(9) Introduction

'Schoolgirl' is in het Japans joshi kosei.

"For Japanese women, the appeal of schoolgirls is that they are in the prime of their lives, unfettered by work, marriage, and children. They are young and relatively free. For men, the appeal is the memory of a first crush, of sitting in a classroom surrounded by girls in skirts and sailor outfits. But the attraction isn’t drawn across gender lines. Japanese schoolgirls, clearly recognizable in their uniforms, exist in an adolescent netherworld. They are not adults, and they are not children. Kids can look up to them, and grownups can look back at them as the last hurrah before entering adulthood." [mijn nadruk] (12)

[Geldt dat niet voor jongens dan?]

"The Japanese schoolgirl is both gruff samurai, strong and powerful, and demure geisha, beautiful and coquettish. Decked out in her Western-influenced uniform, she brings these elements together into a state of great flexibility — the ability to be strong or passive, Japanese or Western, adult or child, masculine or feminine. At home and abroad, she is a metaphor for Japan itself."(14)

(15) Chapter One: Uniforms - Sailor Girls

"But anyone who tried to keep up to date with uniform trends had a huge job on their hands. By the mid-1990s, preppy was out, and slutty was in. Schoolgirl skirts got short and white socks got loose. Much like the sukeban a generation earlier, girls rebelled against strict school uniforms. They wore outrageous makeup, dyed their hair, got fake tans, and rolled up their skirt’s waistband to turn long dresses into D.I.Y. micro-minis. These dangerously short skirt–wearing, golden brown tanned schoolgirls were called kogal or just gyaru.
When girls began showing skin at more conservative institutions, parents and teachers gasped, and strict schools started scrutinizing scanty hemlines with before-class spot checks. Some private academies even went so far to have teachers scattered off-campus to eyeball girls on the way to school. Japanese students all carry rule books that outline their school’s regulations, but the uniform fashion the girls were creating, says Mori, “exists in the space between those school rules and breaking them.” Not all establishments gave a hoot though, and in some cases, delinquent girls were given carte blanche to run amok. In other cases the crackdown on micro-minis only encouraged the trend, and some girls started leading a double life. During learning hours, they’d unroll their skirts to an acceptable length; after school, they’d hike their cookie-cutter uniforms up and pull on a pair of loose socks, the other essential ingredient of the kogal look. It was clear girls enjoyed wearing their uniforms out of school hours, but only on their own terms." [mijn nadruk] (30-31)

"For girls in their mid-teens the uniform symbolizes a brief period in their life when they are free, unbound by adult matters like career, marriage, and children. There’s schoolwork, sure, but as teenagers they are cushioned from the world around them. They’re not children, and they’re not quite adults — yet they have more freedom than both. Anything is possible. So many girls yearn to wear uniforms even when their schools don’t require them. And if some girls think their own school’s outfit is dorky, they change into clothes that, to the untrained eye, look exactly like school uniforms. Whether it’s during school hours or after class and weekends, the uniform is a blossoming beacon, bluntly signaling to society: I am a schoolgirl, young and free." [mijn nadruk] (34)

[Nogmaals: dat geldt ook voor de jongens.]

"The most notorious item in the Japanese schoolgirl wardrobe would have to be loose socks. In the mid-1990s the kogal look was defined by them and they have come to symbolize a certain type of schoolgirl — one that is sexy, rebellious, and very cool. But originally, these infamous socks were American." [mijn nadruk] (36-37)

"By the mid-1990s, after reports that schoolgirls were meeting older men for enjo kosai (paid dating), loose socks were no longer just associated with schoolgirls, but with sex. Enjo kosai preoccupied the tabloids and the Japanese government. And by the end of the 1990s, new regulations cracked down on underage-sex-for-money. But schoolgirl characters were already turning up in porn films wearing loose socks, and massage parlors and sex clubs had young looking women decked out in the socks. The original rebellious meaning of loose socks had been twisted by the media so that even today they carry sexual connotations." [mijn nadruk] (38)

[Hier wordt weer eens kritiekloos het idee overgenomen dat enjo kōsai met seks te maken had, alsof het een soort van prostitutie was. Dat was lang niet altijd het geval.]

