Girls Just Want To Have Fun: American and Japanese Evaluations of the Japanese Moga During the Interwar Years

Abstract

Modan garu or moga describes the young Japanese women in the 1920's who adopted dress and customs akin to those of the flappers in the United States. The moga represented a break with the established role of women in Japanese society, and as such, were the topic of both scholarly and popular commentators. This paper examines natural world and societal factors involved in the moga phenomenon.