Paging Dr. Maaya, the neurosurgeon doubling as a fashion designer

Replete with sexually graphic illustrations, flashing lights and more colors than Joseph’s amazing technicolor dreamcoat, the work of Dr. Maaya was a sight to behold on the runway at Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo.

And the “Dr.” in the Japanese fashion designer’s name is no gimmick: When she isn’t working on her designs, Maaya Orii is a fully licensed and practicing neurosurgeon.

“Perhaps I am the only person in the world working as a neurosurgeon and fashion designer,” Orii says.

With brightly colored hair and equally colorful attire, the 48-year-old certainly stands out in a crowd. Growing up, though, she says she didn’t feel like she fit the ideals of what a young girl should be.

“I wasn’t good at chores or helping around the house, my appearance wasn’t cute,” she recalls. “When I was young, my grandmother often told me I wouldn’t be able to get married so I needed to focus on a career instead.”

Taking her grandmother’s words to heart, Orii made studying her main focus — and it paid off. In 1994, she was admitted to the School of Medicine at Iwate Medical University in Morioka, where she graduated six years later, eventually obtaining her certification in neurosurgery in 2006.

Throughout the endless hours required to obtain her qualifications, Orii never stopped thinking about her other passion — fashion. Growing up, she admired the works of designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier and Rei Kawakubo, but pushed aside any notion of following in their footsteps.

After a setback in her academic career instigated a bout of depression, she changed her mind.

“I wanted to study abroad and, even though it’s difficult to design things, I wanted to study seriously to achieve a sense of accomplishment,” she says. “I’ve always loved fashion, so I applied to Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.”

From 2010, Orii spent two years learning “a different way to think about fashion.” Rather than a Japanese methodology that focused more on the technical aspects of the craft, she says her time at Saint Martins brought her closer to an understanding of “how to pursue (her) own designs in a deeper sense.”

Maaya Orii chooses designs that don’t shy away from the reality of living as a woman in modern-day Japan. | LAURA POLLACCO

“I didn’t care for floral patterns, but I had these CT scans of my abdomen from when I was 75 kilograms and 100 kilograms, so I thought, ‘Maybe I can make that fun. Maybe I will like that,’” she says.

After returning to Japan in 2012, she established the Dr. Maaya Labo in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward, where the walls are adorned with those very same CT scans, artistically rendered as Warhol-esque pop art.

Focusing on her own body has inspired Orii to come face to face with what she, and society, perceived to be her flaws. In a country that promotes thinness (especially in women, with 1 in 5 women considered underweight) Orii uses her brand to promote inclusivity, putting herself front and center. Upon gaining attention after being featured on the Japanese show “Ie, Tsuite Itte Ii Desu Ka?” (“Can I Follow You Home?”) she was offered the chance to write a book and, in 2016, published “Karafuru Debu o Ikiru” (which loosely translates to “Living a Colorful Fat Life”).

“I lived with a lot of complexities and worries,” Orii says. “I have a lot of negative thinking in my life, but I have a rebellious spirit inside me, and I want to live a life that is unique by doing both fashion design and neurosurgery.”

Focusing on her own body has inspired Orii to come face to face with what she, and society, perceived to be her flaws. | COURTESY OF MAAYA ORII

Today, Orii works as a neurosurgeon in Tokyo on weekdays and as a doctor in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on weekends. In her spare time, she’ll shift gears and focus on fashion, still managing to release annual collections: “I have no holidays,” she says.

Orii’s most recent collection was a collaboration with artist Rina Yoshioka that saw the two turn their creative attention to Kabukicho, Shinjuku Ward’s neon-soaked nightlife district.

At a glance the garments are overwhelmingly colorful, with odd shapes and pulsating lights, but upon further inspection a darker theme emerges. Orii explains that she and Yoshioka focused on the seedier side of the area. Drawing on feelings of abandoning femininity in order to succeed in a man’s world, they leaned on the power of feminine sensuality to create garments featuring Showa Era (1926-89) illustrations of “lustful older men” and the “beautiful women” who use their sexuality to get ahead. The two were particularly inspired by the 1997 murder of Yasuko Watanabe, a senior economic researcher at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. by day and prostitute by night.

Despite admitting to having a complicated relationship with her own body, Orii also includes numerous nude illustrations of herself strewn throughout the collection.

Along with the catharsis of self-exploration through fashion, her design work serves to balance out her stress as a neurosurgeon.

Maaya Orii hopes her non-stop life can motivate others like her not to compromise where they don’t have to. | COURTESY OF MAAYA ORII

“As a neurosurgeon, I have to go into the brain and perform procedures to save lives,” she says. “I move things around and even if I fix something, it will never be the way it was. It is not possible to return it to a perfect state. The designer’s job is to start from nothing, from zero, and to imagine and create something. But even though I imagine something perfect, I’ll never be able to achieve that perfection, no matter how hard I try.”

Having taken on two hugely demanding careers, Orii shows no signs of slowing down. Only a day before speaking with The Japan Times, she started working at a new clinic in Yokohama, and she is preparing her next collection for Paris Fashion Week in February of next year. The schedule is grueling but she hopes a life of overwork isn’t what people take away from her story. Rather, Orii hopes her non-stop life can motivate others like her not to compromise where they don’t have to.

“There are so many people who don’t know what to do with their lives. There are many who only learn what their teachers tell them and don’t express their own opinion,” she says. “I want them to really think about what they want from life, discuss it with others so that they can express their opinions and develop the ability to think for themselves — something I am still struggling to do myself.”