(47) Chapter Two: Music - Idol Worship

"AKB48 is the brainchild of Yasushi Akimoto, the lyricist and record producer of the original girl idol super group of the eighties, Onyanko Club. With AKB48 he has tapped into the desires of the otaku who hang out in Akihabara, with the “AKB” being short for “Akihabara” and the “48” referring to the number of group members (though the real number hovers close to ninety). The concept behind AKB48 is to offer fans a huge selection of girls to adore, make sure each girl has a different personality for fans to identify with, and make the girls perform live often enough for fans to see them regularly. The group is split up into several teams, each of which take turns performing at the theater seven days a week. When they perform, they’re typically in school-uniform-inspired outfits, while their music videos are often set in schools. AKB48 is the schoolgirl super group."(49)

"The same “no boys, no smoking rules” that governed Onyanko Club were very much part of Morning Musume’s M.O. This helped keep the girls ideal and pure, but also magnified stupid teen mistakes into press circus fodder, something former member Ai Kago knows firsthand."(65)

"Idols are not only singers. The term is also used to refer to both major or minor celebrities — who are usually in their pre-teens, teens, or twenties. Some of the non-musical idol variety include: “gravure idols” who appear in cheesecake pin-up pics, “tarento idols” who are TV talent, “seiyuu idols” who voice anime characters, and “AV idols” who do, wait for it, Adult Videos. Other more obscure idols include a train idol, a robot idol, and even a fermented bean idol."(69)

(79) Chapter Three: Movies - Girls On Film

"In the years after the war, movies about coquettish bad schoolgirls, delinquent school prostitutes, and even pregnant schoolgirls were made. One of the top grossing films of 1950, the melodrama Otome no Seine (A Virgin’s Sex Manual) was promoted with the promise of a “knocked up school-girl.” As the years passed and competition from television increased, the movies became increasingly graphic, and schoolgirls increasingly common. And for good reason; they could be depicted as submissive like in 1971’s lesbian schoolgirl flick Co-ed Report: Yuko’s White Breasts (beware of suggestive eel use!), or horribly brutalized like in Angel Guts: High School Co-ed (1978). They could also totally kick your ass. Repeatedly. That range of qualities — not to mention that they were young and cute — made Japanese schoolgirls ideal cinematic characters."(83)

"“Schoolgirls were a symbol or a metaphor,” says Toshio Takasaki, a film critic who has authored multiple books on the era. “They’re not meant to be real schoolgirls — they’re fantasy.” Takasaki believes the best way to think of these schoolgirl exploitation flicks is as parodies or homages to yakuza films. With the popularity of yakuza movies on the slide, studios were looking for something they could make on the cheap and pack with action, violence, and nudity. Schoolgirls were the answer. “Taking something very pure like a schoolgirl and putting them in an impure situation to see what happens is male reverie,” Takasaki says, and the original audience was a hundred percent male. These movies were where men went to see things they could never see on TV. And oh, the things you could see!"(85)

"Neither Bounce koGALS nor Love & Pop are typical coming of age films — the girls already act like miniature adults. Rather, the films are critiques on Japanese society, good-girls-gone-bad movies in which young women navigate a chauvinistic society. They get in over their heads, bad goes to worse and then they need to find a way out, a way to survive."(100)

(112) Chapter Four: Shopping - Material Girls

"“I think the Tokyo Girls Collection really shows the power that young girls have,” says Marie, a half-Japanese, half-Canadian girl who is a well known model-turned-TV-star. “This is more than a fashion show, and it reflects the reality of Japanese fashion way better than Tokyo Fashion Week,” she adds. “These are clothes girls can actually buy while we’re modeling them.” And this is what makes TGC so groundbreaking."(114)

"The show’s choreographer, Fumihito, sums up the atmosphere best. “In Japan, these models are like idols. Girls worship them.”"(115)

"The mobile phone revolution came early to gadget-crazy Japan, and 80 percent of Japanese now own at least one. There are over 100 million users with advanced third generation handsets. But it was schoolgirls, not business men, who kicked phone technology into high gear. And it all started with pagers."(117)

"The mobile phone, known in Japan as a keitai or keitai denwa (literally “portable phone”), is a private device, especially in Japan where people use it more for texting than talking. (...) For teens looking for some semblance of privacy in the cramped houses they shared with their parents, the mobile phone was a godsend. It not only offered privacy, but mobility, making it possible to be connected with friends 24–7."(120)

"Tokyo’s Shibuya district is Japan’s youth mecca and ground zero for schoolgirls. “The reason why there are so many schoolgirls in Shibuya is 109,” says Takenaga. The 109 building, or simply ichi-maru-kyu (one-oh-nine) as the kids call it, is an eight-story cylindrical shopping building that represents all that is trendy, cute, and cool about Shibuya."(126)

