Modern girl

Common card · No. 378013

Modern Girls (モダンガール, modan gāru) (also shortened to Moga) were a subcategory of Japanese working women who adopted modern fashions and lifestyles in Japan following World War l. Modern Girls were contemporaries to the Western world's flappers, France's garçonnes, and China's modeng xiaojie (摩登小姐). Exploiting the economic expansion induced in Japan by World War I, many young women who were previously constrained by ideologies of family life and the Japanese state could now work wage labor jobs in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. This independence, characterized by a movement out of the home and into the city, created opportunities for women to adopt alternative norms of dress; enabling them to embody the new, fashionable, playful, Modern Girl. The Modern Girl was sensual, "breezy," erotic, animated, and independent. While the dress of a Modern Girl was somewhat distinct, she was more often described via her gestures, her "way of being," with her clothing as an element to her archetype. The...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Kageyama Kōyō (ja), Public domain