When all-male gangs wouldn’t let them join, all-female “sukeban” gangs formed their own identities – starting with the uniform.

Between the layers of clothing, sukeban girls would conceal weapons – razors, chains and anything else that one ought to take a jot more seriously than a yo-yo. Indeed, the sukeban sisterhood rivalled their male equivalents for violence and crime: facing off with rival factions, punishing girls within their own group (e.g. for cheating with someone else’s boyfriend), or generally colouring suburban ennui with a splash of petty crime. What’s more, Yakuza-style levels of organisation meant that, at the subculture’s peak, the largest alliance had over 20,000 teenage girls sworn in.

They even inspired a series of exploitation-style movies, akin to the works of Russ Meyer. These movies bore titles like Delinquent Girl Boss, Girl Boss (Sukeban), and Terrifying Girls’ High School.

It continues today in the form of all-female bosozoku biker gangs:

As the expectations for young women to marry and settle continue to be a fact of life in Japan, so too has this all-girl outlaw subculture prevailed as an alternative narrative for young women. Today, you can spot them by their embellished and embroidered jumpsuits, floral tattoos, long manicured nails and bright pink, heavily stickered bikes.