“An Examination of Criticisms, Ideas, and Realities

of Japanese Schoolgirl Subcultures During the 20th Century

Through the Lens of Hana no Asukagumi!”

Emily Reichert

Dr. Bae

HIST 172U

May 3, 2010

Asuka, the protagonist of Takaguchi Satosumi’s 1985 manga, Hana no Asukagumi!, is a

rebel of rebels. She walks alone – always – whether it be in a school hallway or on Ichibangai

(First Street) in the middle of the night. The girl “sukeban” gangs terrorize her school and police

the streets of Tokyo. She stands up to and fights them. Asuka rebels against both society and the

sukeban – who have in this story ironically become apart of society despite their rebellious

behavior. What, exactly, is Asuka then? What are the sukeban? Asuka is not technically a

sukeban, or apart of motorcycle gangs. She is not a reincarnation of a moga (modern girl, modan

gaaru) or a Meiji era-type Schoolgirl. Nor is she a time traveling yamamba or kogal or any other

modern day subculture. Asuka, upon historical analysis, is everything. She is Takaguchi

Satosumi’s hindsight creation of the ideal schoolgirl rebel.

Takaguchi Satosumi, the author of this manga, was born in 1957 and had the opportunity

to grow up during the height of the sukeban membership and reflect on her experience through

her manga. Hana no Asukagumi! was first published in 1985, which can be viewed as the “in

between” period. During these years subcultural school girls were over sukeban, but were not

quite Lady’s biker gangs.These girls ****decided to dance in the street in the meantime (with the

Takenokozoku). All three subcultures appear in and are given their own characters in Hana no

Aukagumi!. However the only character worth aspiring towards is the one who breaks

(sometimes literally) all the molds. This essay will examine the subcultural contrast created

among the characters in issues one through three, and the purpose that Takaguchi Satosumi

assigns to Asuka through her transcending of all possible subcultures. It will also follow the

1

“trilogy” of bad girl subcultures from the Meiji period to 1985 to illustrate the individual

contributions that each group had made in girl culture. While Takaguchi would most likely argue

that group mentality among subcultures is detrimental to the overall purpose of a subculture, this

essay will envelope the argument that in the end, group mentality for most female schoolgirls is

all that they have. Group mentality and strength can go hand-in-hand, no less than individual

relationships. In the case of Japanese schoolgirl subcultures, the ends justify the means, no

matter how obscene those means may get.

Chapter one of female delinquency begins in 1899 with the Meiji schoolgirls (Miller

2005). The country was rapidly modernizing, and among the chaos inherited by the government

was the Girls’ Higher School Order, which allowed the daughters of elite families to attend

higher school (Miller 2005). In 1903 there were 25,719 girls registered, who comprised roughly

1.2 percent of school-aged Japanese females (Miller 2005). The population was too miniscule to

accurately represent the female population at that time – which was conveniently not the point

(Miller 2005). The purpose of sending these young women to school was to impress the west, to

act as “an emblem of Japan’s progress made manifest in a tennis-playing, English-speaking,

educated beauty” (Miller 2005). The only problem with this was, according to traditional values,

women were to remain strictly in the domestic sphere. Frederik Schodt in his book, Manga!

Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, states that “compared to Europe and the United States,

women in Japan have had their sex roles rigidly defined and the socialization with the opposite

sex restricted” (Schodt 1986). This statement applies even to feudal Japan (Schodt 1986). A

woman’s place was exclusively to the domestic sphere, or the home, where she was the

subordinate to “parents, husband, and mother-in-law, and in old age to her own male children”

(Schodt 1986).

2

School is a part of the public sphere – a place, with the exception of courtesans, that

women had not seen and been seen in for a long time. This led to an opportunity for girls to

“position themselves” in the forbidden land (Miller 2005). Not surprisingly, the result was a

celebrity tabloid effect on the image of the schoolgirl. The Meiji schoolgirl was at first propped

up to be “little more than a candy-coated symbol of modernity” (Miller 2005). People were

interested simply because she represented a contradiction: She was female, in the public sphere,

and not a streetwalker. The government supported her attendance to these higher schools, so

therefore she must be good. But how was she to fit? As time went on it became clear that this

task was not one of modern versus traditional, but that of good or bad. How they negotiated the

new spaces determined their inheremt goodness or badness, and by “the late-Meiji period, the

label ‘degenerate schoolgirl’ (daraku jogakusei) had gained currency through Japanese

reportage” (Miller 2005). The name would suggest a girl who was eroding society away with her

virus-like activities, but in fact it only referred to girls who overstepped her boundaries in some

way or another. This is where schoolgirl rebellion culture begins.

