LA NOTION « GOTHIQUE » TRADUITE DANS LA CULTURE POP DU JAPON CONTEMPORAIN

Abstract

“Gothic and Lolita” is both a clothing style and a philosophical practice developed in Japanese society since the 1990s in various cultural influences around the Gothic movement whose origin is from the Gothic novel. The article highlights a unique process of cultural transfer of the notion of “Gothic” into contemporary Japanese culture as a cultural phenomenon from different cultures, evolved within a more traditional indigenous culture. The association of the concept of “Gothic” with the concept of “Lolita” is explained by two causes: the total admiration of the Japanese towards Western culture and infantilism as a cultural trait. Although the concept of Lolita is borrowed from Nabokov’s novel, its meaning is distorted in the Gothic and Lolita style. This fashion and its practice have been given a complex meaning of self-defence with gothic elements in order to preserve the Lolita nature forever and to refuse to be consumed in society as a mature woman. In this way, the Gothic concept was transformed and catabolised to fit indigenous cultural ideas in the cultural transfer to Japanese culture.