Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms?: Confessions of a Frigid Man Ch.3

Confessions of a Frigid Man
: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality (2005, 2013, 2017 Tokyo Philosophy Project)

Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher’s Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men’s Sexuality

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Section 1: The “psychological structure” of men who are attracted to school uniforms

In April of 2004, Kazuhide Uekusa, a well-known economist, was arrested for allegedly (he maintains his innocence) being caught in the act of using a mirror to look up the skirt of a first year public high school student. During his trial at the Tokyo district court, it was revealed that he possessed many photographs and videos of women in school uniforms. Uekusa was forty-three years old at the time of his arrest and thus belongs to my generation. I have attended conferences with him and cannot view this incident as involving someone totally outside my circle.

There are thought to be many men who, regardless of their own age, are attracted to girls’ junior high and high school uniforms. A “school uniform” genre of pornography has been established, and there are presumably a very large number of men who masturbate while looking at photographs or videos of girls in their school uniforms. Even looking at the flyers for sexual services deposited in my mailbox, I have noticed some that offer to send an adult prostitute in a school uniform to your home. An editor once whispered to me in the back of a taxi, “Why are school uniforms so sexy?,” and this comment has remained lodged in my mind ever since.

Flight attendants and “office ladies” [a Japanese term for women who perform clerical and administrative tasks in an office setting, sometimes abbreviated as “OL”] also wear uniforms, but the iconic “girl in a uniform” is the female school student. This is evinced by the fact that if you do a multi-termsearch [in Japanese] for “uniform” and “photograph”on the Internet ninety percent of the results returned will be for sites featuring images of girls’ school uniforms.

In order to further investigate the mysteries of the “frigid man,” in this chapter I will delve as deeply as possible into the question of why men are attracted to girls’ school uniforms. I myself understand the feelings of men who are attracted to school uniforms. I do not commit these sorts of crimes or collect uniforms, but I have no trouble understanding the psychological mechanisms at work in men who find uniforms alluring. I would like to put these mechanisms under a microscope and examine them very closely. I suspect a startling “psychological structure” will emerge as a result.

One day while I was investigating the question of where the appeal of school uniforms lies I visited Matsumoto City to attend a symposium. I had some free time, so I took a walk near the train station and discovered a building with a high school uniform hanging in a display window. This uniform was comprised of a white shirt with a red ribbon attached to the collar, a blue vest, and a pleated plaid skirt. I stood in front of the window looking at the display. As I did so, a sensation of refreshing coolness filled my body, as though a crisp breeze had blown through my chest, and the shiver-inducing thrill of looking at something shameful. I wondered what exactly was causing these sensations.

After looking at the display, I continued walking to a café in the train station, and on the way there, I passed many girls in school uniforms. But these somehow grownup-looking girls, or in other words real, living and breathing girls in their school uniforms, give me almost none of the refreshing, thrilling sensations I had felt moments before. They were flesh and blood girls with physical bodies, and I could not feel in them any trace of the aura created by uniform in the display window.

When my work was done and I returned home, I found that collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms I had ordered to aid in the writing of this book had arrived. I opened them and right away began to look through them. They were full of images that brought on the same feelings of refreshing coolness and excitement I had felt when looking at the display. The girls smiling out at the viewer were flawlessly pretty.

The girls in these collections of photographs were much better looking than normal high school and junior high school students. In other words, in order for a girl in a school uniform to be thrilling and refreshing she must be good-looking with a pretty face. In the real world, one almost never encounters such girls. But if I did come upon such a beautiful girl among the students in uniforms walking down the street, I might feel in her the appeal of the school uniform. The allure of a school uniform is completely dependent on the face of the girl wearing it.

Fixation on uniforms has, it should be noted, been thought of as a form of “fetishism.” “Fetishism” involves being sexually aroused by clothing or shoes worn by the opposite sex. The classic image of fetishism is probably that of a man who develops a bizarre attachment to women’s high heels, collects them, and masturbates while touching them. I suspect that uniform fetishism is often understood in the same way. But the way in which I am attracted to school uniforms is quite different. If a large number of uniforms were lined up in front of me, for example, I would not be aroused by these articles of clothing themselves. My attraction to uniforms is limited to cases in which they are able to evoke the image of a girl wearing them.

