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Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style

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Look closely at any typically “American” article of clothing these days, and you may be surprised to see a Japanese label inside. From high-end denim to oxford button-downs, Japanese designers have taken the classic American look—known as ametora, or “American traditional”—and turned it into a huge business for companies like Uniqlo, Kamakura Shirts, Evisu, and Kapital. This phenomenon is part of a long dialogue between Japanese and American fashion; in fact, many of the basic items and traditions of the modern American wardrobe are alive and well today thanks to the stewardship of Japanese consumers and fashion cognoscenti, who ritualized and preserved these American styles during periods when they were out of vogue in their native land.

In Ametora, cultural historian W. David Marx traces the Japanese assimilation of American fashion over the past hundred and fifty years, showing how Japanese trendsetters and entrepreneurs mimicked, adapted, imported, and ultimately perfected American style, dramatically reshaping not only Japan’s culture but also our own in the process.

296 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2015

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About the author

W. David Marx

3 books86 followers
W. David Marx is a long-time writer on culture based in Tokyo. He is the author of "Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style" (2015) and "Status and Culture" (2022). Marx's newsletter can be found at culture.ghost.io.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
Profile Image for Mir.
4,892 reviews5,195 followers
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May 15, 2018
Japanese teenagers spend an inordinate amount of time, effort, money, and energy in pursuit of fashionable clothing, especially when compared to their global peers. America, with a population 2.5 times larger than Japan, has fewer than ten magazines focusing on men's style. Japan has more than 50.
...
This is not a book, however, about the intricacies of clothing patterns or design concepts. Our story follows the individuals responsible for introducing American clothing to Japan, as well as the youth who absorbed these American ideas into the Japanese identity. More often than not, the instigators of change were not trained designers, but entrepreneurs, importers, magazine editors, illustrators, stylists, and musicians.
...
Japanese fashion is no longer simply a copy of American clothing, but a nuanced, culturally-rich tradition of its own.


Marx writes for American magazines such as GQ and it is clear than the intended audience for the book is Western and does not have a lot of background in the subject. Therefore he begins with a clear, if not deep, explanation of Japanese history over the past century and half, focusing on the meaning of clothing in Japanese culture and how it was restricted -- i.e. a lot. Japanese fashion legislation makes Roman sumptuary laws look mild by comparison. In earlier eras people could be penalized for wearing patterns or fabrics reserved for higher classes, and even a few decades ago young people could be arrested for wearing rebellious fashions such as



I'm not reading the entire book because I'm not that interested in fashion. I got this from the library because it is literally THE ONLY book my system had on modern Japanese culture. How is that?

The author recommends the documentary "Take Ivy".
Profile Image for Josie.
232 reviews19 followers
April 17, 2017
Honestly? This was THE best book I've read all year. Which is just as well, because 2016 is now almost over and I have just managed to hit my target reads for the year.

Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style is a MUST for anyone with any interest in fashion, particularly Japanese fashion. In fact, fashion aficionados of the 21st century now know that you cannot possibly disentangle the geneneralised concept of 'fashion' from 'Japanese fashion', the most vibrant and diverse fashion industry in the world and home to the greatest number of men's fashion magazines per capita and a fashion-forward and hype-focused population like no other. But it wasn't always this way, which was the central message the book tried to convey.

Marx traces the history of Japanese fashion from its inception during the post-WW2 period through a number of styles, cultural icons, written guides, geographies and their resulting companies. He notes in particular the fact that 'Japanese fashion' was never really a concept that existed prior to Ichizu's artificial incorporation of Ivy style into the Japanese cultural mindset. Most notably, Ivy style, a 50's American fashion style that was recreated dogmatically by Ichizu and proselytised to the population through the magazine Men's Club, represented the first time Japan was introduced to any concept of fashion. WIth this, Marx reflects on the impact the resultant VAN company, created by Ichizu to promote this imported Ivy, had on the national consciousness, its legacy protected through companies such as UNIQLO and Beams, the premier fashion magazine Popeye, and other styles such as heavy duty, Americana, streetwear, surfer, prep, Miyuki-zoku, the denim fad ... all of which captured the nation in transitory phases and continue to leave imprints today.

