Misa Kimura was still a student from Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, when she visited Tokyo¡¯s Harajuku neighborhood for the first time. It felt like stepping into a dream.
¡°Every kind of clothing or accessory was just there on Takeshita Street,¡± recalls Kimura, now 34. ¡°It was like, ¡®Oh, I saw this on TV! I saw this in a magazine!¡¯ Everything was shiny and sparkling ¡ª I loved all of it.¡±
These days, she¡¯s working a few blocks from that same street, helping turn a very specific corner of Japanese pop into an exportable art form. As the main producer for Kawaii Lab, a project by entertainment agency Asobisystem that is officially stylized in all caps and with a period at the end, Kimura is leading an idol experiment with global ambitions.
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