Let me return to what happened when I saw the uniform on display in Matsumoto City. I experienced a thrill and sensation of refreshing coolness while looking at the uniform. At the time I was looking past the uniform itself at the image of a “virtual schoolgirl” with perfect looks wearing it. Of course, I did not form a concrete picture of this girl’s appearance and personality. But it is true that I did see a kind of hallucinatory vision of this “virtual schoolgirl” somewhere beyond the uniform on display.

In other words, simply having a uniform placed before my eyes is not enough. Beyond the uniform itself I must be able to see the hallucinatory vision of a “virtual schoolgirl” wearing it. When this hallucinatory vision is created, the uniform ceases to be just a piece of fabric and begins to have a life of its own.

So what sorts of sexual urges arise within me when I get this kind of thrill and feeling of refreshment from looking at a school uniform? I suspect it may be an urge to ejaculate on it. There may well be, somewhere inside me, an urge to splatter semen on the uniform and watch it soak into the material. This is not a desire to ejaculate on the skin of the girl in the uniform; what I want my semen to soak into is the cloth of a uniform being worn by a girl. To be more precise, what I want to ejaculate on is not simply the cloth itself but the whole situation of “a girl wearing a school uniform.” The desired result of this is for the semen to land on the fabric of the uniform. This sense of unattainment in not having the semen reach the skin of the girl is very important (this physical sensation can perhaps be seen as having been raised to the level of art in the form of the “bachelors” in Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass]).

The most important elements of the “girl in a school uniform” are the uniform, her face, and white panties. It goes without saying that the uniform is important. Regarding her face, it is indeed essential for the girl in the uniform to be pretty, and she must also be smiling or wearing an expression of artless innocence. In collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms there are very few pictures showing only the body of the girl from the neck down. When men masturbate while looking at pictures of a girl in a school uniform, what part of her body are they looking at? I suspect that when most men ejaculate they are looking at the girl’s face. That is how important it is.

The white panties serve to connect the school uniform to the pretty face. The question of whether or not panties can be seen is the front line in a war between the creator of the collection of photographs and the reader, and the instant the reader catches a glimpse of white panties underneath a girl’s skirt as he flips through the pages he experiences a moment of catharsis and a feeling of satisfaction at having obtained the book or magazine.

In chapter one, I mentioned that the panties beneath a girl’s miniskirt must be white, and this is also an iron rule of collections of photographs of girls in uniforms. In two magazines featuring photographs of girls in school uniforms, Kuriimushashinshū 2 (Wairea, 1995) and Kuriimushashinshū 5 (1998), there are a total of fourteen photographs in which panties are visible, and in every case they are white. The same trend can be seen in other books and magazines. The “white panties rule” can indeed be described as inviolable. There is a photograph in which the girl’s panties are visible on page 103 of Kuriimushashinshū 2, and the accompanying captions read as follows: “Tomomi looked great in her sailor-style school uniform, didn’t she? It was great when she bent over and we could see her panties.” “Catching a glimpse of her panties is very exciting, isn’t it? I would love a pair of Tomomi-chan’s pure white panties!” It is evident that photographs of white panties are intentionally staged by the creator of the photo collection. If you ask young people they will tell you that in reality very few girls wear white panties under their school uniforms. Evidently the “white panties” rule is nothing more than a self-centered male fantasy.

So why do men like white panties? In Chapter One I focused on “white” as a “sacred color.” Here I would also like to point out the following. In most of these photographs, the white panties used are made of cotton. White cotton panties get dirty easily. If the girl in the uniform is wearing white cotton panties they must presumably get at least a little bit dirty. But the panties in these photographs are always sparkling white without the slightest stain. In other words, the significance of catching a glimpse of white panties is that it allows the viewer to meticulously confirm that what should normally be dirty is in fact perfectly clean. For me there is the sense that what must be on the other side of the panties is perfectly smooth skin; in other words, the complete absence of genitalia. It is because there are no genitals under the white panties that they remain clean. In short, the reason pristine white panties are important is that they provide the most incontrovertible evidence for the delusion that “there might not be any genitals under the panties of the girl in the school uniform.”

