culture essays

"Not always so simple: Life as a lolita"
by Faith Shinri

"Live fast, die young: Life as a yanki"
by Patrick Macias

Not Always so Simple—Life As a Lolita
by Faith Shinri

One bright Sunday found me leaning casually against the side of a building on Harajuku's Takeshita Street, my chunky, fake onyx bracelet (Baby Doll, $25) sliding down my wrist at intervals and getting in my way as I tried jotting down notes into my notebook. I sighed and, pushing it up on my arm, idly shifted my weight from my left to right boot, enjoying the view their 4” soles afforded me (Kera, $140). Yet despite my height, the passersby hardly noticed me. Aside from my bracelet, boots, and foreigner appearance, that day I looked like any other Harajuku frequenter.

First, a little about Harajuku. If there is one place in Japan that was created specifically for the youth, it is Takeshita Street, Harajuku. And a little while from the street lies the infamous Bridge, where youth in exotic clothes gather and chat every Sunday. Some of these people are cosplayers, people dressing up as members of their favorite visual style bands, but others among the crowds in Harajuku are known as “ama-lolita” (sweet lolita). Cute, frilled, and pastel with large bows and bonnets on their heads, they draw curious stares from all, and yet most seem oblivious to this attention. If they do notice, they hardly care.

I had come that day to observe the lolita. Some were alone, but many were with friends in matching outfits, or with boyfriends in punk or gothic attire, their parasol shading their heads and their wide, knee length skirt ruffling against their legs as they walked. These lolita acted normally, giggling and shouting cheerfully along with their friends, and no one used the formal speech style some lolita magazines advocate. Basically, they appeared to be normal teenagers, talking to their friends and completely oblivious to their surroundings.

However, being a lolita is not always easy. Though their friends may accept them, some people see them as simple minded, and they can receive harsh judgments for not acting their age. Although many lolita continue wearing the clothes until well into their twenties, they will often hide their age after they reach 19, and for many of them the knowledge that they are not conforming to society is a problem. One 15 year old girl, “Bunny,” admitted, laughingly, that her 11 year old sister tells her she's creepy. “Why can't you act your age? You're embarrassing,” she mimics her with a laugh. “Mom and I get along really well, but my sister? I hate her.” Not all people have a problem with the clothing, however.

Lolita must also deal with prices. Lolita specialty clothing stores are still few, and hard to find for those not looking. The style has been gaining in popularity recently since its advent over a decade ago, but has yet to become truly popular. As a result, the shops are high priced ($150-$500). For ama-lolita whose parents support their fashion cost is not often a problem, but for others who have to pay themselves it is a hard task . Some girls become adept at sewing and make their own clothes. Those who do well are held in a sort of respect. However, in order to be accepted by other lolita as a lolita, mostly all will agree a girl, and occasional a boy, needs to wear lolita brand clothing. Whole outfits can come to $1000. Most lolita only dress as lolita on weekends to go shopping with friends.

Faced with these problems, why do ama-lolita still chose to wear the clothes? First, for some there are no problems. “They're cute,” replies one 24 year old, laughing. Many younger wearers are supported by their parents, and create a bubble between themselves and their friends versus the rest of the world. They also use the clothes to fulfill their own sense of princess-like aesthetic beauty, a concept which puzzles Japanese men to no end. Don't these girls understand we don't find this attractive? What do you mean they're not dressing for us?!? Lolita do not dress to attract men, and some only wear the clothing because it is the fashion at the concerts they attend. But, as stated, being a lolita is not always so carefree. “My parents were very strict, and I never got to be a princess. You know? Japanese people don't wear this stuff,” one 22 year-old admits longingly. Others have moved into Tokyo to attend school and are living alone, or have no friends, and the clothing becomes a surrogate friend. Still others are calling attention to their hitherto ignored individuality, while others use the style to assert that the are wealthier and cuter than other lolita. At times this has lead the community to criticize its own members regarding dress, body type, and even face. I personally believe lolita is a sort of escape, a fantasy for girls and women who, somehow, do not want to think about the hardships of society and becoming an adult.

Of course, I also believe most of us know it’s impossible for us to live in our fantasies forever. Still, as I spent more time living alone as an exchange student on the outskirts of Tokyo and became more and more alienated, I eventually crossed the line between researcher and lolita, and so maybe the style is tied into escape. That is why, on Sunday, I could be found in my odd mix of regular and gothic lolita clothing. My bracelet was my identification; while not wearing the clothes, I was saying I was still a gothic lolita. And my boots had become a symbolic way of distancing myself from the world and people around me, not as a defense from reality, but from the pain of reality. They were also a warning that, were someone to try to hit on me, I could kick them. I've never liked being seen as a woman; I prefer to simply be a person.

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Faith Shinri (Writer /Anthropologist)

Faith has been researching Japan and the lolita and gothic cultures as a anthropologist for the past 3 years. Living in Japan, she dresses lolita once or twice a week, and the rest of the time she's either casually gothic or purposely trying to look “dasai” (dorky), and she happens to have a certain fondness for JUSCO, truthfully.

Her absolute favorite bands are Malice Mizer, Schwarz Stein, Soft Ballet, Cali Gari, and Velvet Eden. She also likes children program songs and 80's pop, particularly Yusa Mimori, Judy and Mary, Scanch, and Kikuchi Momoko.

Message for American Lolitas: “It may be hard being a lolita sometimes overseas as well, but I want lolita to remember that they're really not alone, and there are other people like them who understand what they're going though.”

Learn more about Faith's obsessions at:
obsessions never die

Live Fast, Die Young—Life As a Yanki
by Patrick Macias

Imagine you are a normal decent person…an adult probably, who lives happily in the Japanese countryside. You work hard to earn a living, or run a decent household, and just want to be left alone in peace. But every now and then, you have to go to the train station or the convenience store.