The Meiji schoolgirl’s successor is the modern girl, or moga. She existed in the middle-

class urban landscape during the late 1920’s (Silverberg 1991). After the earthquake of 1923 the

deeper social and cultural effects of modernization sank in and a “fever of anxiety” s-read in

public discourse over the future of Japan as a culture (Silverberg 1991). Men and women went

together to nightclubs, “intent on hearing the latest jazz tunes, showing off their dance steps, and

displaying their fashionable clothes” (Brown 2002). Women and girls, from a wider cross-

section of society,began to appear in the public sphere. They were not there by requirement, and

did not shield themselves from the eyes of onlookers as women were traditionally expected to

do. In fact, they seemed to welcome the public attention. Although these females ranged outside

3

of higher school status, their actual numbers were not any bigger. The media that latched on to

their image (and could not keep their hands off of her). The moga became a game of catch

between social critics and authority figures that were constantly striving to determine the

“modern Japanese woman” ideal (Brown 2002).

Journalists avidly described the modern girl as a young woman that wore western

clothing, was casual about interactions with men – especially flirtatious ones -, cut her hair short

like a boy’s, and showed off her body (Silverberg 1991). At the same time, other ___attempted

to control her moral images, that is, to make her modern in appearance, but conservative socially

(Brown 2002). Some were uncompromising in determining the woman’s place in modernity.

According to Brown and Minichiello, “Articles decrying moga and praising conventional canons

of female beauty were standard fare in periodicals” (Brown 2002). An example of this was an

article by a yōga painter named Fujita Tsuguji (Brown 2002). Tsuguji claimed true Japanese

femininity was inherently, by definition, traditional (Brown 2002). According to Fujita, “When

dressed in Japanese costume, [women] must behave according to Japanese customs of modesty

and quiet, and it is wrong for them to imitate American movie actresses. (Brown

2002)”Ultimately, then discussion of proper versus improper fervently femininity that both the

modern girl and the traditional woman were shaped and controlled by the media (Brown 2002).

Those who tried to mesh modernity and tradition constructed an image ofa “true”

Japanese woman essentially posing as western. An article in The Japan Times from 1932

covered the view of a modern girl on the modern girl (Brown 2002). The piece focused on a

woman by the name of Miyamoto Toshiko,a twenty-two-year-old secretary working at a firm in

the Ginza disctrict(Brown 2002):

4

Although she wears Western clothes and the hairstyle of a modern girl, this young

woman hates the term moga and its social implications. Miyamoto works but is

against women having careers and hopes to quit when married (Brown 2002).

Miyamoto, according to Brown and Minichiello, was “an acceptable hybrid: modern in

appearance and traditional in her values” (Brown 2002).

The over-saturation of modern girl ideals in public discourse is evident in public

mediums. Some criticized her for being obscene, some commended her, and some commended

her only under certain conditions, but the overall effect is clear. According to Miriam Silverberg

in her article The Modern Girl as Militant, “One … saw her evolving toward complete

fulfillment. [It was] predicted that future historians writing the history of prewar men and women

in Japan would call the year when the term modan gaaru appeared in magazines and

newspapers” (Silverberg 1991). The possibilities for where she would go were endless, but with

the onset of the Pacific War modernization slipped second place to militarism and endless

possibilities turned into an end of any possibilities (Silverberg 1991). Throughout the 1930’s and

–40’s women were legally forbidden to wear men’s clothes, weaves, and anything that suggested

western decadence (Silverberg 1991). Women’s magazines also were put under tight controls

and gender and culture were given concrete boundaries that, this time, were not to be crossed at

all (Silverberg 1991).

