My first encounter with “Kogaru”
was in Naha Okinawa. I spent two weeks there as part of a high school
exchange. I remember seeing images of brown skinned girls on the cartoon
motifs of the ubiquitous sticker picture machines (or purikura). These
images were usually clad in what some might call “hip hop hoochie”
fashion, baggy pants or mini skirts, big hoop earrings, and tight
tops. I perceived this to be some sort of “ghetto fabulousness.”
I was fascinated. Maybe there existed in Japan what I had been used
to at home. I was too young to know better.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Oh, you mean the kogaru?” my companions would say.
The kogaru would fascinate me for the rest of my trip. I spotted a
few on Naha’s trendy Kokusai-dori area, but wasn’t able
to really piece what I saw and heard together. No one I met ever had
anything good to say about them. Some even considered them too embarrassing
to talk about. But most of what I was told associated them with delinquency,
hyper-materialism/consumerism, and prostitution. There was also a
firm line drawn between what I was told were Kogaru (who intentionally
darken their faces as part of fashion) and Ganguro (who are naturally
dark skinned people in Okinawa. Ganguro was something of a derogatory
term for these people).
