Mahou Gyaru

Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential

As a Japanese pop culture obsessor, I ordered Brian Ashcraft and Shoko Ueda’s book as soon as I knew it existed. It describes the influence of the Japanese schoolgirl as a cultural icon, a consumer demographic, and an artistic influence. The book is divided into eight chapters, each focusing on one of the following:

• Uniforms
• Music
• Movies
• Shopping
• Kogals, magazines & books
• Art
• Games
• Manga & Anime

It’s got something for everyone. I found the chapters describing the history of uniforms, the material consumption of schoolgirls, and Kogals’ appearance in magazines and books significantly more interesting than those describing the appearance of schoolgirls in video games and movies, so I tended to skim some of it. It does include a lot of fascinating little history lessons and fun facts, such as the popularity of “nanchatte” (fake) school uniforms worn solely for fashion, “pocket bell” pagers that were massively popular and used by high schoolers to type coded numeric messages to friends, and Tokyo Girls Collection, a huge fashion show where girls buy clothes on their mobile phones as they’re viewing them on the runway. Some of the chapters were so gripping that they really left me thirsting for even more information, in a completely good way. I wish some of the sections could be extended into full length books! The book is also very nice in that you don’t need to have a great deal of knowledge about Japanese culture before reading it. I’d give it a 4 of 5. It’s selling on Amazon.com right now for a very reasonable $12.

Next up to review is the The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture! I got it for Christmas and haven’t had enough time to read much of it, so I don’t know when exactly I’ll get around to posting yet.

fehyesvintagemanga:

Maki Miyako’s “Ribon no Waltz” (waltz of the bows)

A lovely tumblr, I reccommend it to anyone with eyes.

fehyesvintagemanga:

idol Kawakami Yukie

(via kyandi)

Candy colored ichi-maru-kyu twins. <3

You guys I want this. I want this RIGHT NAOOOW. 

In case you don’t know, as a middle schooler I was a die-hard tamagotchi collector. That meant buying Japanese tamagotchi not-yet-available-in-US on eBay. That was a while ago, but I just found out about this; the Tamagotchi iD “Lovely Melody” edition. You can like, somehow customize your tamagotchi experience by “downloading” some items or something? I don’t know. But I do know that next time I have a spare $98 lying around, I’m buy one of these. 

Speaking of which, I am currently reading Brian Ashcraft’s “Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential”, a book about the influence of the Japanese Schoolgirl on society, which mentions some interesting information about tamagotchi. Apparently when Bandai released the original tamagotchi in 1996, they were such a huge success that Bandai overestimated predicted sales and ended up with stockpiles of 2.5 million tamagotchi, resulting in losses of US$66.8 million. I’ll probably end up reviewing this book on here later, it’s been very good so far.

Harajuku’s glory days. This gurl is a grade-A QT-pi. You will never attain this level of badassery. And yeah, she’s wearing 6%DokiDoki. Authentic old-skool 6% Doki Doki. Oh man you guys. 

(via FuckYeahFRUiTS)

(via scusiscusi)

mummymeat:

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