The sukeban, from late 1960’s to early 1970’s, were the next subculture to surface and

constituted Japan’s first all-girl gangs (Macias 2007). The fashion sported by these girls, sailor-

suit uniform, fuzzy afro hair, and a very long skirt, went out of style as soon as they themselves

did in Japan (Macias 2007). Hobbies included shoplifting, pick pocketing, violence, and other

misbehaviors. But most importantly, anything they did happened in groups (Macias 2007). Their

5

relationships with are classified by Macias and Evers as “a revolutionary mix of to-the-death

sisterhood, ironclad rules, and an underworld-style flair for organization” (Macias 2007).

Physical violence was taken for granted on a day-to-day basis with other rival gangs or even

members of their own gang (Macias 2007). Macias and Evers state, “Breaking the rules (and the

Sukeban loved to make rules) could result in a physical sanction known as ‘lynching’” (Macias

2007). Lynching had different ranges of intensity that included a lit cigarette placed on bare

skin, to “the harshest of punishments rival anything in the annals of the Spanish Inquisition and

are simply too terrible to mention here” (Macias 2007). The Sukeban liked to play rough.

Although their fashion statements may have become outdated, their “sisterhood” mentality

survived to influence future girl subcultures in some form or another (Macias 2007). The

timeliest affiliation is that with the all-girl biker gangs. They adopted drug habits and intense

bonds to one another (Macias 2007). Macias and Evers state, “The basic attitude and structure of

the Lady’s gangs were derived from the sukeban juvenile delinquents of a decade before”

(Macias 2007). They essentially became an extreme extension of sukeban that greatly amplified

everything their predecessors did(Macias 2007). Differences were limited to their wardrobe and

hobbies, andas the name suggests, they had a passion for motorcycles (Macias 2007). Their

uniform was a uniquely Japanese look that included a sarashi cloth, net sandals, and a tokko fuku

coat (Macias 2007).

These figures all show up in Hana no Asukagumi! in various forms. Asuka, the

protagonist, is introduced into the story wearing a sailor uniform with a very long traditional

skirt. She is extremely disrespectful to her mother and when asked about her sexual life by a

classmate she proceeds to beat her up. This is a typical sukeban reaction. Japanese Schoolgirl

Inferno states that despite the fact that the sukeban committed petty crimes, they “were

6

convinced that they were living by high moral standards,” as far as sexuality was concerned

(Macias 2007). According to Macias and Evers, this reserved concept was a reaction tothe sexual

revolution of the 1960’s (Macias 2007). Wearing revealing clothing and excessive makeup was

frowned upon from other members of the gang (Macias 2007). Asuka follows these moral ideas,

but she does it for herself, not for any other groups or people.

Asuka is not a pure sukeban, however. The first offset is her hair: It is cut very short like

a boy. She prefers this androgynous style because it looks like Momoe Yamaguchi, her favorite

singer. She is also a loner. She refuses memberships to gangs and is often shown “blowing off”

individuals that interact with her. This one-man(girl)-band mentality is anti-sukeban in a sense.

Meanwhile, in other scenes, she is shown wearing biker gang clothes with heeled sandals, a

sarashi cloth, and a tokko fuku coat. In another scene she is mistaken for a takenokozoku by

pedestrians. Her hair is short like that of a moga; she walks alone in the streets as though she

were a Meiji schoolgirl, disrespects authority like a sukeban, yet at the same time relishes

independence. It is shown that she crosses into all boundaries of schoolgirl subculture while

simultaneously throwing their value systems to the wind.

The Hana no Asukagumi! sukeban gangs and the group mentality involved in them are

cast in a negative light. In one scene they are shown surrounding Asuka and hitting her in the

face for “acting big” on Ichibangai (First Street). She is given an ultimatum of joining their

group or not showing her self on the streets in such a free manner (similar to that of the Meiji

schoolgirl) again. Another group of younger girls are shown bullying a character named Tonoko

by cutting her hair, writing obscenities on her face, and stripping her in the classroom. Despite

their age difference, they are shown to be the same type of group that Asuka encounters on the

streets, and resemble “heirs to the throne” to succeed them.

