The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

In 2007, Yuniya Kawamura highlighted that “since the early 1990s”
Japan had been facing “the longest and worst economic recession in
history”. 118 She cited John Nathan (2004) in maintaining that:
[Japanese society was] fracturing under the strain of economic stagnation. Fathers
[were]… losing their jobs for the first time… mothers who used to be full-time
homemakers now [had]… to look for part-time jobs to supplement their
household income and children [were] find[ing] no hope in future Japan. 119
Added to this problem was the shift by youth away from the typical careers
of their parents, and even the refusal to seek employment at all. According
to Kawamura, the “entire… value system, especially that of teens… [was]
going through a major transition”. 120 In relation to this rejection of
traditional responsibilities, discourse claims connections to Japan’s
economic crises.
The simultaneous rise of the Lolita movement at this time reinforces
my theory that the Gothloli phenomenon at least began as emblematic of a
generation who, daunted by their future, were fearful of embracing
adulthood. This view is also reflected by Ginny Parker who, writing at the
same time as Nathan, quoted Kayama in agreeing that “some Japanese
students of youth culture [saw]… the Lolita look as a sign of anxieties
resulting from growing up in a nation beset by economic insecurities” and
that this reflected “a society that [didn’t]… feel too hopeful about its
future”. 121
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