Marie Claire Japon was launched in May 1982 by Chuokoron-Shinsha (now Chuokoron-Shinsha). Chuokoron-Shinsha was seeking to launch a women's magazine aimed at a younger audience than Fujin Koron, which was first published in 1917. When Shimanaka Yukio, the eldest son of then-president Shimanaka Hoji, was Paris bureau chief, he learned of a women's magazine in France called Marie Claire, which had a similar concept to Fujin Koron. In preparation for its launch, Shimanaka Yukio, founding editor-in-chief Yoshio Yoshida, and future founding editor-in-chief of Madame Figaro, Atsuko Seko, approached Marie Claire Album Co. to negotiate a licensing agreement. At the time, the French magazine Marie Claire was highly regarded for its role as a women's magazine that solved women's problems, and its fashion section. Claude Broué, known for his striking slicked-back hairstyle and cigarette in his mouth, is said to have made a major contribution to the magazine's success. As an aside, Blouet later became the fashion director for Hermès.
The cover of the first issue featured a freckled foreign model wearing a yellow knit sweater and a canotier. Due to the magazine's nature, it promoted the image of a friendly Parisian woman rather than edgy fashion photography.
In the early 1980s, Parisian fashion was in its postmodern phase, and collections of all kinds of styles appeared that stirred the hearts of journalists and buyers who were tired of the Western clothing of the time.
Among the leading Japanese brands were Comme des Garçons led by Rei Kawakubo, Y's led by Yohji Yamamoto (presented in Paris as Yohji Yamamoto), and Issey Miyake, who had made his Paris debut after a stint in New York, made his presence felt. However, he was not immediately accepted. At the same time, Jean Paul Gaultier, who incorporated London street sensibility, Claude Montana, who expressed Western beauty in a structural way, and Christian Lacroix, who appeared like a comet and energized the couture world, all debuted, ushering in an era of flourishing fashion.

When Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto first debuted at Paris Fashion Week, they were perceived as foreign elements of the East. It didn't take long for editors and journalists, keen to recognize this foreign element as a new aesthetic sense and new values in fashion that had never existed in the West before.

Broué, editor-in-chief of the French magazine Marie Claire, was one such example. He quickly showed interest in clothes by Japanese designers and actively featured them in the fashion pages. Yamazaki Mako, fashion editor at Marie Claire, was instrumental in bringing the spirit of Japanese designers to the fashion pages. Every time I went to cover Paris Fashion Week, I heard about French-style fashion pages and how to work with brands, and it made me realize that Japan's fashion magazine environment was far from ready.

At the time, it was a dream for a Japanese person to work as an editor for a foreign media outlet. Aside from Matsumoto Hiroko, who went to Paris as Pierre Cardin's exclusive model and acted as a liaison with Japanese companies at Paris Vogue, Yamazaki Mako was the only one working at the core of the media. Her work was later serialised under the title "Mako's Photography Diary," chronicling her shoots with now-famous photographers like Sasha, Peter Lindbergh and Paolo Roversi in their early days. For Japanese editors aspiring to work in Western fashion magazines in the mid-'80s, this was a coveted project.

(Continued on 10/12)