Inventing the Modern Girl
How Japan's 1920s modern girls sparked a century of style, scandal and cultural anxiety.
The early 2000s were a defining era in Japanese fashion, when a kaleidoscope of style tribes captured global attention and brought new energy to the streets of Tokyo. In Shibuya, tanned gyarus reimagined school uniforms as fashion statements—pairing shortened skirts with loose socks, dyed hair, and platform shoes. Harajuku, meanwhile, became a technicolor runway where young trendsetters showcased eclectic looks sourced from indie boutiques. And in the upscale neighborhoods of Omotesando and Ginza, chic office ladies draped in luxury brands spent freely on themselves, reinforcing Japan’s status as a global fashion capital.
These vibrant subcultures didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They were born from the wave of consumerism that followed Japan’s postwar boom—but their origins stretch even further back. Nearly 80 years earlier, the mogas—modern girls of the Taisho era—were already rewriting fashion rules, offering an early glimpse of the youth-driven style revolutions to come.
Unlike the fashion tribes of early 2000s Japan, the mogas—short for "modern girls"—were not a uniquely Japanese phenomenon. They were part of a broader global movement in the 1920s, when women around the world began defying patriarchal norms and embracing pleasure, independence, and self-expression.
The 1920s lacked the instant communication and global connectivity we take for granted today, yet the rise of mass media and a period of upward mobility sparked a remarkably synchronized cultural shift. Across continents, women began asserting themselves as modern consumers with their own tastes, hobbies, and desires. They wore makeup, had casual sex, danced to jazz, drove cars, and pursued pleasure—often without seeking male approval. In the U.S., amid the glitz and upheaval of the Roaring Twenties, and in the U.K., they were flappers, immortalized by stars like Joan Crawford and Clara Bow. In France, they were the garçonnes, stylish women who idolized Coco Chanel. In Germany, the neue Frauen emerged, while in China, the modeng xiaojie—modern misses—flaunted the latest trends.
A viral picture of a group of modern girls strolling around Tokyo in the '20s (picture by Kagayama Kyoyo)
As in other parts of the world, Japan experienced its own wave of cultural transformation during the Taishō era—short-lived, yet culturally significant and with lasting influence. Urbanization and the rise of print media and mass advertising gave birth to a new consumer culture. Urban women of that period—now beneficiaries of the Meiji reforms that introduced universal education—came of age in a society that, for a brief moment, leaned toward liberalism and democratic ideals. Before long, rising nationalism and militarism swept that openness away. It was in this fleeting interwar window that the moga, or “modern girl,” emerged.
Influenced by American and French movie stars and fashion icons, mogas strolled through city streets sporting bobbed hair, high heels, red lips, penciled eyebrows, and eyes accented with shadow and liner—outfits and styling that reflected the latest Western trends. Their look marked a sharp break from the traditional image of Japanese women in kimonos and formal hairstyles.
To the rural majority, these women were unsettling. To nationalist critics, they symbolized moral decay brought on by Western decadence and frivolity. To left-wing intellectuals, they were vapid and obsessed with consumerism. But mogas weren’t interested in provoking debate or engaging in politics—they simply didn’t care. Much like today’s oshare girls, they wanted to enjoy life: to wear cute clothes, experiment with makeup, dine in stylish restaurants, hang out at cafés, fall in love, and immerse themselves in pop culture—especially jazz and American films. Their rebellion was rooted not in ideology, but in pleasure and consumerism.
Like the gyaru of the 2000s, mogas were often associated with debauchery—illicit affairs, alcohol, cigarettes, and a carefree attitude that defied traditional norms. Their image was further cemented in the public imagination with the massive success of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s 1925 novel Chijin no Ai (literally A Fool’s Love, published in English as Naomi).
Tanizaki’s book tells the story of Naomi, a seductive working-class teenager, and Jōji, a bland but financially secure salaryman who narrates the story. He meets the 15-year-old Naomi at the Akasaka coffee shop where she works and quickly falls under her spell. Determined to groom and educate her into the perfect modern woman, the 28-year-old Jōji instead finds himself completely dominated by her.