Of course, in collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms, the majority of photographs do not reveal panties. But even if underwear is not visible, when we look at these sorts of pictures we assume that under her skirt the girl is wearing white panties, and it is because we look at them in this way that girls in school uniforms are soattractive. Evidence for this hypothesis can be seen in the fact that the instant I imagine the girl in a photograph is wearing smooth red panties, for example, the aura projected by the girl in a school uniform transforms into a different kind of erotic appeal. For this reason, “unseeablewhite panties” can be said to exist at the core of photographs of girls in school uniforms even when no glimpses of underwear are actually revealed.

Thus far, I have made little distinction between the images of girls in school uniforms in photography collections and actual girls in school uniforms. Reflecting on this, I am struck by my own inability to properly distinguish between an image and reality. I get almost the same thrill and refreshing sensation looking at a girl in a book of photographs as I do looking at a pretty girl in a school uniform in real life. The inability to distinguish reality from fantasy in the dimension of sexuality may be one of the characteristics of “frigid men.”

Men who confuse fantasy with reality often cause great harm to women. There are men who approach girls wearing school uniforms in the street and try to buy sex, and there are men who are arrested for trying to look up girls’ skirts. These men think of flesh and blood women as nothing more than walking images of girls. They forget that the woman they are looking at has her own thoughts, feelings and volition. In the following chapters, I hope to thoroughly examine the murky sexuality of these sorts of men.

After coming this far, we at last reach the main question concerning school uniforms: why do I experience a thrill and feeling of cool refreshment when I see a girl in a school uniform? What exactly is the appeal of a “uniform”?

Various things have been said about this appeal. For example, there is the assertion that because uniforms are designed to remove individuality by standardization they easily stimulate fetishism based on clothing. This may indeed be the case when it comes to men who are attracted to the uniform itself. It has also been suggested that the sense of oppression conveyed by students being made to wear their uniform gives pleasure. Another idea is that they acquire value through scarcity as they are only worn during junior high and high school. Still another hypothesis is that it reminds men of when they themselves were students or brings to mind memories of girls they liked at that time. I think all of these explanations are reasonable.

As I myself understand these feelings well, I too was tempted to say these explanations are enough, but after conducting extensive analysis concerning school uniforms I noticed that there is another completely different psychological mechanism operating within me. I will lay out a step-by-step explanation of this mechanism, but I am sure that as I proceed many readers will balk at what I am saying. I ask you to put your reservations aside and continue reading to the end of this chapter. What lies submerged beneath my consciousness may be very distinctive or unique, but I believe it can serve as a point of reference for you as you examine your own sexuality. I hope you will be able to use it as an entry point in order to more deeply explore your own experience.

To begin with, the uniforms in question are worn by girls. It therefore follows that the appeal of uniforms may in fact be the appeal of the girls wearing them. Uniforms are bound up in the image of a school-aged girl in ways that make the two difficult to distinguish from each other, so it is possible that when I am attracted to a uniform I am actually attracted to the girl who is wearing it. This hypothesis is soon proved false, however, if I test it by comparing a photograph of a girl in a uniform with another photograph of the same girl in different clothing. In almost all cases the thrill and feeling of refreshment is much more powerful when looking at a photograph of the girl wearing a uniform. The secret to the appeal lies not in the girl but in the uniform itself.

So if the secret is to be found in the uniform, where exactly is it hidden? School uniforms worn by girls in Japan can be broadly divided into “sailor” and “blazer” style garments. When I was a student all girls’ uniforms were sailor style, but in the years since then the number of junior high schools and high schools adopting “blazer” style outfits has increased and nowadays this style is predominant. Is there some sort of secret contained in these forms of dress? Looking at collections of photographs we see that, regardless of whether the uniform in question is sailor or blazer style, in the overwhelming majority of cases the colors used are white and navy blue. Is the use of these two colors perhaps the key? Dark blue is, however, also widely used in other uniforms such as those worn by flight attendants and “office ladies.” It can be described as Japan’s “uniform color.” Given the fact that school uniforms do not have a monopoly on the use of navy blue, we are not likely to find the secret of their special appeal in their color.

