To slip into the world of dark fashion is, for the uninitiated, like tumbling headfirst down a rabbit hole.

Polite applause follows the matching pair of nuns as they curtsy and exit stage right. Next comes the swish of pinafores against petticoats, as the audience-a troop of young women dressed as milkmaids and Alices in Wonderland-leans forward for a better view of the evening’s main act: Mistress Ren, a doe-eyed woman who looks barely past her teens, will be teaching her uncooperative Bunny who’s boss when it comes to cake.

Giggles fill the room as the two women get into a tickling match. But soon the tickles bring on pinches, slaps, dripping candlewax and-in what Ren calls her trademark-a finale with the Mistress eating her cake as a beaten Bunny looks on.

Such were the goings-on at the most recent gathering of Lolitas held at Shibuya’s basement Blue Room club.

Even if you don’t exactly know what a Lolita is, chances are you’ve seen them. Dressed in dollhouse and death chic, these young women are a common sight in touristy Harajuku, where their main pastime, it seems, is posing for cameras.

Yet the Lolitas come as multi-layered as the skirts they wear. There are standard Lolitas-like Ren’s audience-and more macabre Gothic Lolitas, as compared to EGLs, (Elegant Gothic Lolitas), EGAs (Elegant Gothic Aristocrats) and plain and simple Goths, with whom they often associate.

“I don’t think you can say we’re this or that, we’re all different people inside,’’ say Ren, who describes herself as a standard Lolita on the dress scale. “If there’s a common point, I guess you could say we’re all into spending money on clothes. I don’t know if we’re that different from most other people; there are probably a lot more people like us who want to dress this way.’’

No matter the flavor, these dressers are that rare thing in Japan: a fashion statement that actually draws a reaction. “Freaky,’’ “strange’’ and “uncomfortable’’ are regular adjectives that appear in stories of depression, escapism and wrist-cutting among these women. Attention heated up last autumn, after a teenager attempted to kill his parents in Osaka. Much of the media focused on his accomplice, a top student in her school but a Gothic Lolita.

“Japan is still a male-dominated society, and it expects its young women to be cute and well-behaved,’’ says Licca Kayama, a popular psychologist and author on Japan’s subculture. Fashion is simply fashion, she says, but the black veils and funeral imagery appeals to certain troubled souls.

“These women are saying women aren’t just flowers, that they also have a cruel part in them. It’s a protest against the male status quo.’’

Kayama seems to have a morbid fascination with Lolitas herself. Mounted in her office is a drawing of a corseted girl carrying a rifle and a clutch of dead rabbits. Three of her books, one called “Kyo no Fukenko’’ (Today’s unhealthiness) feature drawings of Lolita on their covers.

There is, Kayama goes on, a clear message in the fashion. Women who dress like little girls, for example, are refusing to enter the adult world, which they see as “male’’ and “dirty.’’ (For clarity’s sake, think of Lolita fashion and the Lolita rack in the porno section of the video shop as absolutely unrelated: Lolita, in the language of porn, refers to adult women dressed in bloomers and other kindergarten togs). What’s more, says the psychologist, bodices and corsets are an attempt to “disguise the curves of adulthood that these young women don’t want to see in themselves-the motive behind it is the same motive behind anorexia.’’

It seems a strange turn from what originally started as an early 1990s pop music phenomenon. Back then feminized boy bands with Rimbaud-inspired names-Dir en Grey and Malice Mizer to name a few, brought a touch of the night to the idol stage. Critics branded them bijuaru-kei (visual type), but the androgynous looks and lyrics on platonic love touched a chord among young women.

“I’ve always been fascinated by vampires, and that’s the way I dressed when we performed,’’ says Mana, the former guitarist for Malice Mizer (the band broke up two years ago) who now runs a Gothic Lolita clothing brand. “Fans started dressing the same way we did because, for them, it was a way to get closer to us.’’

