let’s talk about the Japanese Schoolgirl

hello my sweet doves welcome back so today we're  going to be unpacking the japanese schoolgirl   this was a subject that my patrons on patreon  voted for me to do so hopefully i do it justice   anyone who's been watching my videos  for a while now probably knows that   uh one of the things i love talking about the most  is the intersection between culture and fashion   something you may not know about me though is  that i used to really love anime especially   back in high school my favorite anime of all  time is hunter hunter 2011 because they have   taste and i actually rewatched the entire thing  well i started at the beginning of quarantine and   it took several months to finish it again because  i was watching it with my boyfriend and he's not a   binger so it was a slow grind but i  had already seen it so that was okay   but i also had a soft spot for slice of life anime  that took place in a high school setting so oren   high school host club sailor moon paradise kiss  if you haven't seen those you're missing out so   in general i'm pretty familiar with the way that  the anime industry has portrayed the school girl   of course while you'll get pretty wholesome  depictions like in the examples i just gave   you also get shows that pander to anime otaku the  word otaku means obsessive fan and in the anime   context it has a pretty heavy negative connotation  generally associated with the body pillow-hugging   neckbeards who live in dark basements and have um  pedophilic tendencies you know incels anime otaku   do make up a pretty big chunk of capital though  which is why there are shows out there that pander   to their interests these shows do a lot of zoom  shots on boobs and legs and basically employ the   male gaze whenever possible i am disgusted i'm  not blaming the anime industry for everything   the film industry is also notorious for portraying  young japanese girls in a very sexualized way   but it actually goes back even further when girls  were first attending school in the late 1800s and   early 1900s there were already magazines that  depicted these school girls as being sexual and   perverse the yokohama daily newspaper published a  series called the tales of degenerate schoolgirls   which had 35 installments and lasted between  september to november 1905. this series posed as a   hey baby the series posed as a nonfiction  account ow the series posed as a nonfiction   account of late meiji era schoolgirl life of  course the series as one expects from the title   degenerate schoolgirl was riddled with cautionary  tales talking about how schoolgirls would sleep   around with schoolboys and get pregnant and  drop out of school to become sex workers   sure the intentions may have been noble warning  parents to keep a closer eye on their daughters as   if they weren't already doing that because it was  the 1800s but the series ultimately also provided   racy perverse subject material for readers which  ended up transforming the school girl into this   fetishized caricature similar to the geisha  and it only got worse over time one of the   biggest schoolgirl related media phenomenons in  the last couple decades was compensated dating   which is basically a form of teenage prostitution  that became an international scandal in the 90s   for those of you who don't know what  compensated dating is it's basically when   school girls would go on dates or hang out with  adult men in exchange for money or designer goods not all the interactions were sexual but   is it okay for old men to be paying young girls  for any kind of service no the way that the   international media has betrayed the schoolgirl is  also quite insidious sharon kinsella a lecturer in   japanese visual cultures at the university of  manchester was a mouthful theorizes that europe   and north america's obsession with the japanese  school girl stems from pre-existing racist tropes the more modern trope of the cute and saucy school  girl who rebels against the oh so oppressive   japanese patriarchy is just a new incarnation of  orientalist storytelling i also think that the   west is so fascinated by the schoolgirl partially  on the basis that she just exists the japanese   media has been hyper aware of the schoolgirl  iconography for a long time now both good and   bad depictions it's important to remember that the  united states and literally every country deals   with the same kind of messed up issues including  teenage prostitution and sexualizing child stars   like no one forgot about britney spears's song hit  me baby one more time right she recorded the music   video when she was 17. but rather than focusing  on what is wrong with this country a lot of   americans instead find joy projecting and pointing  figures at japan and going off about how messed up   japanese people are it's only been in recent years  that the us's industry treatment of young girls   started being interrogated i was so excited at 13  when the film was released and my work and my art   would have a human response i excitedly opened my  first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man   had written me a countdown was started on my local  radio show to my 18th birthday euphemistically the   date that i would be legal to sleep with but  you know in the 90s the japanese school girl   was already being talked about and it's easy  to project your own issues onto a concept that   already exists but at the same time the japanese  school girl is sexualized she's also presented   as a symbol of rebellion in the media take  movies like love exposure where the protagonist   is a violent schoolgirl who likes to smash up  happy family homes and kill bill volume 1 which   features the character gogo yubari a 17 year old  japanese girl in a school uniform who kills people   now i want to talk about two periods of time when  the japanese schoolgirls style directly led to how   the media misinterpreted her because guess what i  love fashion and media critique let's start with   the late 1800s i choose the late 1800s because it  wasn't until 1872 that the ministry of education   in japan passed the education system ordinance  which was basically a regulation that introduced   a new school system based on the american model  and in principle now all children were supposed   to go to school but because of good old old  traditions it wasn't until the late 1890s   early 1910s that more girls started to enroll  into schools the shift happened because the   government realized that girls higher education  was actually an asset to the state for context   the first sino-japanese war went on from 1894 to  1895 and men were going to war while wives were   keeping up the home front girls higher education  was now viewed as a way to foster patriotism   and to encourage girls to have more baby boys  so in the government's mind those boys could   become soldiers when they grow up early  girls uniforms in the late 1800s took on   the look of boys uniforms which included  hakama which are these wide leg trousers   school girls known as jogakusei were  hakama because it was practical new   school buildings followed western classroom  design so now girls were sitting in chairs   at desks and they wore hakama so that they  wouldn't be concerned about flashing people   sitting in these new positions of course  people were upset because not only were girls   participating in school which you know is a boy  thing they were also now wearing boys clothing and on top of that schoolgirls also adopted  western shoes which were only considered to   be a masculine accessory at the time i also  want to point out that women who wore western   garments in the 1800s were stereotyped as being  lower class or sex workers who only sought after   westerners it wasn't until 1886 when empress  shoken declared that all court ladies would be   required to wear western garments for imperial  functions but earlier artworks and stories that   depicted schoolgirls used western clothing to  imply the artist's negative opinions about them   in the early 1900s girls started to wear modified  hakama which had a skirt like structure instead   of a pants-like structure shimoda utako  the founder of the jissen women's school   is credited for being the person who redesigned  the hakama this redesign was a compromise   because it feminized the uniform a little bit  more but also allowed girls to move freely   i want to emphasize that girls really liked  wearing the hakama even at schools that didn't   