Naomi is a textbook moga: she’s not especially educated or intellectually curious, but she adores trends, Western fashion, going to the movies, and flipping through foreign magazines she can’t even read. With her haafu (mixed-race) features, Western name, and magnetic beauty, which the narrator compares to American silent movie star Mary Pickford, she knows exactly how to weaponize her appearance to get what she wants.
During the Meiji and early Taishō periods, Akasaka—where Naomi works in Chijin no Ai—vied with Ginza as one of Tokyo’s most modern districts. By the time the novel was published, however, Ginza had surged far ahead, especially after its post–Great Kantō Earthquake reconstruction cemented its status as Japan’s trendsetting epicenter.
Originally shaped by European influences, Ginza entered the early Shōwa era under the sway of American culture, with jazz and Hollywood films defining the zeitgeist. It boasted the city’s most fashionable cafés, restaurants, and boutiques, along with three major department stores—Mitsukoshi, Matsuya, and Matsuzakaya. If you were looking for the latest Western goods, from chewing gum to imported cigarettes, Ginza was the place to be.
The photo above captures a stylish madam in 1933 shopping for imported cigarettes at a Ginza tobacconist (source). At the time, mobos and mogas favored British-style rollies like Cherry or Airship, but the truly affluent—like the woman pictured—opted for U.S.-imported Camels or luxury brands like Abdullah from the U.K. Below left, a tinted postcard shows prewar Ginza Boulevard with its iconic Hattori clock tower. On the right, a 1932 Shufu no Tomo postcard captures a row of luxury taxicabs lined up in the neighborhood—a striking image from a time when cars were still a rare sight. Shufu no Tomo was a huge-selling magazine geared towards the traditional houewive (the title means Housewife's Friend) proving that even them were dreaming of Ginza (source)
In many ways, Naomi—like the mogas themselves—represents the collision of East and West. In a country where female submission was expected, Tanizaki painted her as a devilish woman who mastered the art of playing innocent while bending men to her will. The novel frames her as an antagonist: she’s terrible at housework and cooking, she’s selfish, untrustworthy, sexually promiscuous, and uninterested in studying. But what she lacks in traditional virtues, she makes up for in manipulative charm and irresistible beauty.
Despite her role as a kind of villain, it’s Naomi’s charisma that made Chijin no Ai a cultural phenomenon. She might not be “good,” but she’s captivating—and that allure becomes a strength. The novel reflects the ideals of aestheticism, a late 19th-century European art movement that prized beauty above all else. Tanizaki, heavily influenced by this philosophy, treats Naomi’s looks not just as superficial appeal but as a force of power.
So powerful was her image that it gave rise to a term of its own: Naomism, coined to describe women who shared Naomi’s traits. Her free-spirited femme fatale style turned her into a muse for women across Japan. Though Naomi fits into a recognizable international archetype—one that might read as cliché today—it’s striking that Chijin no Ai was published nearly two decades before Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, another novel centered on obsession, youth, and control, told through the eyes of an unreliable (and creepy) older man. While the two works differ in tone, style, and cultural context, both complicate the reader’s sympathies and deliberately blur the lines between victim and manipulator, control and submission. In Japan, the figure Naomi embodies—the koakuma, or “little devil”—is a lasting archetype, celebrated and imitated in literature and pop culture, especially among women who saw in her a subversive kind of power.
For many young women in 1920s Japan, Naomi’s character offered something aspirational. She was from a modest background—proof that the moga lifestyle was within reach. She wasn’t particularly clever, but her beauty allowed her to live on her own terms, ignoring social expectations with little consequence. In Chijin no Ai, beauty becomes freedom. Even today, that message resonates in a country where appearance and presentation—especially for women—continue to carry enormous weight.
The novel also explores another deep-rooted aspect of Japanese culture: sadomasochism. While in the West, S&M is often confined to sexual subcultures, in Japan, it plays a more general role in discussions around relationships and power dynamics. It’s common to categorize personalities as either S (dominant) or M (submissive), with men traditionally expected to take the dominant role. Jōji, like Tanizaki himself, is portrayed as a clear masochist, entranced by Naomi’s control.
