While it’s not possible to counter-signal with a suit in Japan, I feel the equivalent would be to wear traditional clothing like a samue or jinbei, which have their own set of challenges.
Yep. It can be pretty funny watching the contexts in which you can get away with a happi coat or a kimono/yukata; I can only speak from Japanese media rather than personal experience, but one thing I’ve noticed is that it seems a non-retired man wearing a kimono can still get away with it today as long as they are a sufficiently accomplished humanist or literary scholar (but not STEM). It reminds me of the ‘tweed jacket’ professor archetype here: you can still get away with wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches etc, but you’d better be a professor or a novelist or something of that ilk if you don’t want to be quietly judged for it.
Yep. It can be pretty funny watching the contexts in which you can get away with a happi coat or a kimono/yukata; I can only speak from Japanese media rather than personal experience, but one thing I’ve noticed is that it seems a non-retired man wearing a kimono can still get away with it today as long as they are a sufficiently accomplished humanist or literary scholar (but not STEM). It reminds me of the ‘tweed jacket’ professor archetype here: you can still get away with wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches etc, but you’d better be a professor or a novelist or something of that ilk if you don’t want to be quietly judged for it.