7

The sukeban are also shown to be not as conservative as their stereotypical counterparts-

or as confident as the stereotype would suggest for that matter. There is a sex scene involving the

head of the gang who asks her “boyfriend” to get some of his gang-buddies together to gang rape

Asuka to teach her a lesson. This is not exactly chastity 101. The internal strength of these

groups is also brought into question in that same conversation:

“I don’t like that brat [Asuka]. Going around on her own… she gets on my nerves,” the

girl says.

“Alone, huh?” the boyfriend replies. “She must seem that way to people like you who can

only walk around Ichibangai if they’re in groups.”

The girl fires back, “We’re a legit organization! We make rules together and keep order!”

In and and other instances, Satosumi seems intent on criticizing the group mentality among all

girl gangs. The story, however, may not be so simple. Before discussing the criticism of

rebellious youth loyalty systems, it is important to examine where these practices came from in

the first place. This can be done through Sharon Kinsella’s article, Black Faces, Witches, and

Racism against Girls in Bad Girls of Japan, which discusses the culture of the kogyaru, ganguro,

and yamamba, a few of the sukebans many offspring who came into existence nearly two

decades after the first publishing of Hana no Asukagumi!. Analyzing the past through the future

in this case can be done because according to Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno, the group-like

mentality of the sukeban was handed down and adapted into many subcultures that followed

(Macias 2007). Kinsella states, “More and more of these girls flaunt themselves, regroup on the

streets, and adopt provocative attitudes, by which they expose themselves to verbal abuse from

passerby, physical violence, and prurient winks of older men, and getting head hunted by scouts

working for the sex industry” (Miller 2005). The fashion styles of the “black-faces” changed

8

dramatically in contrast to the sukeban, but the themes of how they interact and execute their

rebellion, and do so in groups, remain constant. This is especially evident because upon reading

the previous quote, it is hard, if not impossible to discern which subculture the author is referring

to.

The characters in Hana no Asukagumi! are subjected to physical violence, sexual

trafficking, verbal abuse, all while grouping on the streets. The question that remains is: why?

Honda Masuko proposes in Kinsella’s article that girls “are complicit in their own outsider status

and the segregation of girl’s aesthetics and pastimes from the rest of modern culture.

Incarcerated in schools and dormitories, girls are other worldly beings that are implicit

foreigners: ‘Theories of the everyday order can not even formulate the words required to discuss

this gypsy-like sensibility’” (Miller 2005). It becomes apparent that, in a social context, things

have not changed since the first day the elite Meiji daughters stepped foot into their first day of

Higher Order School. The only difference is, after the U.S. Occupation democratized the

education system, the judgment of “good” or “bad” put on girls depended on how they negotiate

the private and public boundaries opened up to include all female girls. In spite of the handicap

placed on women restricting them to the domestic sphere, Schodt states, “or perhaps because of

it, Japanese women have developed a culture separate from that of men. They have their own

style of speech, using different personal pronouns, mannerisms, and verb endings” (Schodt

1986). Upon analyzing the historical culture of women in Japan it becomes evident how it is

possible that girl gangs such as sukeban exist, especially since women are still publicly criticized

for being in the public sphere in a “bad” way.

An interview with a member of a Tokyo-based biker gang gave insight into the perks that such a

member ship could offer. When asked what the best parts of being in a gang are, she states,

9

“Everything, really. I learned a lot about people and human relationships. There were one

thousand of us, and it just felt so incredible to gather and ride in a big group like that. You felt

really strong and unstoppable. It was even fun when the cops chased us” (Macias 2007).

“Strong” is the key word in this quote that seems to embody what all of these girls are after.

Asuka is honored more than once throughout the three chapters for being strong, and the author

dives even deeper by giving examples of what is and isn’t “strong.” One of these examples is

shown in Figures 3 and 4. In figure 3, a character named Mika, has previously told Asuka that

she wants to be “strong” like her. Later, however in figure 4, Asuka finds Mika who has changed

her appearance and joined one of the street gangs. Askua then says to herself,“That’s not the

strength I meant, Mika.”Satosumi shows in many instances that belonging to a group is not the

equivalent to being “strong.”