In many respects, Tanizaki was a “modern boy” in his own right—a bohemian drawn to Western aesthetics and cosmopolitan life. This fascination came into full bloom during his years in Yokohama, one of Japan’s most international port cities. After the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake devastated Tokyo and the surrounding region, Tanizaki relocated to Kansai, once again choosing to be near a cosmopolitan port town—Kobe—and building a Western-style house during the Great Osaka Era. His home, of course, was in the Hanshin suburb of Ashiya.
That move to Kansai also explains why Chijin no Ai, though set in Tokyo, was first serialized in an Osaka newspaper. While the story was an instant hit, it scandalized many of the Asahi Shimbun's older readers, prompting the paper to cancel the serialization. A few months later, the magazine Josei (“Woman”), aimed at the moga demographic, picked it up—and there, it thrived. Shortly after its conclusion, the full novel was published in book form.
The novel’s run in Josei highlights several key elements that fueled the moga movement: the rise of mass media, the rapid growth of magazine publishing, and the increasing power of advertising. With newspaper circulations in the millions, ideas and images spread more quickly than ever. Josei was one of several magazines aimed at the new female consumer, and it played a major role in promoting moga-style fashion and attitudes across the country.
Not coincidentally, the magazine’s parent company was part of a conglomerate that had a vested interest in the moga boom: its fortune was built on cosmetics. Despite the connection, Josei’s editor and contributors prided themselves on the magazine’s distance from commercialism.
As for Tanizaki, he remains one of the most celebrated authors of the Taishō and early Shōwa eras. Fascinated by modernity and trends, and inspired by his surroundings in Ashiya, he went on to write what is widely considered his masterpiece, Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters). Set among Osaka’s noble Hanshin elite, the novel explores the tension between modern life and Japanese tradition. One of the younger Makioka sisters embodies the “modern girl” ideal—yet, coming from a privileged background and possessing a very different temperament than the Naomi of Tanizaki’s earlier novella, she brings her own complexities to the clash of cultures.
Ginza Streets and Media Dreams: The Mythologizing of the Moga
The moga boom took off in the mid-1920s, in the years following the Great Kanto Earthquake. Around this time, the modern girl became a hot topic in newspapers and magazines, with writers, essayists, and intellectuals eagerly debating what she represented. Was she a symbol of liberation or a product of frivolity—driven by consumerism and a desire to please men? Did she signal progress, or was she a sign of cultural decline?
Launched in 1922 at the height of the Taishō era, Josei was published by Platonsha, a subsidiary of Osaka-based Club Cosmetics—then Japan’s largest cosmetics company. Unlike bestsellers like Shufu no Tomo or Fujin Sekai, which focused on beauty tips and homemaking, Josei followed in the footsteps of Fujin Kōron, featuring essays, debates, and literature from some of the era’s top intellectuals (mostly men, of course). It also played a key role in popularizing the term and image of the “modern girl” (modan gāru), making it a cultural archetype of the time. Its striking art deco covers and logo—designed by Rokuro Yama—left a lasting mark on Japanese graphic design. Though the magazine claimed to rise above commercialism, its pages were filled with advertorials for Club’s best-selling products. It folded in 1928 amid the early Shōwa recession.
According to the media, modern girls could be found in cities across Japan. But they were especially visible in central Tokyo’s booming districts—most famously Ginza, with its chic cafés and boutiques, but also in Akasaka and Marunouchi. Besides Ginza cafés, dance halls and boutiques and Akasaka cinemas, The Marunouchi Building was also said to be a hub for these young women. Many of them worked there in clerical jobs, using their newfound disposable income to enjoy fashion, entertainment, and nightlife. The building itself became a symbol of modern Tokyo—and even housed one of Japan’s first luxury salons, run by Aiko Yamano (more on her later).
The moga appeared in films, literature, and in advertisements. Yet despite her visibility, she was often portrayed in a negative light: as hedonistic, deviant, and sometimes even as a sex worker. There was certainly a fascination with her, even admiration—but it was frequently overshadowed by suspicion and moral judgment. Magazines like Josei—which serialized Naomi—devoted countless pages to dissecting her image, as did other popular women’s titles. In fact, it was Kitazawa Shūichi, a frequent Josei collaborator, who brought the “Modern Girl” term to Japan, inspired by the women he met while living abroad in England.
But amid all this commentary, a question began to emerge: was the moga a real social figure—or merely a media invention?