Here I would like to conduct a thought experiment. Suppose that sailor and blazer style outfits have disappeared, and throughout Japan female junior high and high school students are instead dressed in camouflage-patterned schoolgirl uniforms. Imagine that this state of affairs has persisted for twenty years. Would the men who had been sexually attracted to sailor and blazer outfits now feel the same attraction to the new camouflage uniforms? In my own case I suspect that I would indeed feel sexually attracted to the new outfits. I say this because when I was in school I almost never saw blazer and pleated skirt uniforms; nearly all school uniforms were sailor style. But as the times changed and blazer/pleated skirt outfits became the norm, a sexual sensitivity to these sorts of uniforms grew naturally inside me. This being the case, it can be assumed that if camouflage uniforms became prevalent, the sexual sensitivity within me would alter and become responsive to this new stimulus.

What we have seen so far is that my attraction to sailor and blazer outfits is the result of their being “designated as uniforms” by schools. There is nothing special or mysterious about these forms of dress themselves. If things change and a different kind of outfit becomes designated as a school uniform, I am sure that I will begin to be sexually attracted to this new “designated uniform” as well. One of the secrets of my attraction to school uniforms lies in the fact that junior high and high schools make the wearing of these outfits obligatory. I see “school” when I look at “a girl in a uniform.”

Let me propose another thought experiment. There are some young women who enter the workforce directly after graduating from junior high school instead of attending high school. Suppose that one day the Japanese government decided that these girls should be forced to wear a special uniform. They would have to go to work wearing this uniform until they reached the age of eighteen. Girls wearing this uniform would thus be the same age as girls attending high school. In this scenario, would I also be sexually attracted to the uniforms of these girls who work rather than go to school?Think carefully about your own feelings and try this thought experiment for yourself. While the answer may of course differ depending on the nature of the outfit in question, in my own case I suspect I would not be especially attracted to the uniforms of these girls who are not in school. I say this because it would not be possible to see “school” behind the image of these uniformed girls.

To sum up what I have stated thus far, I experience a thrill and feeling of refreshment when I look at a girl in a sailor uniform or school blazer because I see “school” through her image. In other words, for me “uniform adoration” is another name for “school adoration.” (The original Japanese for “uniform adoration” is “seifuku moe.” The word “moe” means a “romantic and/or sexual feeling” toward imaginarycharacters.)

Here I see a connection to another issue. Why do some people employed by schools seek to buy sex from students? In the last few years there have been many incidents in which people actively employed as teachers or school board members have been arrested for paying junior high or high school students for sex. There has been case after case in which a teacher or school employee paid several high school students for sex or gave students money to appear in pornographic videos. A particularly shocking incident involving violence committed by a junior high school teacher against a student occurred in 2001. The teacher met the first year junior high school student through a “terekura (telephone club)” [a service that allows men to contact women for the purpose of paying for sex]. She accidentally fell out of his speeding car with her hands bound in handcuffs and died after being struck by another vehicle. In his testimony the teacher stated: “I was happy to learn that she was a junior high school student.” Where exactly does this happiness come from?

My own speculation is that for this teacher the fact that the girl was a junior high school student was of great importance. I suspect that he was excited not just because she was a young girl but also because she attended a junior high school.

Presumably many of the men who choose to become a junior high or high school teacher have a strong affinity for these institutions. There are no doubt more than a few male teachers who become infatuated with “school” itself, love “school” from the bottom of their hearts, and see the meaning of life as being involved in “school.” The education system is supported by this kind of passionate teacher. But what happens when this affection for school overflows into the dimension of sexuality and becomes uncontrollable? Might they not then select female junior high and high school students in uniforms, who seem to be a physical embodiment of “school,” as their sexual prey?

These men love “school,” but since they cannot actually have sexual relations with “school” itself, they try to have sex with girls in uniforms who constitute a physical representation of this institution. For them, sexually assaulting girls in school uniforms is equivalent to ejaculating on the “school” they love and having intercourse with “school” through the girls in school uniforms. It has been reported that many of the men involved in these incidents of prostitution at schools were dedicated, enthusiastic teachers. This hypothesis may seem a bit strained, but I think the large number of incidents in which teachers pay female students for sex is very difficult to understand if we do not interpret them in this way. To simply say that many teachers suffer from “lolicon [Lolita complex]” does not constitute an explanation.

Here some readers may think, “I’m not a teacher so this has nothing to do with me.” But this phenomenon is in no way limited to teachers. There are in fact many men who are fixated on “school” even though they do not teach at one. This is something that may affect all men. Here some readers may say that they hated school, but if you raise this objection I would ask you to consider the possibility that this would not be the case if you were in the position of a teacher rather than that of a student. You might hate being taught, but is there really no possibility that you might enjoy teaching young girls? Of course, here I suspect many readers will argue that they have never had any sort of desire to ejaculate on “school,” but I hope they will be able to put aside their reservations and keep reading just a bit further.

