This chapter discusses avant-garde Japanese fashion and the countercultural use of the body as a critical site of resistance in Japan. Focusing on the young Japanese designers who turned against a homogeneous, collectivist culture to create various subcultures by using style as a social statement in the 1970s, this chapter presents the popular kawaii culture as a colourful and fluffy protest against the humdrum, everyday life of the corporate employees (sarar?man) working for Japanese conglomerates, who represented the values and norms of Japanese society in the 1970s. Alongside this protest, this chapter also presents the deconstructive fashion of the Comme des Garçons company and its designer, Rei Kawakubo. As of the 1970s, Kawakubo engaged with the politics of the body and identity and countered the aesthetic discourse and repressive values imposed by the fashion world through dress patterns and fashion photographs that presented women with an imaginary ‘ideal’ body. These two oppositional fashion statements challenged different power hierarchies (in Japanese society and in the fashion world), while addressing issues of class and gender.