Café Culture, Jokyū Glamour, and the Mizu Shōbai Blueprint
The “moga” often portrayed in the media is a working class girl who decided to engage in consumerism, trends and fashion. But, in many senses, this woman didn’t really exist. Mostly because it’s not like women in entry-level jobs on extremely low wages could afford this lifestyle.
In Murakami Nobuhiko’s Career Women of the Taishō Era (1983) Torii Shizuko, a Japanese-language typist (born 1909) who worked in the Yaesu Building said: *“People raved that the Marunouchi Building was a fashion mecca, but I never understood why. We wore kimono with service smocks and hardly any make-up. Almost everyone was supporting parents or siblings.”
“Modern girl” and “career woman” were two parallel and often overlapping phenomena that unsettled the public and sparked widespread commentary. The media frequently conflated them, giving the impression that all young working women were mogas. But most office workers didn’t fit the mold at all.
Even the very magazines that helped popularize the moga myth occasionally admitted that the real thing was hard to find. A telling anecdote in Josei’s March 1928 issue describes a visit from a friend from the countryside, eager to spot one of these glamorous city women:
Last year, at the peak of the modern girl craze, a friend from my rural hometown came to Tokyo and begged me, ‘Please show me one of those modern girls!
We went to Ginza—the real deal, they say—and then to a couple of cafés, which were supposedly the real real deal. But we didn’t see a single woman who matched the stereotype from novels and magazines. He left bitterly disappointed.
Even now, if you stand at a corner in Ginza and try counting how many stylish women pass by, you’ll find barely one in a thousand.
Sometimes Josei or the magazine run by the cosmetics giant Shiseido would observe women outside department stores or in Ginza and would conclude only a tiny minority had Western hairstyles and clothes. Plus, what we could easily forget by observing the flashy department stores in city centers and fashionable districts is that, during the 20s and 30s, Japan was still predominantly an agrarian society, with most women living in rural areas either as homemakers or agricultural labourers.
Still, it’s absolutely true that urban Japan in the 1920s was bursting with life and was the ideal environment for this urban subculture to emerge. “Modern” and “modernism” were basically buzzwords of that era with modern architecture, modern hobbies, modern films, etc. being all the rage. That, in itself, is a reason why so many intellectuals distrusted “modern girls”: because the word “modern” at the time was perceived by many of them as something to describe progressive, innovative movements and the “mogas” were new but they weren’t particularly progressive, instead being seen as hedonistic fashion victims.
Either way, women with proclivity for the new had plenty of things to do and places to go if they had the money and the time: flashy department stores, restaurants with Western cuisine and sweets, the opera, cinemas with the latest movies, dance halls with the latest jazz. Instead of looking up to the traditional geishas or women from noble, traditional families, there were now movie stars from both Japan and the West. After the success of Takarazuka in the West of Japan, all-female revues were also all the rage and spread across the country, with the most notable Takarazuka rival being the Kanto-based Shochiku Kagekidan with their own grand theater in the Tokyo district of Akasaka. The SKD wasn’t as female-targeted as Takarazuka but it was still popular with them.
In the midst of all of this, things associated with “mogas” – short hair, makeup, Western clothes, hedonistic hobbies – were permeating women’s culture as a whole. Plus, the “moga” archetype was also a great way to hack products, used by department stores and often seen in advertisement for a wide range of products.
Unlike the passive, refined “bijin” imagery of earlier ads, these young women embodied dynamism and the modern urban spirit.
But the ads told a distorted story. Mogas were everywhere in print, yet in real life they remained a small, urban minority. Their visibility in media far outweighed their actual numbers. Yes, they did exist. But to what extent?
As Barbara Hamill Sato puts it in The New Japanese Women, the “source materials” on the modern girl -- media reports from the 20s and 30s -- don’t actually tell us what these women were really like. What they do reveal is the conceptual framework through which intellectuals interpreted them. The so-called modan gāru was not a subject in her own right, but rather an object defined within a cultural phenomenon—one mediated by the discourse of the intellectual class via mass media.
