I briefly return to Nagoya. Groups of ko-gyaru like to hang out around Nagoya station. The look is ever-evolving In the face of the current high temperatures and moist air, and the danger of sweating conspicuously, fashion makes concessions to practicality. But back in the crisp cold of December the only danger was that of frostbite of the thighs, and it seemed every ko-gyaru was willing to risk it. Skirts had risen to the point where the slightest movement revealed clean white underwear. Sitting down or negotiating stairs required careful positioning of the handbag. Boots were knee-high, revealing a few inches of black knee-stockings. Between the stocking tops and the skirts there was an acreage of bare skin, tanned, depilated, and goose-pimpled. The boot heels, once merely ludicrously high, became vertiginous. From wide curved soles they tapered upwards to chunky, round-toe uppers. The weight and size of these encumbrances forced many girls to drag them along the street in a peculiar knocked-kneed gait. Most girls wore short coats (short enough to ensure that all the bare leg remained visible). The coats invariably had faux fur collars and hems. Colours were white and cream. Materials were suede, leatherette.

Yet it is the cosmetic elements of the ko-gyaru look that are the most striking. In its extreme form they consist of silver-dyed hair (back-combed or dead straight), conspicuous and complicated nail decoration, a deep nut-brown tan, white eye shadow and lipstick, and black mascara. In Egg magazine, one of the ko-gyaru fashion bibles, we can see creatures that embody this extreme and are held up as models to readers, but it is a look routinely and repetitively lampooned by everyone else. It defies any pre-existing ideals of beauty or attractiveness, and therein lies its significance. It is not just that most of us think the look is weird. We think it is especially weird for Japanese girls to look this way. It radically undermines our stereotypical preconceptions of the Japanese female.

In The modern Madame Butterfly Karen Ma identifies two common western misconceptions of the Japanese woman: the submissive female who wants nothing more than to serve her master and look after his home, and the unfulfilled woman wilting in a loveless relationship with a domineering Japanese man and waiting to be romantically rescued by a western man, who better knows how to treat her. The archetypes can be seen in Katsumi in Sayonara by James Michener, and Sachiko in The lady and the monk by Pico Iyer. To these I would add a third: the enigmatically diffident beautiful lover, who inexplicably takes us in, shows us tantalising glimpses of the world she lives in, and just as inexplicably leaves us. Mariko in Pictures from the water trade by John David Morley is such a woman (and I wonder if Kayo is too).

The ko-gyaru defiantly shatters all these images. She emphatically says ‘No!’ to servility, subtlety, elegance, and mystery. She displays her loyalties by being seen only with her identically-clad girlfriends, or aggressively grungy boyfriends. I don’t think I ever see one walking alone, or with a gaijin.

This radical reorganisation of values appears to offend the gaijin community. I do not think that many western men actually want girlfriends that look like pandas in negative, but what they do want is to know that they could have them, if they were so inclined. The resentment manifests itself as endless jokes about ko-gyaru in both print and conversation. In essence it goes, ‘Aren’t they weird?’ ‘Yes, too weird to matter.’ It is a tiresome dialogue best avoided.

Where the ko-gyaru look will go next year, no-one can say. I would not be surprised to find afro perms and filed teeth. Seriously.