© Tom Jacobi/Stern/Studio X, La Benerie
© Tom Jacobi/Stern/Studio X, La Benerie
©
Tom Jacobi/Stern/Studio X, La Benerie
Tokyo’s fashion victims seldom travel on their own.
Until
the 1970s or 1980s, no self-respecting woman ever went out with bare arms, much less
uncovered legs or feet. |
The
outrageously eccentric young women of Tokyo’s trendy neighbourhoods use their bodies
as a provocation, simply to attain the illusion of being loved
It all started in 1996
with Amuro Namie, a superb, 17-year-old siren and graduate of Okinawa’s Actor’s School.
An excellent dancer, she performed on stage in a strapless bra and then in a pant
suit with long jackets. Her look–golden skin, mother-of-pearl hair and carefully
tweezed eyebrows–immediately became all the rage, launching the “tropical” style.
Amuro Namie also introduced the vogue of “platform boots,” which she even wore in
the middle of summer to make up for her short stature.
Her clones have multiplied like mushrooms after a rainstorm in Tokyo’s trendy neighbourhoods,
like Shibuya. Hiyake tanning salons have cropped up just about everywhere, and young
women who have overdone it–or fallen asleep under the UV rays–are called ganguro,
“black faces.” They find a mischievous pleasure in accentuating the contrasts by
highlighting their eyes and lips in white.
“I went through my kogyaru [literally, ‘little girl’1] phase,” says Sanae, a 21-year-old
student, “my teachers just about pushed me into it. When they let me know that they
couldn’t stand me anymore–that I would never make it in their eyes–I realized it
was no longer worth wearing myself out trying to please them. To get out of my teenage
crisis, I hung out with a group of girls, between 15 and 18, who were as lost as
me. Some of them were ‘occasionals’ who turned tricks to buy clothes or name-brand
handbags without the least bit of remorse. They clung to the illusion that they were
envied.”
Writer Murakami Ryu2 thinks that high school prostitution is the sign of a much wider
malaise in Japan. To him, young “occasionals” are just trying to act like adults
by sacrificing themselves to the ritual of consumption. After all, aren’t the Japanese
the world’s leading consumers of designer Louis Vuitton bags? “These young people
cling to their mobile phones like a life raft to give themselves the illusion of
being loved,” he says. “In reality, they’re terribly lonely. Each girl is in her
bubble, incapable of communicating.”
The kogyaru of the late 1990s vanished as quickly as they appeared. Men now find
them vulgar, and nobody seems to miss them. In Shibuya, they have been replaced by
superb creatures on stilts, their pants held up by garters that offer a glimpse of
legs molded by red fishnet stockings. Clothes are just an excuse. Hanging out in
Shibuya mostly means wandering around in search of an identity, or at least a visual
one. What began as a very affected anti-conformism has ended up becoming a new way
of fitting into the standard mould. You cannot tell one Shibuya girl from another.
Their password remains mureru, “meeting in groups to share,” if not the same philosophy
of life, at least the same eccentricity or the courage to exhibit part of their bodies.
Until the 1970s and 80s, no self-respecting woman ever went out with bare arms, much
less uncovered legs or feet. Sleeves were mandatory and going bare-legged was out
of the question, even during the hottest months of the year. The measure of how much
a woman in a kimono cared about her appearance was the cleanliness of her tabi (linen
socks worn with sandals or wooden clogs), which she discreetly changed during the
course of the day to always look impeccable.
Today’s young women are just as conscious and strict about their appearance but display
it in other ways. They walk around bare-legged, bare-backed and barefoot in spangled
mules and plunging necklines. They wear carefully polished fingernails (real or false,
they are incredibly long) and false eyelashes, their bodies burned to a crisp by
UV rays and their hair dyed blond or bleached.
The Shibuya generation, the heir to the “bamboo shoots” generation (takenoko zoku)
of the 1970s and 80s, is so eccentric they would make London’s former punks blush.
“The plasticity of Japanese women’s bodies lets them change their look whenever they
feel like it,” says Erika, a 17-year-old French-Japanese high school student. “They
can be black or white. For an African look, they overdo it in the tanning salons,
wear clothes with leopard designs, have their hair kinked and permed and use make-up
with an emphasis on brown pastels and white reflections. If they want to look white,
like the singer Hamazaki Ayumi, they cultivate a pale look, bleach their hair, put
on false eyelashes and sometimes even wear blue contact lenses or sunglasses.”
At
twenty, the fun stops
To
obtain a kogao, or “little face,” there is an endless range of products, from sauna
masks to creams. The hard part is maintaining the iron discipline necessary to stay
slim as a reed, with a narrow waist and spaghetti legs. “Anorexia has been taking
a heavy toll since the 1980s,” says psychiatrist Saitô Satoru, who is the author
of a book entitled Onnarashisa no yamai (The Pain of Femininity). “Over 60 percent
of young women today are underweight.”
That’s because being beautiful in Japan means being young, very young. The singers
in Morning Musume, a real hit, are between 12 and 20 years old. The senior member
(called “the old lady”!) just quit the band at the age of 28. Amuro Namie was a star
when she was 18. Today, she has practically disappeared.
Why then do these girls go through so much trouble for their look? They do it more
for themselves than to attract attention from boys. To have fun and show off. But
showing off implies the presence of an audience likely to admire them, or at least
appreciate all their efforts. The blond sirens in Shibuya know that their daring
outfits are less shocking when they walk around in groups, as if to give themselves
the courage to face disapproving stares. In any case, they don’t stand a chance of
getting through the high school door with their look. Education is a serious business,
and all the more so when university begins.
A
rich man is hard to find
“The
student style has nothing to do with the kogyaru style,” says Chikako, a third-year
student who works for the magazine Can Can. “Our readers, who are between 18 and
23, are looking for smart, resourceful men who make a good living and spend their
money like water. The guys these girls want to meet most graduated from the top universities.
They work in business, advertising or for a famous foreign company, unless they’re
future doctors. Since the speculative bubble burst and economic growth came to a
screeching halt in the early 1990s, the student style has become much more toned
down. Girls used to own several name-brand bags, now they settle for just one. They
spend more on their hair than on their clothes. All of them want dirty blond hair.
It’s gotten to the point where girls with black hair are a minority in university
lecture halls!”
After graduation, they reappear in preppy suits, white blouses buttoned up to the
neck and flat-heeled shoes, like perfect office ladies. At 30, they drop their boyfriends
for somebody more serious and hard-working who will help them fulfill their role
as mother and do all they can to put their children on the path to a bright future.
So much conformism is almost enough to make one yearn for the days when the kogyaru
gave free rein to their fantasies.
1. From the Japanese
ko, little, and the English girl pronounced with a Japanese accent.
2. Author of Coin Locker Babies (Kodansha, 1995) |