Café Printemps (left) sparked Ginza’s café boom, followed by Café Lion, which popularized the now-iconic café jokyū (waitress), and Café Paulista, known for its Brazilian coffee and still in operation today. These pioneering spots offered more than just coffee—they served Western alcohol, food, and sweets, creating an atmosphere of modern indulgence. Their success opened the floodgates for countless others, from cafés owned by movie stars to more provocative establishments backed by Osaka capital and transplanted from the Kansai scene
And by the late 1920s, public perception of them had grown increasingly hostile. For a working-class woman to afford such a lifestyle, she would almost certainly need a man’s financial support. That reality fed the stereotype of the moga as manipulative, materialistic, or promiscuous—a “gold digger” in Western terms. Or worse, a prostitute. These anxieties would only intensify with the rise of the café girl, a new symbol of female independence—and moral panic.
At the time, Ginza was the place to be — a fashionable playground for the youth, where gin-bura (a Taishō-era slang term meaning “aimlessly strolling around Ginza”) became a popular pastime. Cafés were already a potent symbol of the modernist wave sweeping through the neighborhood — with their Western-style food, coffee, and liquor, they embodied the allure of a cosmopolitan lifestyle. They attracted urban dwellers, especially mobos (modern boys — the male counterpart to the moga, far more common but far less scrutinized), who were eager to sample Western sophistication. For young women, cafés offered a rare opportunity: you didn’t need formal education or special skills to work there, and the job came with a far more glamorous and stylish image than factory or farm work. As a result, working as a café waitress (女給, jokyū) became a popular profession. In the public imagination, mogas and jokyū — clad in their signature white aprons — became deeply intertwined, a connection famously embodied by the character Naomi in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Chijin no Ai.
Establishments like Café Lion, Café Paulista, and Café Printemps in Ginza gained reputations for hiring beautiful young women — part of the appeal alongside the food and drinks. While customers, especially mobos, flocked to admire the waitresses, strict rules kept everything platonic. Any violation of these boundaries often led to immediate dismissal.
Then came the newly opened Café Tiger, which flipped the script by hiring these dismissed waitresses specifically to flirt, chat, and even sit on customers’ laps. The concept was an instant hit, sparking a wave of similar cafés across the city. Amid the broader ero-guro-nansensu (erotic-grotesque-nonsense) boom, even more risqué cafés — many inspired by or imported from Kansai, where things were even rowdier — began to appear, offering increasingly explicit services.
In many ways, the café jokyū became the prototype for a postwar staple of Japanese nightlife: the hostess. The parallels are striking — a mix of glamour and the murky underworld of the mizu shōbai; the promise of financial independence for working-class girls who happened to be young and beautiful. And just as hostesses in the 2000s were often seen as post-gyaru, the café jokyū was often cast as a kind of moga. This association, of course, only reinforced the public’s tendency to view mogas — and by extension, these women — as marginal figures or even delinquents.
The mogas of the 1920s stood in sharp contrast to the earlier atarashii onna—the "New Women" who emerged in the prior decade. That earlier generation was radical, politically driven, and fiercely committed to women's liberation. Most were highly educated, from prominent families and influenced by the pioneering feminist magazine Seito (Bluestocking), founded by writer and intellectual Hiratsuka Raichō.
By comparison, the Modern Girls—or moga—were less overtly political. They were mostly ordinary young women pursuing personal freedom, financial independence, and modern lifestyles, often without aligning themselves with any broader feminist ideology. This more casual embrace of modernity provoked sharp criticism from earlier feminists like Hiratsuka herself. She scoffed at the moga’s Americanized style—“skirts down to the knee, pale silk stockings, small shoes with high heels, hair barbered daringly short at the nape so that the neck is completely exposed, and make-up modeled on film actresses, especially the vividly red lips”—as little more than surface-level rebellion. “It seems that anyone, given enough money and leisure, could become one in an instant,” she remarked, dismissing them as a fad lacking substance. Her critique echoed a common view among highbrow intellectuals of the time.
Traditional and modern collided in Ginza, as a woman in Western dress passed by two friends in traditional kimonos—still the most common attire at the time.
Shuichi Kitazawa, who coined the term “modern girl” after encountering liberated women in England, offered a more idealistic take. To him, the moga wasn’t a feminist, but “a woman who never considered herself a slave to men, who asserts her own desires and acts freely to honor herself.” Yet that vision was aspirational at best. In a deeply patriarchal society like Japan, most working women had few viable paths to independence. For the average girl, true freedom remained out of reach.
