The T-shirts of Jingumae's Hello Texas tell a solitary story

An open door can be seen on the first floor of an old apartment building. As you approach, as if being called, you notice a sign that reads HELLO//TEXAS, revealing that this is a vintage T-shirt specialty store known only to those in the know.

"Welcome! Is this your first time? First time? Who told you?" The owner, Miyoshi Tomoyuki, greeted us from the tatami room in the back, babbling away. It must have been a rare sight for a customer, as he eagerly wanted to know why we had come all the way here, and began to tell us about his passion for the restaurant.

"We were surprised because no one other than our regular customers ever came in. I've been running the shop for over 15 years, but it's gotten even worse since we moved to this apartment. As you can see, I only sell vintage T-shirts, and I price each one at 20,000 or 30,000 yen, which is an amount that I wouldn't buy. However, I don't price them at an amount that I can't afford, and instead I attach a card to each T-shirt. Their original purpose was to provide an explanatory note that would allow people to understand why I had put that T-shirt on the shelves, even without my narration.

These souvenir and novelty T-shirts are less obvious than those for bands or movies. As I wrote thousands of cards about 40-year-old T-shirts that drifted from America with unknown value, the amount of writing increased, and recently I have written ultra-short stories, usually around 500 words long.

It certainly is literary when you read it. Based on a text that shows signs of thorough research into T-shirts, Miyoshi's experiences and the imagination that wells up inside him are intertwined. His earlier work reads like a social essay, and if you read all the way to the brilliant punchline, you'll see that he projects and barks his own thoughts on how the world should be. For something as simple as a T-shirt, it is imbued with an extraordinary obsession, and after reading it for less than a minute, the T-shirt begins to appear vivid and radiant.

"I devote my life to writing, so I also put in the grudges I feel every day. It can take me a week to write one T-shirt, and I generally don't sell T-shirts that I can't write on in the store. I put my soul into them by writing. The more conceptual they become, the fewer customers there are, but in this shabby, small store, I think about life itself as I face the T-shirts every day."

Four T-shirts from the HELLO//TEXAS collection of T-shirt literature

Is this just a T-shirt store? Is it a contemporary art installation, using the format of a Harajuku store and paying rent for it? Or is it a grand comedy skit that the owner is putting his life on the line for? If HELLO//TEXAS T-shirts don't sell, the price actually goes up.

You might wonder if a store like this is okay, but while running the store, Miyoshi has also been working as a parcel delivery man in the Harajuku area for over a decade since early morning. Supported by people who think that his store, including his way of life, is the coolest of any store in the world, Miyoshi will open his store again tomorrow. Weaving a story.