Yone remained dogmatic in his approach, wanting girls to appear in the magazine only once. “I didn’t want them to become ‘models,’” he says, “I wanted them to be someone you’d see on the street. Someone who was real.” The editors at egg, however, wanted to focus on the popular girls, instead of continually looking for the next thing. What had started out as a revolution in the streets was becoming mainstream.

By this time, the mass media had latched onto the kogal trend. Roaming TV crews in Shibuya became a common sight. The issue of enjo kosai (compensated dating) had begun to capture the attention of the press and when they wanted to show schoolgirls on TV, they would show kogals—the “innocent girl” look was out. “I knew the number of actual kogals wasn’t as high as TV made it seem,” says Yone. “But imagine what people living out in the suburbs or the countryside thought? They thought that’s what all the schoolgirls in Tokyo were like.”

The look became stock standard for many of the teen girls from the suburbs hanging out in Shibuya. And enjo kosai, which originally meant paying schoolgirls for their company, turned into something more. “There were even girls who were drawn to enjo kosai,” says Yone, “because they heard that’s what Tokyo girls did.” It didn’t matter if sex was not originally involved with enjo kosai; the mass media basically decided it was teen prostitution and blew the trend out of proportion. The latecomers to the kogal scene heard about paid companionship, thought it was a great way to raise cash for brand-name goods, and wanted to give it a try. In turn businessmen started showing up in Shibuya en masse. Yone was appalled. “I told my editor that we shouldn’t be using these kinds of girls—that their purpose was totally different. But my editor disagreed and we had a huge row. In the end, egg was using only those kinds of girls. So I quit.”

 

Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool by Brian Ashcraft with Shoko Ueda (Kodansha International, 2010, 196pp, ¥1,800) is available at bookstores throughout Japan

Much like punk or grunge, what had started out as an act of rebellion was sucked up by the mass media machine. The reader-generated pages in egg all but disappeared when the magazine changed publishers in mid-2000, and were replaced with more fashion oriented layouts of gals. Former kogals traded in their tans and bleached hairdos for pale skin, parasols and darker hair. The revolution was over before most girls even realized they were part of something that shook society.

“In the ’90s, some people were really worried about the changes these girls were making to Japanese society,” says Yonehara as he flips through the pages of egg. But the changes the loose sock revolution set in motion were not necessarily a bad thing. The kogals that roamed the Shibuya streets in the ’90s were the beginning of the gal culture that has become so dominant in Japan. Compared to earlier generations of women—who were expected to be demure, obedient, and to become good wives and wise mothers—young Japanese women today are much more confident, brash, and aware of the opportunities life can hold. And they have the kogal to thank for that.

Check out some images from the Metropolis magazine cover shoot on the Metropolis Media Blog

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