Additionally, Marx writes about the impact on the creation of streetwear such as BAPE and Japanese avant-garde brands such as Comme des Garcons (Junya Watanabe), Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and others managed to evoke on the Western fashion consciousness, representing a genuine two-way communication in style. He connects this to the explosion of Harajuku as THE most dynamic fashion location in the world ... a change that happened practically overnight.

What I found most interesting about the history of fashion in Japan was how the Japanese managed to infuse their own traditional values into the industry itself. Whether this be by the obsession the Japanese have for rules leading to their persnickety attention to detail when it comes to dressing, or by their necessity to be 'dictated' to by magazines, style guides, product catalogues and style icons, or by the fastidiousness of Japanese designers and retailers in recreating every stitch and fabric of denim to create jeans more 'authentic' than their American originals ... it was clear that the Japanese took the concept of 'fashion' to new heights and recreated it with such integral aspects of their cultural consciousness that it is now impossible to separate the 'Japanese' from the 'fashion' ... something absolutely unthinkable just half a decade ago.
Profile Image for Carolyn .
123 reviews109 followers
November 27, 2022
Trudny początek, ale ostatecznie bardzo ciekawa książka. Mam anegdotki na kolejne 3 imprezy
Profile Image for niko.
3 reviews
July 27, 2023
At first, this book will seem like it has a really narrow focus and that it might not appeal to people who aren't so interested in Japanese fashion. I do have an interest in fashion, especially denim, which is covered extensively in this book, but this book's appeal was how detailed and all-encompassing it was within its niche. The lessons imparted in this book about how culture travels (especially pre-internet), marketing, and the logistics of international trends, trade, import, and manufacturing, makes this book particularly fascinating and widens the scope of the book past fashion.

The basic premise of this book is the investigation of how American fashion was brought to Japan, it becoming a hit in the post-war era, and the subsequent incubation of American (especially American Traditional, or Ametora) style in Japan. In latter half of the 20th century, Japanese designers took American style and iterated on basic designs that we take for granted, like button-up shirts, jeans etc. and made them something entirely of their own, outside of the purview of the Western fashion world. Now, the tables have turned -- large parts of the Western fashion world takes lessons from Japanese designers. A good analogy of this posited in the book is how the basic dish of chicken katsu was imported to Japan from Germany long ago, but now, served with miso soup and rice, Japan's take on it is universally recognized as authentically Japanese.

I thoroughly enjoyed this as a fashion book, but also as one that documents how culture and commerce can travel and be adopted by different countries. Strongly recommend!
Profile Image for John C..
40 reviews1 follower
January 23, 2016
I read this on the heels of Julian Cope's "Japrocksampler," which is another excellent book about post-war Japan's adaptation of a Western form. I found "Ametora" a bit more engaging, perhaps because I'm getting older and menswear is now more interesting to me than obscure Sabbath clones. In any case, this book is absolutely wonderful. The way it contextualizes each wave of Japanese men's fashion within a historical and economic moment makes it a great primer on post-war Japan as well as a compelling read on fashion in general. I also liked that Marx subverts a few popular assumptions/stereotypes about Japanese design without being baldly political at any point. What a book. Heartily recommended.
Profile Image for Jeremy Liang.
121 reviews6 followers
September 3, 2023
A deeply engaging read that seemed to encompass everything and taught me something new about myself. The best type of nonfiction read.
3 reviews
April 21, 2017
This book is deeply informative and helps the audience to understand the origins of many popular American fashion trends. The amount of information that is included in this book is astounding. The author does a great job at explaining storylines and introducing influencing aspects that created trends in Japan that were then brought to America. The book describes in depth a wide array of things like photography and cultural events that were important in shaping trends. The topic of fashion exchange from Japan to the United States is a little known area of history that will be brought to the spotlight as the fashion industry of the United States continues to grow. The book highlighted many important facts about the history of the Japanese fashion industry that created a fascinating reading experience for the audience. Marx also does a brilliant job of showing the evolution of the fashion industry and the exchange from Japan to the U.S. While the book mainly focuses on fashion it also brings up a number of important questions about cultural exchange and how it relates to life in each country. Overall, this book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the fashion industry of Japanese culture. The amount of information that was provided made the book worth reading.
Profile Image for Nicktimebreak.
194 reviews10 followers
March 5, 2020
一本美国人写的关于日本人如何师从美国男装文化,从复制、复刻、坚持、匠心独运,到最后从学生变成老师的读物。