When I am sexually attracted to a girl in a school uniform, this sexual desire is in fact for “school” itself in its manifestation as a schoolgirl. This has been made clear by my examination of the issue thus far.

So what exactly is this “school” that manifests itself by borrowing the form of a girl in a uniform?

I have not found any text that provides an answer to this question, and while this means that I will have to proceed by piling hypothesis on top of hypothesis, I intend to do so as carefully and circumspectly as possible.

What is often discussed in this context is nostalgia for youth. We savor the bittersweet memories of our time in junior high and high school. It may indeed be possible to assert that a sad longing to return to this time in one’s life lies at the bottom of a fixation with school uniforms. During this highly impressionable period, we spend most of our time at school. Entrance exams, sports days, gymnasiums, afternoon classes, after-school activities, going to school by bicycle, classmates, the school gate at twilight, and graduation: this is the period during which both boys and girls acquire secondary sex characteristics, fall in love, and feel their hearts begin to pound.

Collections of photographs of school-aged girls are in fact full of images that stimulate this kind of nostalgia.Classrooms after school and gymnasiums are obvious choices for a backdrop, but what we must take note of is the fact that old-fashioned houses and traditional Japanese style tatami-mat rooms are also used as locations for these photo shoots. Why are there so many pictures of a smiling girl wearing a school uniform sitting on the veranda of an old-fashioned Japanese house or standing in a traditional tatami-mat room as soft sunlight streams in from outside? I can only assume it is because these photographs are created for a generation that feels nostalgia at the sight of an “old-fashioned veranda” or a “traditional tatami-mat room.”

I do, in fact, get a nostalgic feeling when I see a photograph of an old-fashioned veranda. A girl in her school uniform sitting on a veranda seems less like a young girl living in the present day than a girl who existed in a nostalgic past, specifically the era in which I attended school. I then experience the illusion that she is smiling and looking out at me here in the present. The old-fashioned veranda plays the role of stirring melancholy desires to return to that time in the adult viewer.

The creators of these sorts of photographs seem to be aware of this effect. The following passages of text appear in Supika Vol.1 (Mediaboy 2001). “Remember being in high school. It was normal for you to take part in activities with high school girls, and on sports days you frolicked with these girls in their “bloomer” exercise outfits. Uniforms were just a nuisance that took away your freedom. It is a period that is burned so deeply into our minds in the form of bittersweet memories that we find it hard to forgive ourselves for having been so oblivious to its importance at the time.”“Bloomers in a gymnasium. This is obvious. It is a situation that almost seems to have been created for magazines devoted to beautiful girls.”“A girl standing on a veranda is also a classic scenario.” “A depiction of the world that elicits nostalgia.” (pp. 99-101)

Undoubtedly, there are deep feelings of nostalgia for “school” at work behind the sense of excitement created by photographs of girls in school uniforms. Nevertheless, I find it impossible to believe that the secret of uniforms can be completely explained by nostalgia alone. It is clear that an even deeper mystery lies hidden further down in our psyches. We must try to bring this more profound mystery to light.

While it may be the result of my own bias as a teacher at a university, when I hear “school” the image that comes to mind is that of a place where students are taught. In other words, “schools” are places of teaching and learning.

If this is the case, then feeling sexual desire for “school” is equivalent to feeling sexual desire for “teaching and learning.” What does this mean? One of the most significant characteristics of junior high and high school education in Japan is that the content of what must be taught is determined in quite fine detail by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology. All textbooks must receive government approval, and the scope of what is left to the teacher’s discretion is exceedingly small. In this regard, these schools differ considerably from universities. A great deal of freedom is allowed regarding the content of what is taught at a university, and, particularly in the humanities, it can often be observed that the content of a course will change completely when it is taught by a different professor. Particularly inept instructors can even find themselves abandoned by their students.

In contrast to this state of affairs, classes where all students are taught the same fixed content form the main part of the curriculum at junior high and high schools. In other words, junior high and high school education is essentially indistinguishable from simply pouring knowledge and values into students’ heads, i.e. “brainwashing.” When it comes to junior high and high school, “school” is fundamentally a place where “brainwashing” occurs. Could this fact have something to do with the secret of sexual attraction to school uniforms?

