Rumi Koyama
Are bad girls casualties of patriarchy, a necessary evil, or visionary pioneers? By tracing the concept of the bad girl in Japan as a product of specific cultural assumptions and historical settings, Bad Girls of Japan maps new roads and old detours in revealing a disorderly politics of gender. The essays explore deviancy in richly diverse media. Mountain witches, murderers, performance artists, cartoonists, schoolgirls, and shoppers gone wild are all part of the terrain.
Masaaki Kagari (Akira Kobayashi) is the recruiter and protector of hostesses at the Club Rose. One day he visits Club Aron, to complain about attempts to lure hostesses from Club Rose. Aron's madam Hisayo reminds him of a tragic experience five years before, when a lovely girl named Kumi committed double suicide with a man in a hotel. For Aron's madam is Kumi's elder sister. Kagari's friend Hayazaki introduces him to Chie, the young sister of the man who died with Kumi, who has come to Tokyo to learn the truth about her brother's death. Kagari sends them both away. But he continues to be haunted by the warmed-over memories. When Club Aron is found selling bootleg whisky Kagari learns that Hisayo has been a tool in the hands of the Akune group who are also responsible for trying to steal his girls, and that Fujikura, the public prosecutor who presided over the case of Kumi's death and ruled it suicide, is now the personal lawyer of the Akune group...
