Daisy Moore

Emerging from the high schools of a male-centric Japanese society, came a wave of rebellious teenage girls protesting against mainstream gender norms and female expectations through petty crime, fashion choices, and radical solidarity. The unique and fascinating Sukeban were all-female street gangs, an idiosyncratic feat in itself, that not only used physical violence to prove that they could be both strong and women, but also manipulated their dress to reflect their physical, and metaphorical, strength and unity.

Clothes can be understood as the boundary between body, self, and society, and they can be used to show acceptance, conformity to, and refusal to social expectations of gender. The Sukeban lifestyle held at its core the idea that a woman does not have to bow down to a man, and their customisation of fashion was a protest against the societal standards put against them. Foreshadowing the ways of 70s punks in Britain, the Sukeban turned their sērā-fuku uniforms from a symbol of conformity and oppression, into one of expression, freedom, and rebellion. Rolled up sleeves, converse trainers, and cropped blouses to expose the waist all became indicative of a Sukeban girl gang member, but perhaps the most significant dress style was their long school skirts. The altered and lengthened school skirts could be seen as a protest to the sexual revolution, as although women were becoming more in control of their sexuality, it also increased the concept of a woman’s existence being solely for male pleasure. Their long school skirts can also be considered as a reaction to the sexualisation of schoolgirls by Japanese men, as the Sukeban were trying to prove that their bodies could be more than simply sexual objects, but weapons of power and destruction.

To further portray a menacing image, the Sukeban wore little makeup but sported extremely thin eyebrows and messy hair, and the layering of their uniforms and long school skirts meant they could easily conceal weapons such as knives, razors, and chains should a brawl ensue. Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Sukeban aesthetic is that even post-graduation, the Sukeban members continued to wear their uniforms, customising them further with embroidered roses, anarchic kanji characters, and gang symbols on their blouses.

As the Sukeban gangs of the 60s and 70s started gaining recognition for their deviant acts, production companies decided to capitalise on the image of a weapon-wielding sērā-fuku-wearing schoolgirl for their own benefit. Facing an economic crisis in the 1960s as the television’s popularity began to soar, Japanese film studios became desperate to attract an audience and resorted to the most obvious selling point of all; sex. And so, the booming pinku eiga industry, literally meaning pink films, or colloquially sex films, was born. 

Japan’s cinematic landscape became fuelled by sex, and in the early 70s emerged the distinctive Pinky Violence film series from major studio Toei. The series of films incorporated levels of both nudity and violence, and famously featured the Sukeban trope. Under Toei, Norifumi Suzuki directed a series of films that took advantage of the Sukeban subculture, most notably Girl Boss Guerilla (Sukeban gerira) (1972),and the first two films in the Terrifying Girls’ High School (Kyōfu Joshi Kōkō)film series: Terrifying Girls' High School: Women's Violent Classroom (Kyōfu Joshi Kōkō: Onna Bōryōku Kyōshitsu) (1972)and Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom (Kyōfu Joshi Kōkō: Bōkō Rinchi Kyōshitsu) (1973).These films made stars of ‘bad girl’ actresses Reiko Ike and Miki Sugimotto and gave an exaggerated and sexualised portrayal of the Sukeban.

We can speculate that the Sukeban depicted in these Pinky Violence films could be seen as empowering and embracing of their sexuality due to the level of violence involved in the films compared to the other subservient representations of Japanese women in film at the time. However, the nudity involved still leads to the sexualisation of these women, which was in direct contrast with the Sukeban ethos. As the original evidence of the Sukeban gang members was slowly lost, their strength, solidarity, and protest were being sexualised for young men’s enjoyment and exploited for commercial gain, with their image even commonly featuring in seinen manga, specifically targeting young men. The Japanese schoolgirl as a sexual ideal is perhaps one of the most famous fetishes of all, and it is one that the Japanese film industry exploited and popularised to the extent that sex and the Sukeban became so closely associated.