本书从明治维新全盘西化的末期开始,通过一个个人物、一本本时尚杂志穿针引线,介绍美式男装风格是如何影响再被引进到日本,书中内容翔实,调理清晰,翻译的也精准到位。

服装风格演化的背后无不深受政治运动、文化冲突的影响。随着技术革新,材料演化,服装在展示大众审美的倾向的同时,还承担着意识形态的表达。

美国人兴许无意识的时尚文化却在多年后的日本得到了发扬光大。「日本人守护了美国的服装历史,一如阿拉伯人在欧洲黑暗时期守卫了亚里士多德的物理学。」如今的日本男装在美式复古风格复刻的基础之上,已经走出了自己的道路,而现在也随处可见各种英文网站在盘点考究那些日本牛仔裤中被挖掘出来的「猫须」、「蜂窝」、五金之各类细节。在21世纪,日本人「制造的美国风格比美国人还出色」已是各界共识。

在日本传统艺术教育当中,已有「模仿以求创新」这个概念的先例。在花道与武术中,学生借由模仿单一权威的「形」(Kata)来学习基本技巧。学生首先必须保护「形」,但在研习多年后,他们会脱离传统,接着分别去创造自己的「形」——这个系统称为「守破离」。

比起简体中文版的书名翻译《原宿牛仔》,台湾版的翻译《洋风和魂》更深得我心。当然,若不是原宿牛仔中的牛仔二字,也许我也就不会这么早注意到这本书了🌝

适合任何兴趣广泛的人阅读,尤其是对复古风情有独钟者。
Profile Image for Ryan.
1,042 reviews
February 10, 2022
I don't recall how I came across W. David Marx's Ametora, but it's almost certainly one of the best books I'll read this year--and this in spite of the fact that I understand neither fashion nor style. Much of this book is about how Japanese businessmen copied Ivy league prep style in spite of some public pressure against it. Marx explains that Tokyo “law enforcement swept the streets in search of overly fashionable youth��� (5) at one point. In spite of the odds, that initial venture led to an intense interest in American style. That market led to the Japanese saving all of the American designs and often also technology used to create mid-20th century denim, etc. When American designers began to look for clothing designs that did not rely on mass production techniques, they wound up finding the information to make quality clothing not in America but in Japan. It would be difficult to list all of the things that Marx explores in telling this broad story, but I'll leave off saying I found it fascinating.

I did start making a list of iconic "American" things that caught on here:

-The American military
-JFK's haircut
-Prep and the Ivy league universities
-Many subcultures, including biker gangs and leather jackets, surfer culture, greasers, and hippies.
-Coke advertisements and pinup girls
-Catalogues and especially Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalogue
-Many movies, though I sometimes wonder if Hollywood is just amplifying these cultures that are already established--in a sense, it might not be very creative.
-A lot of this book is about Oxford cloth button downs and denim, though rarely together. It occurs to me that the two together now with a nice pair of boots might be considered a good look. But I'd warn anyone from trusting what I have to say about clothing.

I once listened to an interview with former CIA director John Brennan in which he argued that American culture is one of its most powerful assets, and I suppose there is some truth to that. I was impressed by how many aesthetic/ cultural movements it was able to give rise to--and this is by no means a comprehensive list.
Profile Image for Ca.
54 reviews22 followers
May 5, 2022
Good read for anyone interested in fashion, history or culture, particularly Japanese and how the US influenced it. The author explained the concept of 'ametora' concisely and comprehensively with references from culture, history and the Japanese psyche as well as their obsession towards detail and authenticity. I'd recommend this book to anyone, really.
Profile Image for Nicole Wong.
74 reviews5 followers
November 6, 2022
A fascinating book that sheds light on the genesis of what most have come to know as modern Japanese fashion from the early years of IVY to more recent brands like UNIQLO, BAPE, and Engineered Garments.

