looked down upon.” This stink might have caused some schools to rethink the mandated school outfits, but hardly stubbed them out.
TOMBOW UNIFORM MUSEUM
In the confining parameters of school uniforms, however, kids were figuring out their own ways to show their individuality—with scissors! In the late 1960s and early 70s, bad schoolgirls in long skirts and Converse sneakers began cutting sailor tops short, exposing bare midriffs. The look was called sukeban explains Sano—slang for “girl gang leader.” Not all sukeban chicks got in fist fights and knocked heads with baseball bats, but the delinquent look became iconic. The mere act of standing up to conformity by altering assigned clothing gave the most innocuous suburban rebel the air of danger.
Sukeban style marked the nascent stages of “uniform fashion” and soon schoolgirls everywhere were personalizing their apparel. While the first sukeban did the uniform altering themselves (or had their mothers do it), tailors soon began charging to shorten school tops. And when sukeban graduated, they’d embroider things like roses and Japanese kanji characters on the back of their sailor suits. Nothing says thorny rose like a schoolgirl who’s going to punch your face in—or at least act like she will.
Sukeban boy
YAKKUN SAKURAZUKA not only knows what it’s like to wear a schoolboy uniform, but just how comfortable a form-fitting schoolgirl uniform can be. Since getting into showbiz over ten years ago, the cross-dressing Yakkun has donned a sailor suit as part of his act. And not just any sailor suit but a hard-hitting sukeban version.
TOP COAT CO., LTD.
“I chose a sukeban style uniform,” he says, “because I didn’t want to be a weak, effeminate character, and the tough sukeban style was the farthest thing from that.” Fitting for a tough guy-girl comedian who wields a wooden kendo stick and heckles his audience with biting barbs. But he’s got a soft side too: “I love it when I’m confused for a girl, or when a woman says I’m pretty.”
In true sukeban style, Yakkun wears a long skirt and bare midriff with exposed belly button. “It’s certainly made me more self-conscious about developing love handles.” The first time he put on the sukeban sailor uniform, he was impressed how easy it was to move in the outfit. Still, the look took getting used to. “I kept stepping on my skirt when I was going up and down the stairs,” he says.
Yakkun’s collection consists of six outfits: two light summer uniforms, two heavy winter uniforms, one checked patterned uniform, and one white embroidered uniform. Some are order-made, some were presents from fans. “The best thing is that I don’t need a wardrobe stylist,” he says. “The worst thing is that the uniforms show dirt easily.”
But the biggest difference between wearing girls’ and boys’ school duds is, according to Yakkun, the protection: “The male uniform isn’t drafty during the winter.”
Yakkun Sakurazuka, whose real name was Yasuo Saito, was tragically killed after being hit by a car on October 5, 2013. May he rest in peace.
By the 1980s, baby boomers who’d grown up when uniforms were frowned upon had children of their own, and when it came time to get the kids some learning, preppy school clothes proved very popular. School dress was conservative, and the sailor-suit standard found a new rival: the blazer.
TOMBOW UNIFORM MUSEUM
Sport coats had been part of some school uniforms for decades, but it was in the mid-1980s that the blazer really took off. More than the “look,” the practicality of the blazer and skirt drove its appeal. Students typically only bought a couple of sets of uniforms for all of junior high or high school. So for the first couple of years these may have been too big, but when girls hit a growth spurt the outfit would look terrific. In the final years of school, however, the uniform would be bursting at the seams. A blazer layered with a white shirt and a sweater vest was much more forgiving to raging teen hormones.
The preppy single-breasted jacket became very much in vogue—Tokyo schools leading the charge with navy and caramel colored versions. Large school crests sewn onto the blazers not only appealed to parents’ preppy sensibilities, but breathed an air of nostalgia as the style was reminiscent of the jackets-with-embroidered-crests worn by the athletes of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. In the “bubble” economy of 1980s Japan, the uniform moved well beyond simply functioning as a uniform—it became brand-name fashion.
Schools noticed a sudden spike in applicants when they changed their uniform designs. As a result, institutions across the country began adopting new styles. People like illustrator Nobuyuki Mori began to take a keen interest in the sudden variety of uniforms springing up at the time. While still in high school, Mori began sketching school uniforms in his neighborhood to quiz his buddies. When he left the ’burbs to study for university entrance exams in Tokyo, the endless uniform variations blew his mind. He noticed that no two uniforms were the same. They couldn’t be, or else they’d cause confusion. So Mori set out to catalogue all this in the ultimate compendium, his 1985 book, The Illustrated Schoolgirl Uniform Guidebook, which would go on to sell two hundred thousand copies. “I was inspired,” says Mori, “by all the different and beautiful uniforms in Tokyo.”
NOBUYUKI MORI
But anyone who tried to keep up to date with uniform trends had a huge job on their hands. By the mid-1990s, preppy was out, and slutty was in. Schoolgirl skirts got short and white socks got loose. Much like the sukeban a generation earlier, girls rebelled against strict school uniforms. They wore outrageous makeup, dyed their hair, got fake tans, and rolled up their skirt’s waistband to turn long dresses into D.I.Y. micro-minis. These dangerously short skirt–wearing, golden brown tanned schoolgirls were called kogal or just gyaru.
When girls began showing skin at more conservative institutions, parents and teachers gasped, and strict schools started scrutinizing scanty hemlines with before-class spot checks. Some private academies even went so far to have teachers scattered off-campus to eyeball girls on the way to school. Japanese students all carry rule books that outline their school’s regulations, but the uniform fashion the girls were creating, says Mori, “exists in the space between those school rules and breaking them.” Not all establishments gave a hoot though, and in some cases, delinquent girls were given carte blanche to run amok. In other cases the crackdown on micro-minis only encouraged the trend, and some girls started leading a double life. During learning hours, they’d unroll their skirts to an acceptable length; after school, they’d hike their cookie-cutter uniforms up and pull on a pair of loose socks, the other essential ingredient of the kogal look. It was clear girls enjoyed wearing their uniforms out of school hours, but only on their own terms.
NOBUYUKI MORI
Off to one side of the Tombow Museum is a large meeting room where staff from academic institutions and retailers sit in red fabric chairs and plan new duds with Tombow. Headless dummies model Tombow-produced uniforms for the Japanese clothing brands Olive des Olive and Comme Ça Du Mode. The meeting room is a lab of sorts as well, to research the latest school trends. The company not only polls teachers and parents, but also investigates schoolgirl tastes by quizzing kids. “Students want something they can wear after school,” says Sano. This often means fashion that looks like a
