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This article examines Kogals, young Japanese women who challenge dominant models of gendered language and behavior through linguistic and cultural innovation. The article describes the linguistic resources Kogals use to construct female-centered subcultural identities and the condemnation and fetishistic interest they provoke in mainstream media. Media focus on these "misbehaving" girls places them at the center of an ongoing struggle over female self-definition and autonomy. The study of Kogals contributes to scholarly analysis of youth subcultures and to understanding of linguistic diversity and cultural heterogeneity in Japan.
[adolescent subculture, gender, slang, representations, Japan]
Introduction
Among the many subcultural identities available to Japanese youth, perhaps none has become the focus of such mainstream anxiety and voyeuristic interest as the young women known as Kogals (kogyaru). This article examines critiques and displays of the Kogal, with a particular focus on the way her gender-transgressing identity and language style challenge longstanding norms of adolescent femininity. In addition to providing evidence of Japanese heterogeneity and documenting the current struggle for female self-definition, I argue that Kogal subculture is significant as an unusual case of female-centered coolness at the forefront of cultural and linguistic trend setting.
A few years ago, a Japanese journalist decided to work against the model he characterized as "girls created by the old-guy press" by documenting, from her own perspective, the everyday life of a 17-year-old high-school student named Asuka. He asked Asuka to write down her activities and thoughts during a one-week period and subsequently published her unfiltered journal as the "diary of a kogyaru" (Yoshidô 1998). Kogyaru, which is not a term that belongs to those it describes, is usually rendered in English as Kogal. It is the mainstream media label used to describe young women between the ages of 14 and 22 who project new types of fashion, behavior, and language. Asuka writes about meeting friends in the hip Shibuya section of Tokyo, going to restaurants, spending time in karaoke boxes (private rooms for rent by the hour for karaoke singing), getting photos taken, and shopping. Asuka also expresses hatred of her teacher and school and worries about how to juggle two boyfriends, one of whom she accompanies to a "love hotel" for sex. The journalist's effort to unpack the behavior and...