As an outsider, having the curtain pulled back to reveal who have been pulling the strings of culture was very fascinating
Profile Image for Alejandro Yee.
11 reviews
August 13, 2019
Excelllent read for understanding the apporpiation, improvent and exportation of culture between countries and how it affects the culture.
Profile Image for Maya.
23 reviews3 followers
November 19, 2023
so good i love learning need to keep learning
2 reviews1 follower
January 22, 2024
One of the most interesting books i read ever
Profile Image for Jeffrey Wu.
8 reviews18 followers
June 18, 2017
Ametora, written by W. David Marx, is a historically exhaustive survey of cultural flow between Japan and the United States. While seemingly dense for a niche issue and topic, Marx keeps it interesting by centering the book around the story of a few movers and shakers. People like Kensuke Ishizu of VAN Jacket, Nigo from A Bathing Ape, and Masayuki Yamazaki of Pink Dragon dot the fashion landscape as they took what was familiar in American fashion and made something distinct from it.

If culture is a large yarn ball stemming from a single pole, Marx unravels it across national boundaries to find contemporary foundations and pillars we can point to. In the same way that Take Ivy became a preservation of information long gone, Marx has revitalized and reorganized decades of fashion and cultural dialogue into one succinct book. I definitely would recommend to those who are made curious by who trends start and how culture is disseminated not only domestically but globally.
1 review
December 29, 2015
Page-turning and packed with information

Ametora's introduction features a quote by William Gibson- fitting, since it was his twitter where I first heard of this book.
Anyone can make a nonfiction book informative, many can make them entertaining- and some deeply thought-provoking. But Marx manages to do all three with his fascinating history of the Japanese obsession with American fashion, from black market blue-jeans to young Americans rediscovering classic collegiate style in the painstakingly researched pages of Take Ivy, and all the subtle adaptations along the way. A must-read for anyone with an interest in fashion, economics, history, or cultural interchange.
Profile Image for Maureen.
466 reviews29 followers
January 21, 2016
Truly a fascinating read for anyone interested in either fashion, design, or Japanese culture. Well researched and detailed. I enjoyed the chapters on the Take Ivy photography series, as well as the vintage Americana obsession that launched (revived?) Harajuku. Could have done without the streetwear section, as I wasn't convinced of the connection to the rest of the historical arc, which was a weakness. Anyway, very interesting stuff.
Profile Image for Brandur.
300 reviews10 followers
May 7, 2016
Ametora is an amazing book that is very informational while managing to stay easy to read and quite succinct. All its stories, from the rise of Ivy style, to the domination of international streetwear with A Bathing Ape, to the obsession and mastery with first finding vintage American denim, and then later with its production, are enthralling. A perfect example on how the history of fashion can be interesting.
Profile Image for Rachel.
34 reviews5 followers
January 15, 2016
Anyone interested in Japan or fashion will enjoy this book.
Profile Image for Eustacia Tan.
Author 14 books272 followers
September 23, 2023
I found this book from the Articles of Interest series on American Ivy/Preppy style and immediately borrowed it because it sounds very cool. And I was pleased to find that while this book also talks about a lot of the events that the podcast does, it also goes into detail on subcultures not mentioned in the podcast.

Ametora, a terms for the “American Traditional” fashion style, is a book about how post-WWII Japan imported American fashion, developed it, and then re-exported it to the world. A large part of the book focuses on the preppy style (called Ivy in Japan) but Marx also talks about other aspects of American fashion like:

- Yankee
- Harajuku-fashion
- Hip Hop (such as the rise of A Bathing Ape)
- Jeans (including the huge market for vintage Levis)

It was fascinating! I have to admit that I was a bit confused when I saw the photos of the clothes because it just looks like a regular outfit but I guess that’s the beauty of Ametora – it’s become so prevalent it’s practically the default style for many people. Plus, the book basically ends at Uniqlo, which is the default outfit for most guys in Singapore so I shouldn’t be surprised that even the older outfits look familiar to me.

I think the only part of the book that annoyed me was this comment about Takuya Kimura: “Meanwhile, stylist friends of Nigo repeatedly put A Bathing Ape on the ost popular male idol at the time, SMAP’s Takuya Kimura. // These new Bape celebrity ambassadors – pretty faces with questionable talent who appeared nightly on teenage girls’ favorite variety shows – were a far cry from indie gods Cornelius and James Lavelle.”