"Schoolgirls say it. Little kids say it. Even men, gasp, say it. Anywhere you go in Japan, you will hear it said, if not squealed: “kawaii.” It basically means “cute,” but also carries connotations of adorable, precious, and charming. It is convenient for meaningless compliments and is often overused. Kawaii can describe just about anything and when kawaii alone won’t do, things can be kimokawaii (creepy cute), erokawaii (sexy cute), or busukawaii (ugly cute). The bar for cute is much lower than the more serious utsukushii (beautiful). Kawaii is light and fluffy. It’s ambiguous, personal, individual, and doesn’t have to conform to clearly defined concepts of Japanese beauty. Beauty is natural, but kawaii can be manufactured. And it’s attainable — any girl can be cute."(135)

"In 1975 the character most closely associated with Japanese cute was launched when the Sanrio character goods company released a snap-top coin purse featuring the now iconic Hello Kitty or “Kitty-chan” as she’s affectionately known in Japan."(136)

"At its very core, kawaii captures both the nostalgic memories of days gone by and the adoration of youth’s sparkle. Schoolgirls are the physical embodiment of that concept, while Hello Kitty is the commercialization of it."(137)

"Masuda has taken his visual sense to the masses, directing music videos and doing 6%DokiDoki fashion shows across the globe."(140)

Trends fueled by schoolgirls

" Hello Kitty: Known in Japan as “Kitty-chan,” the cute cat first appeared on girls’ purses during the seventies and spread to stationery, stuffed animals, video games, and even a theme park.
Texting: Schoolgirls didn’t invent text messages, but they popularized them. In Japan, young women are still the highest percentage of text messengers.
Virtual pets: Schoolgirls bought tens of millions of Tamagotchi handheld digital pets when they launched in 1996.
Hair coloring: A trend that’s here to stay, but that wasn’t always the case. Kogals in the mid-1990s kick-started the trend, making fashion statements with their brown, blonde, and even gray locks.
Color contacts: Schoolgirls in the mid-1990s started wearing blue contact lenses, kicking off a kara-kon (color contact) boom. By 2005, contact lenses that made the iris look bigger were popular with schoolgirls, because they made their eyes appear larger.
Camera phones: With schoolgirls dragging around disposable and polaroid-style cameras in the 1990s, electronics makers decided to put digital cameras in mobile phones.
Gyaru-go (gal speak): Japanese slang such as “KY” (kuuki yomenai or “clueless”) started among schoolgirls.
Loose socks: Originally meant for hiking, they made girls legs look skinny and became part of the kogals’ essential wardrobe in the mid-1990s. Often still seen on the streets of Shibuya.
Sticker pics: Purikura have long been a schoolgirl favorite.(144-145)"

[Jongens speelden in een aantal van de genoemde onderwerpen net zo goed een rol.]

(147) Chapter Five: Kogals, Magazines & Books - Cover Girls

"According to Yone, the first kogals were rich, private schoolgirls rebelling against conformity."(149)

"Much of egg’s appeal was the rampant reader participation. In an age before the internet, egg offered internet-esque interaction: the reader generated content was what made it so special. Schoolgirls could send along opinionated essays, sticker pictures, or Polaroids covered in colorful graffiti. The pages of the magazine became so personalized by the kogal readers that it became a forum in glossy print that girls could roll up and shove in their school bag."(151)

"Egg magazine became known for the snapshots that showed girls’ fashion in the real world. The “street snap” style (as it’s called in Japan) spread to other magazines, both men’s and women’s."(153)

"Yone remained dogmatic in his approach, wanting girls to appear in the magazine only once. “I didn’t want them to become ‘models,’” he says, “I wanted them to be someone you’d see on the street. Someone who was real.” The editors at egg, however, wanted to focus on the popular girls, instead of continually looking for the next thing. What had started out as a revolution in the streets was becoming mainstream."(155)

"The kogals that roamed the Shibuya streets in the nineties were the beginning of the gal culture that has become so dominant in Japan. Compared to earlier generations of women — who were expected to be demure, obedient, and to become good wives and wise mothers — young Japanese woman today are much more confident, brash, and aware of the opportunities life can hold. And they have the kogal to thank for that."(160)

"Girls’ magazines in Japan don’t just keep young women abreast of the latest trends and fads, they also supplement an education in something that is insufficiently covered at most schools and typically not discussed with parents: sex ed."(164)

"“Gal culture has become really mainstream in Japan in the last decade,” says Popteen editor Wataru Ishihara. The basic concept of the magazine has always been to bring its teen readers the latest fashion trends, plus interviews with celebrities like singers Namie Amuro or Ayumi Hamasaki. It tends to cater to more fashion conscious gals than egg, and models even “graduate” from one magazine in order to move to the other. Other magazines have emerged to target smaller segments of the gal phenomenon; such as Cawaii!, claiming to be for “gal-type high school girls”; Ranzuki for slightly erokawaii (erotic cute) schoolgirls; and Nuts which is for college-aged “sexy gals.”"(167)

"Gyaru-go slang mixes shortened words, acronyms (using the Roman alphabet), parts of words translated into English, and is heavy on the use of Japanese prefixes such as cho (ultra), and suffixes like ra (~er). The language was code lingo parents and teachers couldn’t understand. There are even dictionaries available for struggling adults!"