This disconnect helps explain why the moga ideal, though controversial, found firmer footing among women of the elite. In upper-class circles, “modern girls” weren’t such a radical departure. As far back as the Meiji period, affluent women had already begun incorporating Western fashion—like corsets and bustled skirts—into their wardrobes for formal events. Such styles were available at department stores like Mitsukoshi but remained impractical and out of reach for everyday wear. It wasn’t until the 1920s, with simpler silhouettes and lighter fabrics, that Western clothing became more accessible.
By the time the moga craze took hold in magazines and media, wealthier women were already well-versed in Western fashion. More importantly, they had the time, money, and social insulation to explore the “modern girl” lifestyle on their own terms—without the stigma or financial pressures faced by working-class women. In many ways, they were the closest realization of the free-spirited moga Kitazawa imagined.
A 1936 roundtable in Fujin Kōron, one of the most influential women’s magazines of the era, titled "Why I Won’t Get Married: A Discussion of the Troubles of Marriage”, captured this dynamic. It featured unmarried women from intellectual and artistic families—Ayame Tsuda, daughter of the nihonga painter Seihō Tsuda; Yoshiko Nii, daughter of critic Itaru Nii; and Ema Togawa, daughter of English literature scholar Shūkotsu Togawa. Many were graduates of the prestigious Bunka Gakuin. These women, by their own admission, didn’t need to work to put food in their table. They could afford to enjoy the freedom, style, and leisurely pursuits associated with the moga life—shopping and dining in Ginza, pursuing hobbies, and delaying or outright rejecting marriage. They belonged to the ojōsama class—daughters of high-status families—and couldn’t be lumped in with working-class mogas as delinquents.
Early café culture, with its emphasis on café jokyū (waitresses), was largely male-oriented—women were there to work, not to linger. But that changed quickly as modern girls began flocking to cafés and food parlors as customers, driving the popularity of Western-inspired sweets like fruit cakes and ice cream. Sembikiya, now a luxury fruit retailer still prominent today, opened its Ginza fruit parlor at the end of the Meiji era and gained momentum through the Taishō and Shōwa periods. With offerings like strawberry shortcake, banana shortbread, fruit parfaits, and punch, Sembikiya—alongside department store restaurants—became one of the first eateries in Ginza where an unaccompanied woman could be at ease.
Not long after, a rival emerged in Shinjuku: Takano. Though the area was still transitioning from its rural past, it quickly developed into Japan’s busiest hub, and Takano grew alongside it, becoming a landmark of the area. Like Sembikiya, it embraced the new taste for indulgence, and continues to serve fruit-centered treats to this day.
They were women like Toshiko Yamawaki, a Western-style painter, fashion illustrator, and researcher who came from a wealthy family and led a thoroughly modern life. In 1929, she participated in a “Beauty Roundtable” published by Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, alongside literary critic and translator Itaru Nii—one of the first intellectuals to popularize the term modern girl in Japan.
In the discussion, Yamawaki voiced her discomfort with how the label had become superficial and stigmatizing:
That word modern girl, you know... In Japan, the image of a model or modern girl is nothing like the modèle in France. Personally, I feel so sad that Mr. Nii helped popularize the term. It breaks my heart. Even just walking down the street, people immediately call me a modern girl—and that makes me incredibly sad.
Put on a slightly fashionable Western outfit, get your hair and makeup done at Mrs. Yamano’s salon, carry a handbag, and stroll through Ginza—just like that, you’re labeled a modern girl. But when it comes to a person’s inner spirit, it’s not that simple. Society tends to define modern girls by surface appearances—short hair, Western clothes—rather than substance.
Their exchange laid bare a persistent tension: the divide between what critics and intellectuals believed the modern girl ought to represent and how she was perceived in popular culture. And yet, the very mention of Mrs. Yamano served as a subtle reminder that not all “media approved” modern girls came from elite backgrounds.
