The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

As discussed, Visual kei is the music genre followed by many Gothloli,
especially Gothic Lolita, due to the impetus created by Mana’s adoption of
the Lolita look during his Mizer days. As Monden writes, the Japanese Lolita
movement has itself “undoubtedly emerged from European and Japanese
cultural interactions and hybridisations”. 38 But, in referring to Okamura
Keiko’s theory of “format” and “product”, Monden explains that:
Historical European fashion styles (the “format”)… [become, in general]
transnational, and then “localised” in Japanese culture. [In regard to Lolita, when]
the “format” is then hybridised with the local [Japanese] aesthetic notion of cute, it
engenders a fashion form peculiar to Japan. The “product” of this transcultural
flow reflects the emphasis on the fusion of elaborated sweetness and cuteness, a
quality unknown in Western Goth subculture. 39
The psychology behind “cuteness” in Japan is complex especially in its
significance to Lolita, and as such is an important aspect that I discuss in
greater detail in the following chapters. However, at this point, it is relevant
to note that the cute and sweet elements of the Gothloli style are what make
the fashion quintessentially Japanese but, when fused with the Gothic, as
Monden says, the look “is neither European nor Japanese, but at the same
time both European and Japanese”. 40
It is this hybrid nature that allows the Lolita subculture to become
accessible to fans outside Japan. While the movement shares ideas with the
West, it combines them with local paradigms, transforms them into unique
proclivities, and in turn creates Western counter currents. This pattern can
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