This paper explores the hip hop impact on Japanese youth culture with special reference to the ganguro[1] phenomenon among Japanese teenage girls. Ganguro has been identified as a new fashion style[2] imitating certain hip hop outward physical features, such as blackened faces and necks with shimmering makeup, blond or white hair, boots with solid platform soles, and bright colored tight miniskirts.

Three assumptions underlie the current study: (1) Ganguro as a new fashion style reflects the global influence of hip hop culture and affects Japanese youth ideology. (2) Ganguro is more than a new fashion style among Japanese teenage girls; it is an explicit expression of self- identity of those who attempt to depart from traditional Japanese cultural values and social standards. (3) Ganguro as a subculture is in conflict with  mainstream Japanese culture, and although this subculture may not spread to the whole Japanese younger generation, it has socio-cultural and ideological significance in Japanese society.

How race was formed. Dr. Carl Gutierrez-Jones shows you how with his precient summary of an important study.

Most activists in prison and their allies outside want to reduce the suffering of people in prison and people in communities that are targeted for imprisonment. Many also work to challenge prisons more broadly. Increasingly activists and academics are talking about the points of tension and connection between reform efforts that seek to improve conditions in prison and those that take a more radical abolitionist approach to the problem and call for the eventual elimination of the prison altogether.

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If you like what Cassandra Shaylor and Cynthia Chandler are doing, let us recommend The Sentencing Project and The Prisons Foundation:

The Prisons Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC that promotes the arts and education in prison and alternatives to incarceration. We believe that art can not only play a cathartic roll in the life of a prisoner, but that it boosts self esteem, decreases frustration and anger, fosters a sense of productivity and that this ultimately translates into a released prisoner who feels a greater sense of self worth, and a greater sense of “connection” to society and the world around him.

Our African women’s collective first began sewing BaBa Blankets™ in June of 2000. We were brought together by E. Aminata Brown, an African-American woman who was a full-time resident in Ghana. When Aminata met us, we were a group of young women who shared the common experience of fleeing our rural towns and villages to become load-carriers, or “kaya yo”, in Accra’s big city markets. Being a kaya yo meant long days of carrying heavy loads from dawn ‘til dusk and then sleeping under the market’s crowded pavilions at night. Aminata stumbled upon our makeshift market community through a brief encounter with a young kaya yo girl named Ayisha. It wasn’t long before Aminata realized that Ayisha was just one of thousands of kaya ye (pl.) living in the Agbogbloshie food market, Ghana’s enormous and rather chaotic agricultural trading place.

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