TOKYO —

U.S. and European shops offering stylish but inexpensive clothing have created a ‘‘fast fashion’’ boom in Tokyo’s trend-setting Harajuku district.

An outlet of Forever 21 from Los Angeles, which opened in May, has become so popular that shoppers, mostly teenage girls and women in their 20s and 30s, sometimes have to line up for half an hour on weekends.

Vocational school student Mayuko Yamada, 20, said after buying a blue stole and a skirt for 3,500 yen in the shop, ‘‘These are cheap and ‘kawaii’ (cute).’’

Many foreign clothing stores including H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) from Sweden, Gap from the United States and Zara from Spain are located nearby.

The stores try to attract to young people by putting new low-priced products on sale immediately and changing lineups frequently, sometimes every day, according to Takahiro Yamamura, a professor at Bunka Fashion Graduate University in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward.

Masayuki Kusunose, editor-in-chief of popular monthly ‘‘Fashion Hambai’’ (Sale), said many women are drawn to the shops as they allow customers to enjoy seasonal fashions without spending much amid the economic slump.

‘‘As consumers are seeking inexpensive things, Forever 21 made inroads in Japan at a very good time. That made headlines and the outlet has become something like a tourism spot,’’ Kusunose said. 

WASHINGTON —

North Korea would attack Japan if another war with the reclusive country erupted as a result of efforts to implement recently strengthened U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang over its second nuclear test, a U.S. scholar said Wednesday.

Selig Harrison, Asia Program director at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, who visited North Korea in January, sounded the warning during a House Foreign Affairs Committee subcommittee hearing on North Korea policy.

‘‘In the event of another war with North Korea resulting from efforts to enforce the U.N. sanctions, it is Japan that North Korea would attack, in my view, not South Korea,’’ he said.

‘‘Nationalistic younger generals with no experience of the outside world are now in a strong position in the North Korean leadership’’ in the wake of the illness suffered by the country’s leader Kim Jong Il last year that led to ‘‘his reduced role in day-to-day management,’’ he said.

Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution to punish North Korea over its second nuclear test in late May, centering on tougher financial sanctions and the stricter enforcement of North Korean cargo inspections.

North Korea reacted with anger to the resolution, saying it would ‘‘weaponize’’ more plutonium, begin uranium enrichment and react militarily to blockades.

Harrison attributed North Korea’s eagerness to attack Japan to the U.S. military presence in Japan. ‘‘The reason—U.S. bases in Japan, in all likelihood,’’ he said.

Harrison said the U.N. sanctions have further strengthened the generals’ hard-line position because all North Koreans feel threatened by U.S. nuclear arms deployed near their border, and would be united if tensions caused by attempts to implement the sanctions should escalate to war.

The generals, he said, ‘‘have alarmed’’ others in the North Korean regime with their ‘‘unrealistic assessments of Pyongyang’s capabilities’’ in the case of a conflict with Tokyo.

The scholar also said some of the generals were angry at the North Korean leader’s apology for Pyongyang’s past abductions of Japanese nationals during his September 2002 talks with then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Despite the apology, Japan and North Korea remain at odds over the abduction issue and rows over the problem have been an obstacle to normalizing ties.

‘‘When Kim Jong Il apologized to Prime Minister Koizumi in 2002, this was a very sensitive matter inside North Korea. This was regarded as very unfortunate by many of the nationalistic younger generals and other generals and others within North Korea,’’ Harrison said.

‘‘But this is history. Japanese colonialism was the biggest event in the history of Korea that had an impact on the current situation, in many ways,’’ he added.