By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Aug 26 1997 (IPS)

Kei Miwa, 16, thinks nothing of spending an average of 400 dollars a month on clothes, make-up and just having fun.

“Most of my allowance goes to clothes,” says the tall, slim high schooler, who is dressed in fashionable bottle-green bell- bottoms and a black lace T-shirt. “The rest goes to eating at cute restaurants, which is a must if you are with your group on weekends,” she explains.

Miwa is a typical teenager or one of many Ko-Gals, or high school girls, as they are called in Japan. Young and well-off, they represent a new generation of Japanese that is growing up pampered with material goodies, made possible by the country’s phenomenal rise to affluence in the last 50 years.

In just a generation, Japan has been transformed from a ravaged country to one of the world’s industrial powerhouses with per capita GNP exceeding 34,000 dollars a year.

As the country gre richer over the decades, its birth rate has dipped to around 0.2 percent as families opt to have fewer children. Experts say this is one reason why parents and relatives can shower material goods on their youngsters.

According to the Japan Youth Research Institute, 68 percent of Japanese teens receive allowances of some 220 dollars per month.

In addition, part-time work by teeners and regular pocket money from two sets of grandparents have made this group of youngsters a growing consumer force — although it makes up only 4 percent of Japan’s population of more than 125 million.

“High school girls today, unlike those of ten years ago, have economic power,” says Yoshiyuki Ogino, editor-in-chif of the popular teen magazine ‘Cawaii’.

It is hard to miss Japan’s pampered youngsters when walking in the fashionable parts of big cities across the country. In Tokyo, swank locations like bustling Shibuya and the leafy Harajuku districts are packed with young women who lounge around in mini- skirts, body-hugging tops, purple polish on toes and fingernails, and chat incessantly on tiny mobile phones.

Their trendy lifestyles, according to sociologists, are supported by parents who dote on a generation that represents the material and economic achievements that crown the successes of postwar Japan.

In sharp contrast to their elders, many of these parents believe that their children must not want for luxuries they were denied when they were growing up in Japan’s difficult years after the Pacific War.

Miwa’s mother, who married when she was 23 years old, explains that times have changed in Japan. She does not expect her two daughters to live like her.

“Kei needs to enjoy herself because she lives in a society that puts a lot of stress on her,” says the mother. “Schools are too exacting, for instance. And when she is an adult, she will face all kind of role pressures so I want her to have a good time now.”

However, experts say this attitude helps cultivate a new breed of Japanese, whose chief concerns are to achieve economic satisfaction and material wealth. Likewise, these youngsters are often overly shielded from making difficult decisions on such matters as moral issues or planning for their future.

For instance, Kei says one of saddest things that happened in her life was when she could not purchase a Tamagotchi toy, a “virtual pet” in the shape of an egg that took Japan by storm last year.

“All my friends had it before I finally got my father to buy it. I was depressed for weeks,” she sighed.

Costing some 200 dollars each, the Tamagotchi is a game that features an on-screen newborn chick that matures into an adult provided it is fed, played with and disciplined by pushing the right buttons on the toy.

Analysts say the craze over the Tamagotchi, which has since spread to Asian and western countries, is another illustration of how consumer trends are set by, and cater to the tastes of, this generation of affluent Japanese youngsters.

In an interview, Ogini of ‘Cawaii’ magazine explained that the publication is based on the idea that high school girls are no longer children.

“We teach that there is nothing wrong with striving for adult fashion, adult make-up, adult hairstyles and adult enjoyments. Teachers and parents are telling them to be children, but they desire to be adults,” he said. “We represent that desire.”

This summer, teeners are busy following a new fad. This time, they are chasing after charm bracelets, made of prayer beads that traditional custom requires the Japanese to carry to funerals.

Shopkeepers selling the once-humble bracelet say they are happy the tradition has caught the fancy of teenagers. “When one buys and everyone admires it, you can be sure everybody will want to wear the bracelet,” remarked one salesperson.

But the constant search for newest, cutest or fashionable goods is giving rise to a number of worrisome problems, as recent teenager trends have shown.

This year, the Japanese media have highlighted the rising number of high school prostitutes who have sex with older men in order to have more money. Meeting middle-aged men through “date clubs” have become a way for teenagers as young as 15 or 16 years old to acquire extra buying power.

Reports of high school girls who sleep with an average of three partners on a regular basis, earning 300 to 500 dollars for each customer, has raised eyebrows and triggered calls for discussion of such social ills among government officials.

Sociologists are calling for stricter laws to curtail the activities of date clubs and other telephone services that foster this practise, saying it is time to reevaluate the moorings of modern Japanese society and how it influences its young people.

In his book ‘Seifuku Shojotachi no Sentaku’ (‘The Choices of Girls in Schoolgirl Uniforms’), author Shinji Miyadai says the real cause of Japan’s increasingly materialistic culture is a breakdown in society’s means of transmitting its moral values.

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