Public reactions to this quest for strength, including examples such as Satosumi’s manga,

tend to be extremely critical. Kohama Itsuro in his essay, Girl as Subject, states “the cliquey

habits of girls are essentially those of ‘pack animals,’ who ‘exhibit their eroticism not as

individuals, but as a solid collectivity’” (Miller 2005). The group-like mentality of these girl

subcultures tends to be viewed not as the product of the expectations placed on young females

required to attend school, but rather as an independent occurrence caused from internal factors.

Yamane Kazuma, a freelance scholar, elaborates on this theme saying: “As a country in the

northern hemisphere, Japanese society is correspondingly governed by the erstwhile European

and Protestant principals of ‘industrious’ and ‘self-denial.’ In the midst of this industrious

society, girls’ culture was revealed as an alien element” (Miller 2005). The existence of both

results in a tug-of-war that Kinsella describes as “literarily and literally dominated by male

cultural and intellectual production, girl’s street fashion, … secreted a silent, stylistic response,

10

which caught up, echoed, contradicted, confused, and incited the barrage of male journalism and

broadcasting, peremptorily accusing girls of sexual and racial delinquency” (Miller 2005). The

purpose of all of these subcultures is to desensitize the media in such a way that eventually

makes it allowable for young women to walk around in public without being labeled as “bad.”

Upon examining where the sukeban came from, what it was at its peak, and what it led to

in the following years, one thing becomes clear. There has never been an instance in 20th or 21st

century Japan where girls have been put into the public sphere in the name of democratization

and been free of public regulation of their social actions. As Miriam Silverberg states in the

conclusion of Bad Girls of Japan, “I suggest that Japanese bad girls be linked in a karmic series

of dance partners, linking arms and moving forward to the next … Lets keep them going by

naming each bad girl a ‘returnee’ reincarnated from another bad girl” (Miller 2005). She

continues, “The connected possibilities are beyond imagining” (Miller 2005). Perhaps Takaguchi

Satosumi in her work of Hana no Asukagumi! has blatantly sent the message that girl subcultures

are “not doing it right.” She makes the argument that loyalty should lie in generational

predecessors and not literally to her current subculture counterparts. The loyalty should be to the

universal goal of girl subcultures. Asuka is not loyal to anyone except herself and her beliefs.

She is not the ideal young Japanese woman, Meiji schoolgirl, moga, sukeban, nor biker-girl. Yet

she embodies all of these personas at the same time. Satosumi has shown that her true definition

of teamwork involves acting towards the bottom line, not towards individuals.

This essay, on the other hand, supports Satosumi’s view and the girl gang’s mentality that

she criticizes. History cannot have one right way to do things, so it becomes necessary to

welcome any and/or all viewpoints. Because in the end, it doesn’t really matter how social

equality of women in Japan was achieved, it just matters that it was done. So to schoolgirls of

11

Japan: Keep doing what has been done, do something different, or do both at the same time. To

quote Miriam Silverberg, “You go girls. And you keep going” (Miller 2005).

12

REFERENCES

Brown, K., & Minichiello, S. (2002). Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia, and Deco. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Macias, P., & Evers, I. (2007). Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook. San Francisco: Chronicle Books LLC.

Miller, L., & Bardsley, J. (Eds.). (2005). Bad Girls of Japan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Satosumi, T. (1985). Hana no Asukagumi! Retrieved April 19, 2010, from http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hana_no_asukagumi/

Schodt, F. (1986). Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha International.

Silverberg, M. (1991). The Modern Girl as Militant. In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600-1945 (pp. 239-266). Los Angeles: University of California Press.

13

Figure 1: Asuka is shown wearing the biker-gang “uniform.” The only thing missing is the

bike.

Figure 2: Asuka is shown wearing the sailor school uniform with a very long skirt and a

baggy shirt – nonsexual.

14

Figure 3:Asuka is in her room telling her parents to “fuck off” while holding her stuffed rabbit. She then

remembers Mika telling her that she is strong. This scene brings into question what strength is exactly

in terms of the schoolgirls.

Figure 4:The next time Asuka sees Mika she has conformed

herself into a group. This action is criticized by Satosumi through the words of Asuka: “That’s not

the strength I meant, Mika.”

Figures 5 & 6: Asuka and Tonko are shown to be victims of girl gangs, whether they

are official sukeban on the streets, or younger girls in school.

15