(171) Chapter Six: Art - Artists' Muse

"Aida, who has also included schoolgirls in his paintings Azemichi and Picture of Waterfall, believes the uniform fundamentally suits the Japanese. Not because they provide conformity, but because they provide a sense of belonging to a group — something that is extremely important in Japanese society. The concept of being “in” or “out” is so culturally ingrained that when parents want to punish small children, they will threaten to lock them outside the house, thereby making them outside the family group."(180)

"Yet, over the past two hundred years Japan has become Westernized by cultures that value individuality. “The foundation for Japanese people isn’t Western individualism, and our Asian-style group thinking lingers,” says Aida. This creates a paradox, and as the artist says, in Japan today “everything is really warped.”"(181)

"Sawada, Koide, and Aida, and many other Japanese artists today, use schoolgirls in their work much the same way French Realists like Millet and Courbet painted peasants — schoolgirls represent the common people, they are the soul of the country and bear the brunt of society, they are the ones who keep it going. And sometimes that stress can take its toll."(183)

"“In Japan, not having a keitai is strange,” says twenty-seven-year-old artist Noriko Yamaguchi. “Girls need someone to talk to.” Keitai is short for keitai denwa (portable phone), and Yamaguchi’s creation Keitai Girl is the embodiment of Japanese girls’ relationship with their phone. Yamaguchi’s art consists of photographs of herself dressed in costume or naked in various situations that highlight the sense of touch, or of wanting to be touched."(193)

(196) Chapter Seven: Games - Play Girls

"While it may seem odd that young women like Ito work in the very male-orientated world of adult video games, female designers actually have more freedom, and get more famous, creating original characters for these titles than they would elsewhere in the industry working on characters everyone already knows."(198)

"Schoolgirls have been popping up in computer games since the early eighties, generally in what are known as “bishoujo games.” Bishoujo means “beautiful girl,” and games of this kind are mainly targeted at a male audience and revolve around interactions with attractive girls."(200)

"However, since these kind of games deal with romance and even adult situations among high school students, it is difficult to bring visual novels and their “over-eighteen” content to a Western game-playing audience — especially as the characters in the game are younger than the age required to purchase the games. “I think because of the religious morals in the West,” says Tada, “certain themes have a hard time being accepted.” Yet in Japan visual novels make up the vast majority of the PC games market and the inevitable anime and manga spin-offs mean these games are inching closer to the mainstream. And while not all feature schoolgirls, they do dominate."(205-206)

(221) Chapter Eight: Manga & Anime - Comic Icons

"Though manga entered a golden age in Japan during the 1950s and the genre has gone on to achieve acceptance and popularity all over the world, its heritage can be traced to Japan’s long and proud history of illustration and decorative arts. As early as the eleventh century, Japanese artists were inking scenes on scrolls that would reveal a tale as they were unrolled. Later, during the Edo period (1600–1868), comic pictures and fuzokuga (genre paintings) were influenced by daily life and these in turn influenced popular ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Ukiyo-zoshi were illustrated brash and bawdy genre novellas set in the pleasure quarters of the cities of Kyoto and Osaka."(226)

"Around the year 2000, as female manga readers were plunging into a gritty, often unforgiving world, male readers and anime otaku (geeks) were entering a world of warm, fuzzy cuteness. A new breed of schoolgirl characters had appeared, and they were more than simply kawaii (cute). They were moé! The term literally means “budding,” but is also a pun on “burning.” Heavy on the fan service — such as putting characters in saucy outfits or providing glimpses of their underpants — moé manga and anime are not dependent on the strength of a story, but on the appeal of the characters and the mood created."(240-241)

"“Schoolgirls represent possibilities,” says Ueda, echoing the common theme. “They’re young, they’re inexperienced, they can do anything, and at that age, they have a freedom that older people don’t have.”

In manga and anime, Japanese schoolgirls are the embodiment of those possibilities — whether it’s the possibility of falling in love, the possibility of saving the world, or the possibility of saving themselves. Their only kryptonite is growing up."(241-242)