched as a sayonara party for a friend in 2005.
“It’s a cosplay night at heart but I didn’t want to limit it,” says le Danois, who cites manga like Dragon Ball and GUNNM as inspirations for his own look. “People need to dress up and look nice when they go out. But we do get a lot of maniac types, which gives us a certain reputation and brings out repressed people looking for sex.”
The sounds at Tokyo Decadance (a reference to the 1992 Ryu Murakami SM film Tokyo Decadence) hew to the sort of house-techno-electro mix you might hear at a hundred clubs across Japan. But punters’ costumes and the otherworldly atmosphere make the event a standout.
“Japanese clubs are pretty boring to be frank,” le Danois says. “Places like Womb and Ageha aren’t working to offer clubbers a good experience—they just leave it to the promoter. And the DJs don’t respond to the crowd either. They just stick to their sets.”
Bursting with manic energy, le Danois has taken Tokyo Decadance to 16 countries from Slovenia to Mexico, hosting 2,000 people for the Paris edition. In addition to promoting his own events he also manages Japanese artists’ overseas tours.
“In Europe, Japan is still booming, but Japanese aren’t good at selling their culture overseas,” he remarks about the Cool Japan phenomenon. “It’s hard to work with the Japanese entertainment industry.”
With an understanding of both Japanese pop culture and foreign markets, le Danois may be better placed to present Japanese culture overseas than the Japanese entertainment industry itself. He says the problem begins with the talent. “Japanese artists are obedient when a big company like Avex is footing the bill,” he comments. “But when I brought Japanese artists to interviews in France they said such silly things it was embarrassing.”
Le Danois was attracted to Japan by the freewheeling approach of the cosplay and other fashion tribes that attend Decadance. But as his knowledge of the country has deepened, his views have changed. “I had the perception that Japanese are free to express themselves, but having lived here a while I realize it’s not so,” he says. “There are spheres of life—fashion for instance—where Japanese are free. But in their personal and work lives, they are very circumscribed.”
The shock of the new may have worn off for Tokyo Decadance, but le Danois is not content to let the event stand still. He’s buzzing with new ideas and recent nights have taken thematic approaches like “Animals” and “Oedo.”
Held at the vast, neo-gothic Christon Café on busy Yasukuni dori in Shinjuku, the night attracts an eclectic mix of Japanese and gaijin. Europeans predominate among the foreigners but recently Decadance hosts growing numbers of Chinese and other Asians.
Some punters come dressed to the nines; others come simply to gawk. “Decadance appeals to otaku, but on the other hand regular people who haven’t done cosplay before can discover that side of themselves,” le Danois observes. “Sometimes they go overboard. We once had a salaryman having sex on the dance floor.”
