Schoolgirls, Money and Rebellion in Japan

by Sharon Kinsella

Japanese society in the 1990s and 2000s produced a range of complicated material about sexualized schoolgirls, and few topics have caught the imagination of western observers so powerfully. While young Japanese girls had previously been portrayed as demure and obedient, in training to become the obedient wife and prudent mother, in recent years less than demure young women have become central to urban mythology and the content of culture. The cultic fascination with the figure of a deviant school girl, which has some of its earliest roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, likewise re-emerged and proliferated in fascinating and timely ways in the 1990s and 2000s. Through exploring the history and politics underlying the cult of girls in contemporary Japanese media and culture, this book presents a striking picture of contemporary Japanese society from the 1990s to the start of the 2010s. At its core is an in-depth case study of the media delight and panic surrounding delinquent prostitute schoolgirls. Sharon Kinsella traces this social panic back to male anxieties relating to gender equality and female emancipation in Japan. In each chapter in turn, the book reveals the conflicted, nostalgic, pornographic, and at times distinctly racialized manner, in which largely male sentiments about this transformation of gender relations have been expressed. The book simultaneously explores the stylistic and flamboyant manner in which young women have reacted to the weight of an obsessive and accusatory male media gaze. Covering the often controversial subjects of compensated dating (enjo kôsai), the role of porn and lifestyle magazines, the historical sources and politicized social meanings of the schoolgirl, and the racialization of fashionable girls, Schoolgirls, Money, Rebellion in Japan will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, sociology, anthropology, gender and women's studies.

Genres: Japan, Sociology, Nonfiction, Asia, Anthropology, Feminism

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2013

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I arrived in Japan in 2013 and I’d say I saw the very tail end of the events, styles, and issues discussed in this book. I definitely saw a few girls around Tokyo dressed in the kogyaru and Ganguro styles, and there was still some talk about compensated dating, but it had mostly faded away.

This book covers a lot and does so with very accessible language in just the right amount of depth. Some of the topics, as the Kinsella acknowledges on occasion, could be expanded upon to make an entire book of their own, but as they are gave me just enough information so as to not feel too hurried or shallow.

I wonder how my perspective, as someone living IN Tokyo, changes my reception of this book compared to someone who’s maybe visited, if that. Given that the sexualised images of Japanese schoolgirls have been spread worldwide, I think it’s a very valuable read for both. I found it really enlightening to read about how the media created and sustained the topic.

It also got me wondering if a similar thing is even possible now that we have social media and individuals can control (sort of, that’s a whole other book!) the distribution of their own image. The way styles and trends can now spread online from “influencers”, who are themselves often (usually?) a part of these subcultures and social groups, is vastly different to the world of magazine editors who were producing so much of the media about and for these girls.

[CL Chu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very relevant to my research or, rather, to my understanding of the culture I grow up with - the anime representation of Japanese schoolgirls. While based mostly on interviews with commentators and analysis of existing literature - which makes the experience of "real schoolgirls" obscure, the book successfully highlights the (contradictory & ambivalent) assumptions underlying the moral panic around compensated date and "deviant" girls, thus questioning what exactly is "schoolgirl", or what kind of questions circulating are actually misdirecting/self-serving/reflecting other structural issues (e.g. much is said about girls, what about schools?).

The gyaru style is indeed less a media phenomenon since the 2010s, but the author's attempt to draw parallel between the ideals of femininity, nation, ethnicity/race, political economy is impressive. With the mainstreaming of (some aspects of) Japanese culture across the globe, the book remains highly important in highlighting the complex entanglement between media representation, academic critique (left or right or indifferent), uneven power relations, and the figure of the girl in global media.