Inside the city, change is in the breeze. Japan may be one of the most patriarchal, male-dominated countries in the world, yet top of last year’s Japanese bestseller list was a novel by the young Japanese female writer Hitomi Kanehara, called Snakes and Earrings. The story was about a young girl obsessed with extreme body piercing, tattoos and violent S&M.

Not a big deal, you might think: western girls have been doing that for decades. But it is hard to overestimate the influence the book had in Japan, a country where radicalism and conservatism sit shoulder to shoulder. It may be the land of obsessive collectors of Paris Hilton memorabilia, surgically enhanced Audrey Hepburn lookalikes, prepubescent pop stars singing about heartbreak and green-tea KitKats, but it’s also a country where females are still not allowed to ascend to the throne. The 1960s and its feminist revolution never happened there.

Not so many years ago, a job was for life, a matter of honour for the salarymen who dragged Japan out of its post-war hole. It was traditional for housewives to remain on their knees to greet their husbands when they returned home from work. Now, to be part-time (or freeter) is the chosen career dream for the next generation of Japanese youth. You work three days a week in shops and spend the rest of your time chasing creative dreams. The real energy goes into doing what you want, when you want, and never mind the money — and it applies to girls and boys alike. Next month, Princess Sayako, the only daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, will marry a commoner. Sayako, who works as an ornithologist, will live in her own flat, make her own bento boxes, learn to drive, and is even said to enjoy a tipple. This is pretty unprecedented behaviour.

Also, did you know the Japanese produce some of the most original female porn anywhere? Girl manga or shojo — which features cross-dressing boys, characters who magically change sex, brother-sister romances and teenage girls falling in love with 10-year-old boys, among other things — sells fast in Japan, and is becoming a noted cultural export. Off Omotesando, Tokyo’s Champs-Elysées, hair salons are training their beautiful male stylists to flirt with the ladies (it’s all part of the service). And yes, we all know about hostess bars, the men’s pleasure domes that hit the big time during the 1980s economic boom. Now there are host bars too, for Japan’s rich and independent-minded women.

Unsurprisingly, the fellas are somewhat taken aback, and there is a very real sense of sexual inadequacy — strong women who know their own minds? They’ve never had to deal with them before. But change is coming, whether the men like it or not. Kneeling for their husbands? It’s hard to imagine the appeal any of today’s young Japanese ladies would see in that.

FASHION

Dressing isn’t about showing off your body to men. Japanese girls aspire to something much more elusive: mote. Mote is softer than sexy. It means delicious and perfect, and Japanese girls set about the pursuit of it with alacrity. Tokyo ladies pride themselves on being master fashion editors, and it’s it’s easy to feel underdressed around them. The country spends £55 billion on clothes and accessories every year, which makes them an economic force to be reckoned with, and the boys are as enthusiastic as the girls. Some pick up and drop whole personae every month. Want the surfer look? Buy some long shorts and a surfboard. In September, it was the French look (delicate camisoles, Breton shirts, pumps). This month, they just want to look like Twiggy circa 1968.

In lady freeters’ minds, what’s important is to strike a witty balance that illustrates how sophisticated, yet individual, you are. Prada dress? Wear it with scruffy Converse sneakers and a bag by underground Tokyo label The Viridi-anne. Got a £500 limited-edition Israeli army-inspired miniskirt? Add a restyled version of your granny’s kimono and a Sonic Youth T-shirt. We Brits have been mixing labels like this for ever, but thrown into the fashion ring with the maniacal Japanese version, there’d be no points for guessing who’d win.

SHIBUYA GIRLS

When Tokyoites go on a romantic date, it is probably to the shops, and, if it is to the shops, it is probably to the hyper-commercial entertainment district of Shibuya. The Japanese are the mad professors of consumer desire, and Shibuya girls — female teenagers who treat this place like their playground — are the most brand-savvy of all. They congregate inside the auditory bedlam of the Shibuya department store 109. Or outside McDonald’s, where they occasionally pick up older men for a few hundred yen (the extra cash goes towards the latest Chanel handbag). Aggressive, self-empowered and sexy, they dress as they want — from orange tans, razor-sharp stilettoes and microskirts, through Victoriana to extreme punk with pink nail varnish — shop as they want, and behave exactly as they want. This is Japan’s female future.

SEX

Unlike westerners, the Japanese emphatically do not consider sex disgusting. Hostess bars, bath houses (or “soapland”), love hotels, stores selling graphic manga porn, pretty giggly schoolgirls in short skirts and over-the-knee socks and the continuing practice of shibari (rope bondage) are just part of a rich and complex sexual landscape in which almost anything is allowed. As long as men are in charge. Japanese men prefer their ladies submissive and girlishly sexual. But male/female relations are so heavily cloaked in etiquette that some men choose their fantasy lives over real women. They will pay through the nose for schoolgirls’ used panties — more if they’re still warm — and the latest graphic manga porn, where the women are as submissive as they used to be in real life.

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