Japanese Teen Agers

... teenage girls, particularly those who flock to Shibuya ... on average the girls have as much disposable income as salarymen, the male office workers who spend much of their incomes on home and family."
In Japan, Teen Girls Are the Arbiters of What's Cool
By David Pilling | Financial Times | October 31, 2005

TOKYO — Shibuya girls come in multiple, ever-changing varieties.

The ko-gyaru, usually of high school age, has a savage orange tan, favors miniskirts and razor-sharp stilettos, decorates her mobile phone with jangly ornaments and will probably have plastered her manicured fingernails with glossy pink polish and rhinestones.

Other young tribes come to Shibuya — Tokyo's high-tech teenage fashion mecca — dressed as schoolgirls, in starched blue-and-white uniforms. Some of them actually attend school.

Still others come as punks, wannabe Rastafarians or Victorians in layers of black petticoats. Yet more stomp through the streets in wedge-like platform boots, though that fashion has faded somewhat since a series of car accidents in which outsize heels got caught under brake pedals.

Every day, these young women congregate by the thousands in Shibuya, whose arcades, narrow streets and giant video screens were the inspiration for Ridley Scott's futuristic but grimy city in the movie "Blade Runner."

They come to browse the shops, particularly a multi-tiered emporium called 109; to take pictures with their friends in garish photo arcades known as purikura; and generally to soak up what is new and cool.

Few of these young women — most of whom have part-time jobs at best — look like the sort of customers whom businesses need spend excessive time cultivating. But international and Japanese companies alike ignore the Shibuya girl at their peril.

That is because what the Shibuya girl likes has an uncanny habit of catching on nationally, not only among teenagers but also with more sober, older generations. In certain segments of the market, the Shibuya girl is Japan's trendsetter for fashion, movies and technology.

Vodafone learned this lesson the hard way. The British mobile phone company, once the darling of Shibuya girls, was just a few years ago a market leader in Japan thanks to cutting-edge services such as photo mail and its use of Britain's heartthrob soccer player David Beckham — known as Beckham Sama in Japan — in slick ad campaigns.

Part of Vodafone's subsequent difficulties, according to analysts and company insiders, was the failure of its management in Europe to spend enough money keeping the Shibuya girl happy.

Vodafone stopped investing enough in new phones and tried to standardize its 3G handsets globally, depriving the Shibuya girl of the new features and Japan-specific innovations she craved. Within a matter of months, what was trendy became passe, and the Shibuya girl's attention wandered.

Partly as a result, Vodafone's sales have foundered; the company lost 60,000 subscribers in January alone, the biggest fall of any mobile phone company in a single month.

Vodafone has drafted William Morrow, president of Vodafone UK, to help turn around its Japanese operation.

In addition to offering sleek-looking handsets chock-full of features — including the ability to make short video clips and to take trick photographs — it has recruited young Japanese stars, known as talentos, to promote its brand to the teenage market.

Kyoko Nakamura, a researcher at Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, affiliated with Japan's second-biggest advertising company, said teenage girls, particularly those who flock to Shibuya, are among Japan's most important markets. "Everyone wants to look young, so they study what is popular with these young female consumers," she said.

Nakamura said there were countless examples of products that caught on among teenagers in Tokyo before sweeping the country. Fashion magazines and television programmers flock to Shibuya to seek the latest trends, ensuring that anything that makes it there quickly gets national exposure.

According to Nakamura, the author of a book on teenage consumers, the Shibuya girl has a lot more money than is often recognized. Nakamura's research indicates that on average the girls have as much disposable income as salarymen, the male office workers who spend much of their incomes on home and family.

Often the only offspring in their families, the teens have numerous pockets to raid, not only those of their parents but also of their grandparents and aunts and uncles, who in low-birthrate Japan may well not have children of their own.

As a result, Nakamura estimates, many girls as young as 11 have a monthly disposable income of as much as 30,000 yen (about $260).