require them girls would still voluntarily wear  them or ask permission to wear them the hakama was   viewed as a fashionable garment and girls could  express their own personal styles by knotting the   waist cords in different ways the sailor style  uniform gradually came about in the early 1900s   but really took off in the late 1920s according  to katsuhiko sano the director of the tombow   uniform museum i actually don't know if he's still  there but in 2010 he was there so according to him   one of the sources for the sailor style  uniform was elizabeth lee in 1915 lee the   american headmistress at the fukuoka jo gakuin  school which was a christian girls school   wore sailor style clothes the students loved her  outfits so much that a local tailor called ota's   western clothing shop started to reproduce  lee's clothing for the spring 1922 class   this uniform like the hakama was initially  self-enforced with a lot of schools not requiring   it let's fast forward to the 90s because i  do really want to talk about kogaru culture the term kogaru first showed up in 1993 in the  magazine called spa early media usage generally   referred to the kogaru as being sexually deviant  teenagers but over time as the term became more   widely common the term encompassed girls teenage  girls who exhibited a certain kind of behavior i   hesitate to call it a style but i think i will  anyway because i'm mostly going to be talking   about their clothing but it's important for you  all to know that being a kogaru meant you behaved   in a certain way as well this included squatting  on street corners like men using crude language   and posing for pictures with ugly expressions  also the style was not universal among all school   girls sharon kinsella actually conducted a small  survey in 1997 asking students what they thought   about the kogaru and most of the responses among  the participants thought of the kogaru as pretty   rough and uncultured but let's talk about the  kogaru style girls who participated in the style   rolled up the waistbands of their school uniform  skirts to make them into mini skirts they wore   loose white socks that crumple around their shins  and in the winter time they wore fendi or burberry   check pattern scarves they also had a lot of  cute accessories like hello kitty phone cases   they did wear other outfits in the evening and  out of school such as hot pants and slinky dresses   but it's their modified school uniform that really  dominated the public's image of them the school   outfits had a very mixed match feel to them some  students would buy second-hand items from bloomer   sailor shops which were shops that sold pre-worn  items to male uniform fetishists the girls would   also swap clothing items with their friends to  create an original uniform with different kind   of school insignias modifying school uniforms was  not a new concept as i said earlier it started   in the 1900s with the girls knotting their waist  cords different ways and then there was a movement   of sukeban in the 1970s where some girls joined  gangs wore longer skirts and cropped their shirts   to name a few examples but schools always  had difficulty with these modified uniforms   regulations vary depending on the school of  course but girls who attended stricter schools   would have a cuter uniform that they would change  into after class despite the negative attention   that the kogaru sometimes garnered from the  media they were trend setters at least in   the street fashion side of the world kogaru were  featured in magazines like harper's bazaar in 2000   and in h which is a japanese magazine with an  older readership in 2003 the brand sock touch   which kind of faded in relevance in the 80s became  super popular in the 90s because of the kogaru   sales rapidly increased in 1993 after the  magazine 17 and pucci saboon ran stories   about sock touch as part of kogaru fashion  product sales jumped from 10 000 units in 1992   to 4.5 million units in 1994. the reason the socks  are popular among kogaru is difficult to trace   in the early 90s eric smith founder of the company  eg smith which was a sock making company wanted to   expand into the japanese market he subsequently  struck a deal with wix a japanese textile company   the wix company president uehori takahiro claims  that the loose socks first became popular when   they put them in the display at a SOGO department  store in yokohama in 1993. he's quoted saying   two high school girls bought the white socks and  wore them to class before you knew it the look had   caught on at their school allegedly i don't know  if he's just saying that to get good company pr   eric smith also added that some girls would change  into their loose socks in public areas because   those socks were against school regulation  so they would change into them after school   and unfortunately this caused the loose  socks to be fetishized by some businessmen   it also didn't help that tabloids that were  reporting compensated dating featured these   girls wearing loose socks and then all of this  kind of snowballed into loose socks showing up   in pornographic films the sexualization of kogaru  was a real problem and the media went into a huge   frenzy when they were covering compensated  dating some sociologists actually criticized   the media for blowing the situation way out of  proportion because apparently there were not that   many schoolgirls who were engaging in compensated  dating in the first place obviously the fact that   any girls were partaking in this is a problem but  the media made it seem like all of them were to me   the most like hellish part of this whole coverage  situation is that the media portrayed these girls   as being like willing participants in compensated  dating which ended up leading cultural producers   to viewing these school girls and kogaru  as these post-feminist revolutionary forces   the 1997 film bounce kogal for instance  shows kogaru in their loose socks arguing   and beating up conservative sexist old men i think  it was the combination of the compensated dating   scandals and the fact that these girls were so  visibly rebelling against their school uniforms   that led to them being pigeonholed as these  hyper-aware anti-establishment symbols   you may be wondering so what's the problem  what's the problem with the media depicting   these schoolgirls as badasses because they  are whether or not they're aware of it well   the problem is once again and i cannot emphasize  this enough the media is mostly run by adult men   and they paint the schoolgirl the way they want to  see her painted the way this trope has developed   actually tells us more about what the writer  the filmmaker the artist the journalist wants   in our society than it does about real teenage  girls feminist writer asano chie criticized   investigative journalist and sociologist under the  logic of the same reasoning for these critics the   sex worker the high school girl doing compensated  dating or the tokyo university student who does   prostitution are nothing more than tools to  further their own political goals and consequently   these writers have blocked japanese girls and  women from articulating the way that they want   to be represented in theory teenage girls should  be able to just dress up in the way that they want   to without carrying the weight of society's  expectations for them because the reality is   most of these girls weren't thinking of you know  smashing the patriarchy or sleeping with old men   for revenge which is what male film directors want  you to think i wish there was more media by girls   for girls i wish there was more media um where  even adult women had the agency to depict their   childhoods the way that is realistic to what they  actually lived and i think when male directors   depict japanese school girls in a very revenge  seeking sexually mature way it puts the actual   girls at risk there are tons of articles out there  for instance talking about how girls know what   they're getting into when they go on dates with 50  year old men so there you go um obviously there's   a lot of factors that go into the way that the  japanese school girl is represented in media today   it's just something to think about and  something that occasionally gets on my nerves   um especially being an asian woman and seeing all  this stuff like unfold and feeling so close to it   but uh yeah thank you everyone for watching this  i appreciate it and i'll see you all next time

