Kamata Gal: The Ganguro Prototype

April 14th, 2024

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In 1997, writer Baba Hironobu published a book on kogyaru called Shibuya-kei vs. Kamata-kei , likely the first work that noticed a split growing within the new subculture. Baba well understood the nature of the original Shibuya gyaru — their origin from wealthy Setagaya-ku homes and rich delinquent style of hiked up skirts from prestigious high school uniforms. At the same time, he noticed a growing number of kogyaru hailing from Tokyo’s less affluent neighborhoods such as Kamata (蒲田) in Ōta near Kawasaki and Kamata (鎌田) near the Tama River. As short-hand, he thus calls these new gyaru “Kamata-kei.” These new recruits tanned themselves a much darker color and colored their hair in silver-y streaks called messhu (from the french mèche). The book’s cover shows an almost Jomon vs. Yayoi-esque battle between the two kogyaru subsets — a dark-skinned Kamata gyaru and a light-skinned Shibuya gyaru. Baba believed that this battle was actually over: In Shibuya, the original wealthy “Shibuya-kei” originators had fled the area and the “Kamata-kei” gyaru were making up the bulk of the actual kogyaru population. And with this change, the fashion started to look cheaper. Baba attributes this to the Kamata-like areas being home to small-to-medium businesses that suffered most from both the burst of the Bubble and the globalization of Japanese economy in the 1990s. Essentially the Kamata-kei girls were lower middle class trying to imitate a wealthy youth subculture, but in the process, they changed the aesthetic and its values. Needless to say, Baba assigns enjo kōsai to the Kamata-kei girls — not the original Shibuya gyaru.