If we’re talking about success in financial terms, a number of Ginza café jokyū (waitresses) achieved the so-called fairytale ending by marrying wealthy or intellectual men. Some of them were also famous actresses, singers and performers. Others, however, made their own fortune -- as famous actresses, singers, performers or, like Yamano, through their entrepreneurship. These entrepreneurial mogas capitalized on their “modernity” and became so successful that they were ultimately embraced—even respected—by conservative Japanese society.
Many of them were hairdressers like Mrs. Yamano, aka Aiko Yamano, who also took part in the Mainichi's Beauty Roundtable alongside Yamawaki and Nii.
Driven by a longing for the West, Aiko endured great hardship to live and study in the United States, where she mastered modern hairstyling and cosmetology techniques. After the Great Kantō Earthquake, she returned to Japan with cutting-edge methods like the perm and the Marcel wave. These quickly became fashion staples among Tokyo’s stylish women, and Yamano’s salon—located in the Marunouchi Building—became a massive success.
Her influence grew rapidly. She became a media fixture and used her platform to bring further innovation to Japan. One of her most ambitious ventures was the founding of the Japan Mannequin Club, an agency that supplied fashion models—then called “mannequins”—to department stores. These women were hired to promote products and demonstrate beauty ideals. The job was glamorous and high-paying—though, of course, only available to the very beautiful—and quickly became one of the few aspirational careers open to women at the time.
Among Yamano’s apprentices was Aguri Yoshiuki, who went on to open her own highly successful chain, the Yamanote Beauty Salon. Yamano even mentioned her former student’s salon during the Mainichi Shimbun's Beauty Roundtable:
“There’s that beauty salon in front of Ichigaya-mitsuke—it was designed by Mr. Murayama (Tomoyoshi), I hear. It’s quite a unique building. I went inside and was impressed by how cleverly the small space was used. A very smart layout.”
The Dadaist-style building, designed by Tomoyoshi Murayama and later demolished after the war, was almost certainly influenced by Aguri’s husband, the Dadaist poet and writer Eisuke Yoshiuki.
Then there were figures like Fumiko Hayashi, who carved her own path through the literary world. Unlike the typical moga, Hayashi wasn’t particularly obsessed with fashion or makeup. Plain-looking, she did work as a waitress—but not in the glamorous Ginza, rather in Shinjuku, which at the time was still a rough, recently developed area with rural traces. Her résumé included jobs as a nanny, maid, street vendor, factory hand, office clerk, and newspaper worker—she took whatever she could to survive.
Hayashi came to Tokyo not just chasing a man (although that too), but chasing the city itself. She was drawn to the thrill, the possibility, the sheer scale of life in the capital. She jumped from man to man, job to job, always searching for that sense of vitality—and even in poverty, she was enamored with the modernity the city offered. She befriended writers and intellectuals, attended literary gatherings, and threw herself into the excitement of Tokyo life.
She chronicled her experiences in her breakout work “Hōrōki” (A Wanderer’s Record). While presented in diary form, it reads like a scrapbook—combining diary entries, letters, poems, and tanka. Her prose crackles with life: slang, colloquialisms, katakana loanwords, onomatopoeia, and punchy sentence fragments. It embodied the rawness and thrill of Tokyo in the 1920s. The book became a massive bestseller, beloved by both critics and the public, and transformed Hayashi into a wealthy, respected literary figure embraced by the establishment. In many ways, she exemplified how a woman without status or elite education could still thrive by leaning into her modern sensibilities.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Japan had one of the largest literary markets in the world. While not as groundbreaking as Europe’s, Japan’s readership was deeply engaged—highbrow literature wasn’t just confined to city elites. Serialized fiction by major authors filled the pages of mass-market newspapers, and literary magazines were read widely. A career in literature wasn’t just prestigious—it was profitable and could catapult someone into the mainstream.
It’s no wonder, then, that Chiyo Uno—perhaps the most iconic moga of all—also rose through the literary world. Uno became a powerhouse not only in writing, but also in fashion and beauty. Yet what made her so fascinating was that she embodied many of the traits most criticized in modern girls: her obsession with clothes and cosmetics, her romantic entanglements, and her unabashedly scandalous lifestyle. By all accounts, she could have been dismissed as a social outcast. But instead, she became a celebrated figure—one of the most respected women in Japanese cultural history.