I mean excuse me? Takuya Kimura is an icon in Japan and probably out of Japan too. The “questionable talent” bit sounds vaguely insulting, especially since he’s trying to explain Japanese fashion and Japanese culture to an American audience – it just sounds like after all the trouble he took to take various subcultures in Japan seriously, he could not bother to do the same for pop culture.

Anyway, apart from that, I really enjoyed learning about the history of various subcultures and thought that the following two points were interesting:

1. The disparity between the Americans and Japanese in post-WWII Japan during its occupation by American forces “gave a veneer of prestige to anything American” – a concept that makes a lot of sense and which I think still endures till this day. In general, I think the reason why American culture is still dominant is because it’s seen as “better” somehow, like how Singaporean-Chinese try to signal higher status by reducing markers of “Chinese-ness” and taking on habits/speech patterns closer to what they think is present in Western culture.

2. The idea that the Japanese adopt American styles without adopting American lifestyles. This is due to the fact that these styles are non-native to Japan. As Marx writes “By virtue of their foreign origin, any corresponding lifestyle must follow from the clothing rather than vice versa.” I actually like this idea of fashion as one component of a lifestyle, because I find that quite a few people have adopted one thing and made it their identity, which is a bit extreme (or maybe it’s ‘American’?)

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book! I would like to read similar books on other subcultures, like Lolita and Hanfu. Especially for hanfu – I think there are quite a few resources on the history of the clothes, but I don’t recall seeing much on why it became popular and how its adoption spread. If you’re into fashion history, especially as an exploration of how it intersects with culture across countries, this is the book for you.
Profile Image for Brian.
657 reviews81 followers
October 30, 2019
I'm going to do that thing I do--I'm glad I lived in Japan in the later 00s, because I got to see Ura-Harajuku in the post-2000 heyday. I've been to the A Bathing Ape store, wandered through a bunch of the vintage shops, and watched all the people dressed with more style than I had realized was possible.

I didn't buy any clothes, of course. I wasn't nearly as cool then as I am now.

I have some issue with Ametora's subtitle, as most of the book is a history of post-war Japanese fashion. It starts with the charity drive for clothes in the immediate-post-war period, when Japan had basically been bombed flat, and continued with Japan looking to America as a fashion beacon, Kensuke Ishizu bringing East Coast Ivy League style to Japan and spreading its gospel through a rigid series of rules that taught men how to properly dress, through the suspicion from the Japanese establishment, Marxists adopting blue jeans as a symbol of revolution, an introduction of the America 50s into the Japanese 70s, and so on until post-Bubble Economy, it was Japanese streetwear brands like A Bathing Ape and UNIQLO that were reminding Americans they didn't have to go everywhere in sweatpants and flip-flops.

That was Ivy style when I was a university student at Penn. Guilty.

My favorite part was the long section about deadstock jeans. "Deadstock" is a fashion term for items of clothing no longer made anymore, and apparently the manufacturing process for jeans used to be different. Japanese people greatly preferred the old-style jeans to the new ones, and the market meant it was worthwhile to go to America, buy a ton of old jeans, and ship them to Japan. Or for Americans to make contact with Japanese buyers, go to stores claiming that they were outfitting workcrews, and buy four dozen pairs of jeans. It reminds me of the reverse situation in retro video games, when Americans would go to Japan and look through old game shops to buy cheap retro games, bring them overseas, and resell them for a premium, and in both cases basically cleared out the other country. There's a quote that almost 75% of American deadstock is now in Japan.

I also appreciated the parts about how the constant fashion changes led to clashes with the establishment, including police performing mass arrests of fashionable students hanging out in Ginza. As one aggrieved student said in the Asahi Shimbun:
What's wrong with wearing cool clothing and walking through Ginza? Were not like those country bumpkins around Ikebukuro or Shinjuku.
There were even hippies in Japan! With all the other copying of America that Japan did I shouldn't be surprised, but somehow I was.

