Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential
This is basically a history book about how Japanese schoolgirls have influenced the development of Japanese culture and it is an absolutely fascinating work. It covers everything from tamogatchi through picture booths through the idea of schoolgirls dating older guys to get money.
The first chapter deals with the sailor uniforms that girls wear to school, where they came from and how they changed through the ages. The second chapter talks about music and idols such as Morning Musume and Seiko Matsuda. The basic idea is that idols need to appear to be pure and do nothing 'wrong' or 'nasty,' even though many males are drawn to the groups since they are often either cute or sexy or both.
The history of how things can go wrong, such as in the case of Kago Ai, is also covered.
The third chapter is about girls on film, both in anime film and in regular film. Many of their appearances are involved with extreme violence, sex, or sex and violence. The Whispering Corridors series of movies is a perfect example of this.
Chapter four goes into the types of things the schools buy and how this has influenced the grown of certain industries including the cell phone. Chapter five is about how there are many magazines in Japan that feature schoolgirls on the cover. One specific example is Fruits magazine, which has pictures of Japanese girls wearing rather wild outfits. There's even some regular books about their fashion choices.
Chapter six is about how schoolgirls have influenced art in Japan and chapter seven is about schoolgirls in the various videogames, including those that are primarily pornographic in nature, and those that are basically exclusively romantic in nature.
Chapter eight is about Japanese anime and how schoolgirls appear in both anime programs and in the very popular manga.
This is just an inkling of all the really fascinating information in this book.
Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
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