2023, book 2: Japanese schoolgirl confidential: how teenage girls made a nation cool, Brian Ashcraft & Shoko Ueda

Not very interesting. The thesis is that "schoolgirls are young, they have their whole lives ahead of them, everybody is nostalgic for that time, and so everyone considers them cool and full of possibility, and (therefore?) they are the drivers of what's cool in pop culture." The most interesting part is the smattering of pop culture references: Egg/Popteen/Ranzuki magazines, Tokyo Girls Collection fashion festival, pinku eiga, and a smattering of idols, anime, and manga.