When you arrive, there’s an ominous buzzing in the air, like the sound of locusts getting ready for war. The buzzing becomes a roar. Then the source of the sound is made clear. It’s coming from a pack of obnoxious youths on motorcycles who quickly occupy the defenseless parking lot.

Their clothes and vehicles are decorated with “live fast, die young” slogans. They shamelessly sniff from bags of paint thinner, act tough; yell nonsense slogans like “Bari! Bari!” and generally behave in the manner of beasts.

And there’s just no ignoring them. Indeed, they are doing everything they can to provoke you, get your attention, and offend you.

These antisocial punks are known as Yanki. And they are one of Japan’s most endearing and totally outrageous youth subcultures.

Ichigo (Anna Tsuchiya) in Kamikaze Girls is a textbook Yanki in all respects save one: you’d probably never, ever see a Yanki hanging out with a Gothic Lolita like Momoko (Kyoko Fukada). Yanki are motivated by a clan mentality, and their pride would prevent them hanging out with pretty girls dressed in frilly clothes. But that’s what makes Kamikaze Girls such a special film. It dares to ask “What If?” and then show us an unlikely Yanki—Gothic Lolita pairing.

But where did the Yanki originally come from? Where are they going? And why are they always hanging out in the parking lot looking for trouble?

To understand what makes the Yanki tick, you have to go all the way back to packs of post-war bad boys known as Furyo. Closely related to the lowest levels of Japanese organized crime, the Furyo set the standards for how to be bad for generations of youth. Even better than simply being a bunch of violent thugs, they also created their own insane fashion sense: Furyo were tough guys who deliberately wore women’s slippers and the ugliest Hawaiian shirts they could find. Even better, they would sometimes file their teeth down with sandpaper, making the gaps bigger to aid in the art of spitting.

Next in the evolutional leap came the Bancho, who were active in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Bancho were bad high school kids who fought to be top dog at their school and then, having cemented their position, fought with other Bancho from different area in a pint sized imitation of yakuza territorial invasions. Then there were the Sukeban, the female versions of Bancho, who beat you up something bad if they caught you planning to leave the gang or if you got a boyfriend.

By the ‘80s, being a bad egg in Japan was an occupation that could be enjoyed by both men and women. They combined the wild fashion sense of the Furiyo, a love of gangster-style power games common to Bancho and Sukeban, and a fanatical devotion to motorcycles from yet another group of Japanese juvenile delinquents; the bosozoku (speed tribes).

According to legend, Yanki originated in the Kansai area, near Osaka. In Nanba, Osaka, there is a section of town called “America Mura” (American Village). During the late seventies, hoodlums and teenagers went there to score tacky Hawaiian shirts. Since their clothes were American in origin, they got the nickname “Yanki,” as in the ever-popular slogan “Yankee Go Home!”

The average Yanki begins life as a disaffected bored youth. Around the age of 14 to 15, they join a gang of others like themselves. During that time, they enjoy taking over parking lots—because, let’s face it, there’s not much else to do out in the middle of nowhere—battling other gangs, and riding their bikes to Mt. Fuji to celebrate New Years Eve (Even though the cops have been trying to crack down on this annual event, it remains the biggest event of the year: a kind of Yanki Woodstock with paint thinner instead of LSD).

The preferred style of dress is a Tokko-fuku (Kamikaze Coat): a robe covered in Chinese characters. Each elaborate-looking hardboiled slogan (example: “I have to die, mom. There’s no other way for me to live!”) is incredibly expensive to make. The more slogans you have, the more status you gain in the group. But be warned. Since every Tokko-fuku is a proclamation of strength, people will continually try to challenge you to back it up. So a real Yanki has got to be tough.

As the third act of Kamikaze Girls shows, violence is an essential component of the Yanki, especially when gangs turn on their own members for breaking the rules, or when battling other gangs. These violent acts are called “suicide missions,” and sometimes the results are fatal. Dying from injuries sustained in fights with baseball bats and steel pipes is not unheard of.

But the Yanki should not be seen as mere wild beasts. They live by a strict moral code that owes something to the oyabun-kobun (parent-child) system of the yakuza. They also take inspiration from the “live beautifully, die young” sentiments familiar to Kamikaze pilots. A Yanki boss is sometimes called a Tokko-taicho; the captain of a suicide mission. Sometimes, they even decorate themselves with the old Japanese Imperial flag, inseparable from memories of World War II.

By the age of 18 or 19, the life of a Yanki in his or her prime is winding down. Anyone who stays past the age of 20 is a loser, even by loser standards. The boys get blue-collar jobs in factories, and the Yanki girls get pregnant and become moms with dizzying speed. But Yanki adults keep strong ties to their former gangs. Visits to the old hangouts are common, where they regale the younglings with tales of heroic deeds that begin “when I was your age…”

Few Yanki ever leave their hometowns. And aside from growing older, there’s really nowhere to go. This is the fundamental tragedy of the Yanki. They have created their own culture and style, one worthy of further study, but they are incapable, or unwilling, to communicate it to outsiders often.

It might seem like such isolation might lead to the Yanki someday becoming totally extinct, but I doubt it: as long as Japan has a countryside, and kids who live there who are bored out of their minds, you can bet a parking lot full of ungrateful punks can’t be far behind.

Thanks to: Yoshiki Takahashi

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Patrick Macias (Writer/ J-pop Critic)

Patrick Macias is the author of TokyoScope: The Japanese Cult Film Companion. Currently, he lives in Japan. Follow his adventures at:
www.patrickmacias.blogs.com.