Looked at in this way, junior high schools and high schools seem like very dangerous places where experienced adults are given license to gang up on and “brainwash” highly impressionable young people (the same can also be said of elementary schools, something I will touch on in the next chapter). “School” is in fact a place where the essentially very dangerous and shameful activity of reprogramming the minds of young people is carried out publicly in broad daylight.

Of course, since at junior high and high schools students are given opportunities to freely debate with teachers and time for discussion and independent study, we cannot apply the label “brainwashing” to everything that occurs at these institutions. But as the fundamental goal of these schools is to pour into students’ heads the precise content of the textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology, we cannot avoid saying that this system is essentially indistinguishable from “brainwashing.” This is also the reason there have been increasing calls for the teaching of “patriotism” and “respect for masculinity and femininity” at schools, because the most effective means of ensuring these values take root is to have them taught, or instilled via brainwashing, at these institutions.

Thinking about things in this way leads us to a possible interpretation of the seemingly nonsensical idea of a sexual desire for “school”: it is a sexual attraction to the act of “brainwashing” school-aged girls (here I am writing from the perspective of a heterosexual man).

With this perspective in mind, I notice something when I look at collections of photographs of schoolgirls. The girls in these collections put on uniforms, look at the camera and smile. Or they are photographed staring at the viewer with an expression of childlike artlessness. To me they seem to be saying, “Brainwash me!” or “It’s ok to brainwash me in whatever way you like!”

The secret of the thrill and feeling of refreshment imparted by girls in uniforms is now revealed: it is the delusion I hold that it’s OK for me to brainwash this girl, that I have permission to reprogram the contents of her brain, use “mind control” on her so that she really loves me, and make her do my bidding as though she were my servant, and that no one will criticize me for doing such a dangerous thing because the girl herself actually desires it. The feeling of refreshment arises out of my viewing the girl as a “blank slate” before brainwashing. The thrill comes from the sense of transgression (doing something that should not be done) that accompanies reprogramming her brain or reshaping her personality. Attraction to “school” turns out to be excitement at the thought of brainwashing young girls. The desire to ejaculate on “school” is a desire to ejaculate on the idea of brainwashing girls. Thinking about it in this way should make it slightly easier to understand, and I hope readers will agree that this is by no means a desire held only by teachers. I am confident that there are a great many men who can understand the desire to brainwash a young girl and turn her into an obedient servant or maid. It would not be surprising if this desire were indeed wriggling and squirming inside every man who feels a twinge of excitement when he sees photographs of a girl in a uniform staring out him.

So how does this differ from the reverence for virgins or veneration of pure young girls that has been with us since ancient times? To begin with I would point out that in contemporary society reverence for virgins on a physical level is not very strong. The number of sexually experienced female junior high and high school students has increased, and it is thus unlikely that men are expecting girls in school uniforms to be virgins in a physical sense.

Instead of a physical virgin, what men want is a girl with a “virgin brain”: a girl who is sexually “unbrainwashed” and onto whose brain any number of things can still be printed. Men want a girl who is this sort of “brain virgin”; they want a girl who seems to be herself desirous of brainwashing, saying “It’s OK to brainwash me.” The uniform she wears is evidence of this desire to be brainwashed. In other words, when these girls walk around in their uniforms, from a man’s perspective it is as though they are walking down the street publicly saying, “It’s ok to brainwash me in any way you like.” It may not be easy to understand, but I think this is the kind of self-centered thought process at work in men who are attracted to girls in school uniforms.

It is a desire to put knowledge and values in her head that are convenient from my own point of view, and to place her thoughts, feelings and behavior under my control. If I can succeed in doing so, I will be able to make her do as I like. I can use her to satisfy my desires like a servant or a slave. I can also manipulate her via “remote control” and enjoy watching her do my bidding.

If we divide domination into external domination, like that of a body chained down, and internal domination, like that of a heart or mind restrained, “brainwashing” is clearly domination of the latter kind. There is a desire to enter deep into the girl’s mind and acquire the ability to manipulate her from the inside at will.

So why is it so important to be able to control her mind in this way? To solve this mystery, let us consider it from a different angle.