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 667,554

Rating: 4.9632511 out of 5

Keywords: schoolgirl, japan, cosplay, japanese, film, film commentary, style analysis, kogaru, kogal, kogyaru, gyaru, fashion, style, film analysis, kill bill, gogo yubari, sailor moon

Id: BBnlC9lrKVM

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Askingquestions55]

I love Mina's content so much I'm glad her content about japanese and asian culture in media is finally getting posted here

[u/vintagegossamer]

So happy we’re posting Mina here! She’s awesome!

[u/Dantien]

Despite her mispronunciation of words like kogyaru, this is a wonderfully informative explanation. I appreciated how she explained the post-Meiji transition to include the Sino-Japanese war’s effect on education as well as the voluntary adoption of hakama etc. it’s easy with our lens to critique the past, so being honest about intention and motivations is critical. She does a really great job.

[u/mirh]

I have a bit of a hard time understanding who this video is addressed to.

I only lightly know the story behind kogal.. but as far as I can tell from my western armchair, the only source of schoolgirl tropes here is anime. And while trashy fan service exists, Kodocha or Sailor Moon or Haruhi Suzumiya always took the cultural spotlight in this regard imo.

(Kill Bill actually being the only other occasion I can think of one being depicted, and I wouldn't use that crazy movie as a reference for anything)

Also, the otaku/incel equivalence doesn't really seem warranted and I thought child beauty pageant were only a thing in the USofA.

[u/robm0n3y]

Be like Slavs and have a Chinese School boy fetish.

[u/Tribalrage24]

Very well done, interesting and well researched. Definitely going to look into more of their stuff!

[u/dabbling-dilettante]

How have I not discovered Mina before? Thank you for posting this, going to go down a rabbit hole of all her content on her YT channel 👀