Joshikousei

Joshikousei (女子高生), also spelled joshi kōsei or joshikosei, is the Japanese word for uniformed school girl, applied to either elementary or secondary students. Similar terms employed by otakus and cosplayers include kogal, kogaru, and kogyaru.

Traditionally speaking, a joshikousei outfit consists of a mid-length pleated blue skirt worn with a white blouse and a red scarf bowed beneath the lapels (loose socks optional). Although uniforms are only required in private institutes, many Japanese girls wear the costume well into their 20s, especially around the Shibuya/Harajuku nightclub districts. In anime and manga, the joshikousei style is closely associated with the "sailor" costume depicted in 1980s media such as Project A-ko, Yawara, and Nanako SOS. Archetypal Japanese schoolgirls are frequently portrayed with white cotton panties visible below a raised hemline; this image can be traced back to the television adaption of Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen (TVT, 1970), in which the female cast was subjected to skirt flips, tea-bagging, panty-spanking and similar indignities.

The convention has survived well into the twenty-first century, undergoing numerous permutations over the past forty years.