How would one go about gaining complete internal domination over the brain of a young girl? To put it another way, what is the most complete form of “brainwashing”? It would, I submit, be to have my brain surgically removed and transplanted into the girl’s skull, that is to say, to replace her brain with my own. In other words, it would be for me to put myself right inside her head. By doing so, I would become able to completely control her thoughts, feelings and behavior.

What would happen if her brain were replaced by mine? I would presumably be able to enter her body like a spirit and go on living inside her. Her body would become my body; if I touched my chest I would feel her still-small breasts, and if I looked in a mirror I would see reflected in it the face of a pretty young girl. I would be able to live inside her, and therefore I would be able to completely dominate her and manipulate her in any way I chose. This is the most perfect form of “brainwashing.”

In other words, it seems that the desire to brainwash a young girl is the desire to abandon my own body, transplant myself into her body, and manipulate this pretty body in accordance with my own will. But since this cannot actually be achieved, I have no choice but to settle for a fixation on the “uniform” that so strongly evokes the image of “brainwashing.” When a girl with a pretty face is smiling and wearing a uniform, it is as though she is saying, “Go ahead and enter my brain. Come and live inside my body!” Among the men who open books and magazines full of photographs of girls in uniforms, there are undoubtedly many who, as they turn the pages, wonder excitedly, “What sort of girl will I enter and live inside today?”

Earlier I mentioned a desire to ejaculate in the direction of an image of the brainwashing of young girls. I did not explain, however, why men cannot be satisfied with the image alone and need to progress all the way to ejaculation. The answer to this question can be found, however, if we understand the meaning of “brainwashing” to be “transporting oneself into her body.” In order to transport myself into a girl I am looking at, whether a flesh-and-blood human being or a girl in a photograph, I require a “medium” (means of transport) to carry me inside her. A bridge spanning the divide from this side to that side: this is the role played by a line of semen emanating from the penis. Like a spider proceeding along a line of silk spun between a pair of trees, I follow the line of semen emanating from my penis to the girl in a uniform in an attempt to get inside her and live within her body. A “uniform fetish” must be consummated with ejaculation.

At the start of this chapter, I described a state of affairs in which a “virtual girl” emerges from beyond a school uniform I see in front of me, and my accompanying desire to release my semen in the direction of this whole situation. After considering this at length, the identity of this “virtual girl” has at last become clear. The girl I am looking at is an image of “another me” after I have transported myself inside her and begun to live inside her body.

When I am about to expel semen in the direction of the girl I am looking at, the target of this emission is in fact an image of “another me” that has succeeded in entering her body and is now looking back at me. In other words, my “uniform fetish” is an attempt to create a sexually solipsistic world (a world where only myself exists) by directing my ejaculation towards myself. Here my interaction with the “ideal girl” culminates in an “interaction with myself.” Flesh-and-blood girls are only needed as raw materials for the construction of this world, and once this construction has been completed, they are no longer necessary. In the solipsistic world of the uniform fetish, to be treated as nothing more than disposable pawns is the ultimate fate of living and breathing girls.

A “uniform fetish” is a desire to become a school-aged girl. Here some may object that if this is the case then a man with this fetish should enjoy dressing up in women’s clothing. But for me, to become a woman is not the answer; even if I dress my muscle-bound, dirty body in girls’ clothing I will never be able to love it, and it is not as though I want to become a woman of my own age.

This being the case, why did this desire to become a girl arise within me to begin with? What gave rise to this desire to transplant myself inside a girl and take over her body? I suspect that at the root of this longing is a prayer-like plea for release: “Let me out of this muscle-bound, dirty body!” This kind of self-negation exists at the center of my feelings about my own body.

If I could transport myself into the body of a pretty girl and live inside it, what would I do? I would presumably begin by caressing the soft new body that has become mine. I would savor again and again the sensations of having sensitive breasts and soft, responsive skin I was experiencing for the first time. And then, while looking at my naked body in a mirror, I would begin to look for all of the hidden pleasure spots.

For the first time in my life, I would feel love for my own body. I would know deep in my heart what it is like to experience this kind of love. All of the strange desires I have discussed so far are based on this “delusion”: I want to feel profound love for my own body by leaving my original body and entering that of a girl. It is here that the secret of my “uniform fetish” is ultimately to be found.

Philosophical study of life, death, and nature