The visual bands are mostly gone, but the style that swirled around them lives on. Moi-meme-Moitie is a major label in the genre, offering both an Elegant Gothic Lolita line for women and an Elegant Gothic Aristocrat line for those who are “boys or girls, or neither boys or girls.’’ More than a score of other brands are featured in the glossy bimonthly Gothic & Lolita Bible, which serves as the unabridged styleguide to the set.

“This is another fascinating aspect of Japan,’’ says Kayama. “No matter how minor a genre starts, there’s always an industry ready to support it. It adds the appearance of normalcy.’’

To be sure, Lolitas have gone mainstream-there’s an entire Gothic Lolita floor in the Marui department store in Shinjuku-and the great majority are not weirdos. Yet the look continues to exert its pull on the alienated.

“There’s a lot of young women who’ve undergone some sort of trauma among us,’’ says Ren. “But I’m not one. I dress this way because I think it’s pretty and because I feel that women should be the weaker sex. Girls should be the children and the men should be the adults.’’

Ren may be an extreme case, but she’s not alone within the Lolita underground.

She started dressing as a Lolita as a teenager and began making the Gothic and Lolita scene as soon as she moved to Tokyo from Tochigi Prefecture. About five years ago she found herself volunteering for an S&M demonstration and, eventually, in a professional relationship with torturer and magician Mirakurumi.

Cake shows, it turns out, are just part of her repertoire. Their shows together involve ropes, pulleys, surgical needles, a chainsaw and screams. Mirakurumi, says Ren, is a ladykiller in Lolita circles.

“There’s no problem getting assistants,’’ says Mirakurumi, who eight years ago was involved in a bijuaru-kei band before finding his calling. Ren, he estimates, is his 50th stage partner. “These women may look innocent, but deep down they’re extremely interested in this stuff. They’re attracted to the unreality of it all. Instead of real sex they want simulation on stage. They’re looking for a dream world, even if it’s a nightmare.’’

To be sure, horror shows have been around for a while. What’s newer, though, is how much of what once was underground-from tattoo and body piercing events to bondage and fetish nights-has become standard on the Tokyo club menu. Pain, to judge by the works of young writers like Karin Amemiya, the Gothic Lolita who’s written a cost-comparison guide to suicide, and Hitomi Kanehara, who recently won the Akutagawa Prize for “Hebi ni Piasu’’ (Pierce earrings for a snake-but actually referring to a split tongue pierced with a stud), is one way members of a desensitized generation confirm their existence.

“I guess you can say I’m in the service profession,’’ says Genet, leader of the band Auto-mod and organizer of one of Tokyo’s largest gatherings of the dark tribes, Tokyo Dark Castle. It’s not really his bag, says Genet-Auto-mod has been around for 20 years playing Industrial-inspired “Positive Punk’’-but it’s what draws the kids these days.

On the surface the scene now resembles the underground of the the 1970s, when avant-gardists such as Shuji Terayama and Juro Kara attempted to harness all forms of expression to create something new. Now, Genet says, “The impulse among Goths, Gothic Lolitas or hip-hoppers, what have you, is to close themselves off in their categories.

“Tokyo Dark Castle and other events are really a kind of Darkside Disneyland,’’ says Genet. “It’s the world of the macabre as imagined by little girls. None of it-the stage torture, the eroticism-is real. It’s presented on stage to stoke the imagination. If they can’t get their fantasy fix here, they might look for it in the real world.’’

But for Ren, though, that sort of unreality is enough.

“Escaping into fantasy,’’ reasons Ren, “is reality too.’’

The next Tokyo Dark Castle event will be held from 11:30 p.m. Saturday, April 3 at Shibuya DeSeo and Club Kinoto (03-5457-0303), a 5-minute walk from JR Shibuya Station. Admission is 3,500 yen in advance, 4,000 yen at the door. See < www3.to/gothdarkwave >.

In the Kansai area, the Kobe Underground Festival Vol. 1 will be held June 5 at Kobe Uwaya Gekijo. Call 078-371-0132.

(Because this article is no longer available at the Asahi site, we decided to publish it here in full.)