Definitely, I am in agreement that “reporting” is poor. An NPR reporter came here recently to write an article and, as far as I could tell, he was just looking for what would seem goofy on the radio while trying to get sex from a Japanese girl. I was less than impressed.

In those times too, silkworm cocoon futures contracts were traded on the Japanese financial markets. I think that’s ended now, probably when they started using foreign silk.

Not about first class expensive kimono, but this is my childhood memory. Up until the middle of the 1970s, my village in Shikoku grew silk worms and sold cocoons three times a year. Haru-ko（春蚕)for spring, natsu-ko（夏蚕)for summer and banshuusan(晩春蚕)for late autumun.
The farmers kept second grade cocoons for their demestic use. I can not believe this, but some village girls put on silk dress(wanpiisu) and went to the elementary school! Those wanpiisues were sewn from the home spun materials. In my memory my favorite wanpiisu was vivid orange in color, and I believed that it was because the threads were dyed with mikan peels. (^.^)
The village grandmothers got together, ventured out to the mountains and harvested ugly tree barks, then they dyed the bundles of white threads through the process of soaking and drying.
I do not believe that many city dwellers had done that.

I have no idea what the photo is, but it’s not a goth geisha. Unless she is trained for years in the arts of conversation, service, music and dance, and applies those arts to serve clientele at very high-priced establishments. Now, if a geisha did do her job in punk makeup and in a black kimono, that would indeed be a goth geisha, but I think Faiola is simply using the word ‘geisha’ here as alliterative shorthand for ‘woman in traditional kimono’. Because not even normal geisha “flaunt attitude” – at least not since tayu and the other oiran of Yoshiwara strolled the streets to her assignations looking very haughty.

Don’t have any problems with his purple prose though.

Do the Japanese wear kimono as much as they once did? Of course not, but anyone who’s watched television or casually glanced at newspaper and magazine photos over the past 50 years knows that. Westerners don’t don formal wear as frequently as they used to either, but tuxedos are still worn by American boys at high school proms and grooms at weddings.

So what? The article isn’t about western clothing, it’s about Japanese clothing. Must the author refer to trends in the west to legitimize the article? To put the piece in context? Not at all. If an author wrote a piece decrying the decline of top hats, would be need to point out a similar decline in rustic Japanese attire? Why should the reverse be true?

Faiola wants to make the point that the number of Japanese wearing kimono at formal occasions is dwindling to such an extent an entire culture is threatened.

No he doesn’t.

Twenty-five years ago, production of Nishijin kimonos and obi — elaborate kimono sashes — was thriving, with highflying Tokyo businessmen purchasing $25,000 kimonos for wives and lovers like so many boxes of roses.

Wouldn’t Faiola be better off saving that sort of prose for a novel?

No. He’s a feature writer and the prose is pretty good.

Some see a light for the industry in the unlikeliest of places — Tokyo’s hyper-hip Harajuku district, where Goth geisha in punk makeup and secondhand black kimonos strut the streets flaunting attitude and skull-faced leather purses. “Right now, they are wearing cheap, used kimonos they bought for a few dollars in a bargain bin,” said Toshimitsu Ikariyama, president of the Nishijin Textile Industrial Association.

Please. “Goth geisha” is a ridiculous phrase. If you’re one, you’re not the other.

Says who? Last time I looked, Tokyo didn’t have fashion police, nor is it a crime to coin a phrase that i think can be pretty accurate at times:(http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonspi/17778540/)