Even Japanese adolescents seem to equate the two. Just last week, a trio of eighth-grade girls in my English class flipped through an issue of Teen People magazine I'd brought to school for use in a culture lesson. Peering at pictures of teenage stars, my students were unwilling to believe that girls as "mature" and "grown-up looking" as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera could possibly be under 20. They were particularly shocked by their "mature" clothing and "adult" hairstyles -- no pigtails in sight.

"Kawaikunai," one of the girls said, pointing to a glamour shot of Mena Suvari: not cute.

While the Japanese term "romansuguray" ("romance gray") is commonly used in reference to sexy members of the male salt-and-pepper set, there is no equivalent word for desirable older women. On her 25th birthday, an unmarried Japanese woman automatically becomes what's laughingly referred to as "spoiled sponge cake," in honor of the Christmas sponge cakes that are discounted and rarely purchased after Dec. 25.

This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why Akari is not entirely anomalous here. She may be wearing the national lower-school uniform, but the 19-year-old is well past her student days. She works as a hostess at the Lullaby Girls Pub in Kanazawa. In the evenings, before the night show begins, she stands with her "masuta" (hostess bar manager, or pimp, from the English word "master") on a bustling street corner and hands out flyers depicting a young, uniformed schoolgirl sitting sprawled like a toddler on a linoleum floor, fingers teasingly splayed over her bare crotch. The photo is framed by a keyhole. According to the flyer, "Guests can enjoy peeking through a real high school student's keyhole without fear of arrest!"

Men who find kogaru hostess bars indiscreet or overly staged can procure real junior high "dates" through local kogaru cell-phone-sex rings. Bus stops and street corners frequently display flyers with the first names and cell phone numbers of willing schoolgirls or convincing substitutes. For a small fee, girls will come, in uniform, to pre-designated meeting places, often "love hotels" rented by the hour.

One such ring was recently broken up at a school where I was a teacher. In order to keep their preteen daughters' records pristine, none of the girls' families pressed charges. Despite the occasional incident, however, kogaru is not a synonym for "call girl." Every school has its kogaru group, and every town has streets and shops where they hang out. Kogaru is simply a fashion statement with lucrative options.

Despite their fondness for schoolgirl uniforms, those kogaru who opt to stay in school are not exactly model students. They exist solely to be "kawaii" (cute), a word they repeat like a mantra. And although they live in their uniforms, they are frequently in trouble for altering them, violating school codes by shortening their skirts, bleaching and perming their hair. Kogaru are easily distinguishable from their more serious female classmates whose hems hit midshin and who wear their glossy hair black and sensibly cut.

After reaching the age of 20 or so, the uniformed vixens graduate from kogaru status to mere garu. These things in mind, it's easier to understand why girls on the outset of adolescence might choose to outfit themselves as kogaru and buy a few more years of pimply prime. At 19, kogaru Akari is almost too old to play the nymphet.

Although business is booming at the Lullaby Pub, few men will admit to finding kogaru attractive. At least, they won't admit it to me. And yet, wander into any Japanese convenience store at any hour of night or day and you're sure to find a row of men and boys standing square in front of the kogaru manga rack. These novel-length comic books are among Japan's most popular. The artist's eye -- like the reader's eye -- is trained upward, as though he were rendering the image reflected on cleverly positioned patent-leather shoes. From this perspective, pantie-less pudenda flash beneath pleats and the undersides of breasts bulge out from middies. A penchant for kogaru manga is by no means confined to the furtive and trench-coated, either. Even mainstream Japanese fitness and lifestyle magazines occasionally include a bonus kogaru manga special, tucked among recipe cards and articles suggesting family weekend getaways.

"Teachers like the Lullaby Club," my friend Ritsuko Yamagishi tells me with a wicked grin. She herself is a teacher; we met when I was placed by the Ministry of Education as an assistant in her eighth-grade English class. She mentions several of our male colleagues' names, including that of the doughy sumo instructor who occupies the desk -- bedecked with photos of his infant daughter -- across from mine.

"Maybe," Ritsuko says, "at the club, teachers can recognize former pupils in their old junior high uniforms and feel happy and enjoy a closer look, or even invite them onto their laps for a feel."

In Japanese public schools, all forms of self-decoration are strictly policed, whether they lean toward sex kitten kogaru or drag queen ganguro. The high school at which I spent a year teaching held regular hair and face inspections. Homeroom teachers measured bangs with rulers, removed earrings from self-pierced lobes, scolded students who plucked their eyebrows and required even seniors to scrub off all traces of lipstick or powder. Before school assemblies, junior teachers were handed aerosol bottles of black spray with which to return our "kinpatsu" (golden-haired) students to regulation black. Teachers talked despairingly of "rebellious" kids who came to school with hair illicitly afuro, who rolled the waistbands of their skirts and donned slouchy rusu-socks, in flagrant disregard of the school uniform.

In Japan, uniforms are worn both in schools and workplaces, and their impact goes beyond making it easier for people to dress in the mornings. In a recent city high school debate over whether students should continue to wear uniforms into the 21st century, those in favor won with a high margin. Their main contention, that uniforms help provide "a group-feeling," mystifies most non-Japanese. The cozy concept of group-feeling doesn't even translate properly into English.

In other words, it's hard for foreigners to grasp why these "little gals" in shortened uniforms and cake makeup come across as insolent, and even, according to some teachers, "dangerous." They are refusing to conform to "the group." And in Japan, "the group" -- a system of circles within circles with Japan overlapped across the whole -- begins at, and is centered upon, school.

But strict teachers aside, there are many who believe that the ganguro and kogaru may have an impact on traditional Japan, for better or worse. According to Australian artist and Japan scholar Kirsten Farrell, these girls -- dedicated solely to the subjective pursuit of cute -- are unwitting feminists and radicals, rattling the status quo simply by hanging around, being visible and cropping up in every corner of Japan.

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