The only flaw is, as I said, the subtitle doesn't really apply. The last chapter is about Americans looking to Japan's sense of style as a guide for how to be fashionable, and about finding old copies of Ivy Tribe and using them as a sartorial guide, but I would have preferred at least a couple chapters about it. Most of the book is historical, and I would liked a bit more of a modern focus.

I may be cooler now, but I'll always listen to more advice.
Profile Image for Lawrence.
801 reviews12 followers
December 31, 2023
A wonderful, beautifully-researched book. If you've listened to Avery Truffelman's American Ivy you'll recognize all the most interesting content is just lifted from this book. They even start the same: with the arrests of Japanese "delinquents" dressed in weird suits before the Olympics. The beginning of Ivy style.

Marx follows the improbable story of Kensuke Ishizu, the man who single-handedly introduced Ivy style to Japan, and how the buttoned-up but carefree style became its own obsession in a suit-obsessed Japanese culture. But he doesn't stop there. He traces Elvis-inspired rockabilly gangs, Levis denimheads, the weird 90s emptying of middle American thrift stores by Japanese tourists obsessed with Americana and the rise of BAPE and streetwear.

All this is to answer why so much contemporary Americana is made in Japan. Marx's take is nuanced: from post-war American imperialism and cultural hegemony to the history of artisanal craftsmanship and the filters of Japanese culture. He explores the rise of contemporary brands from the wonderful Kamakura Shirts to Visvim and the hippy-influenced Kapital.

Throughout you get a cast of wild characters and wonderful stories including how the Japanese had to get worse at indigo dying denim so they could get the best fades (Japanese dying techniques are more thorough and don't leave the white core that results in whiskering Levis). Preppy, Ivy, two button versus three, cliques, clubs, leather jackets and military nostalgia. It's all here, all analyzed through clothes, all a fascinating look at modern fashion and the influence and filtration of the American aesthetic.

http://lawrencedebbs.home.blog/2023/0...
Profile Image for Annelie.
134 reviews28 followers
August 3, 2022
When I first read this book, I was troubled by its seeming abundance of blind spots: although it did devote a section of the book to the vintage craze of Harajuku, I was surprised that it didn't mention the Fruits magazine at all. Of course, Harajuku fashion is much more trendy right now during our current Y2k resurgence, but still--I sometimes felt that this book focused too much on individuals who changed the fashion industry, instead of the large swathes of nameless teens from the lower and middle classes who created entirely new styles during the aftermath of Japan's lost decade.

Of course, Fruits magazine fashion is not really an example of Ametora, which is the book's focus. In that regard, it does a great job of emphasizing the enduring relevance of Ivy fashion (in particular), as well as other trends. This book is very focused, which is great--and perhaps this is better than any of the philosophical routes that this book could have taken. In particular, I would have been interested in how America's past and current fascination with Japanese clothing is related to Asiaticism (as opposed to the more past-directed Orientalism), which also manifested in art in movies such as Blade Runner, which warned of a Asian-dominated dystopic future, and the successful globalization of anime.

Perhaps I"m wrong, and these considerations would have weakened the book overall. I am leaving this book, though, with many questions unanswered.
Profile Image for Bookworm.
2,053 reviews78 followers
January 3, 2024
I had this book on my to-read list for years but eventually took it off because I just couldn't find a copy, didn't want to spend money for a used version, etc. But I found my local library had it (I missed it, maybe, or perhaps it was an addition that I missed). I was also inspired by a Twitter user who is an expert on men's tailoring (he's not the same as this author, though).

So I was curious to see what the author had to say and how to connect how Japanese kept the American style alive. Marx traces history, looking at how Japanese style mimics and absurd this style and preserved it even when fashion moved on in the US. It's an interesting look at soft power as well.

It was dull. Unlike the user that I follow on Twitter, this was pretty dull. Like others, I was disappointed at the lack of pictures and agree with that the focus on menswear and denim was fairly dull. Since this book was presumably about style in general, I found this fairly narrow.

I do think this definitely has a place with a very particular audience (I'll bet people who know what Twitter account I am discussing might) and I would not be surprised to see this on a class syllabus on fashion, for example. But as I mentioned, this has a very specific audience and the layperson probably would find this as a library borrow or skipping it.
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