Shōjo Manga—Something for the Girls (original) (raw)
Related papers
Shōjo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan ed. by Jaqueline Berndt et al
Journal of Japanese Studies, 2021
Japanese manga has evolved in the form of genres based on the target audience's age and gender: shōjo (girl), shōnen (boy), josei (young adult female), and seinen (young adult male). This division stems from the magazine serialization of manga. While in the same magazine any thematic genre may be present, gendered genres are distinguishable by their visuals as well as character settings and character relationships. The magazine format gave rise to manga's conventional genres, which have been less defined by the thematic content (such as science fiction, mystery, fantasy etc.) than age and gender, namely shōnen (boys), shōjo (girls) […], seinen (youth), and josei (women). One of manga's most striking particularities is the "gendering" by publication site and, closely related, style. 1 While female genres frequently position character's feelings as the kernel of the story, male genres tend to be action-oriented. Another aspect is visual aesthetics. Elements of character design imply personality traits and
Shōjo Manga Research: The Legacy of Women Critics and Their Gender-Based Approach
Manga Studies no. 7 (edited by Jaqueline Berndt), 2015
Shōjo manga varies in style and genre. Despite this diversity, however, there is a certain conception of shōjo manga aesthetics, dominated by images of flowers, ribbons, fluttering hem skirts, and innocent-looking girls with large, starring eyes. While it has been a tradition to equate the beginning of shōjo manga with Tezuka Osamu’s Princess Knight (Ribon no kishi), more recent studies have instead focused on shōjo manga prior to Tezuka’s, namely the creations of Takahashi Macoto, who was influenced by the so-called lyrical illustrations (jojōga) of artists such as Nakahara Jun’ichi, Takabatake Kashō and Takehisa Yumeji. And manga influenced by jojōga arguably prioritized visual qualities. The importance of visual qualities has increasingly been recognized in shōjo manga studies. However, most critical examinations of shōjo manga place emphasis on the role of narrative structure and representation of gender. This applies particularly to those who read shōjo manga as a medium to challenge conventional gender roles. As Iwashita Hōsei points out, especially female manga researchers have tended to focus on biological and socially constructed gender. This column discusses two such works, Fujimoto Yukari’s Where is my place in the world? (1998, revised edition 2008) and Oshiyama Michiko’s Discussion of Gender Representation in Shōjo Manga: Forms of “Cross-dressed Girls” and Identity (2007, revised edition 2013). This paper aims to show that an attention to qualities other than explicitly gender-subversive narratives can equally be important for advancing the genre as a scholarly topic. Paying more attention to visual and fashion aspects as well as less known works and thematic sub-genres will further illuminate the cultural uniqueness of shōjo manga.
Studying shôjo manga : global education, narratives of self and the pathologization of the feminine
2003
This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary Cultural Studies approach to the study of shojo manga, or Japanese comics for girls and young women. Audience research is combined with textual analysis in order to explore roles for Japanese Studies in a global context. Building on the large body of Western academic writing on romance narratives and popular culture for girls (Radway 1984, McRobbie 1994, Ang 1996, Driscoll 2002) original ethnographic interviews with shojo manga readers are linked to close readings of major works by three key artists whose manga are marketed to female readers in Japan Yoshida Akimi, Haruno Nanae, and Okazaki Kyoko. Various layers of "narratives of self" are identified within the shojo manga texts as well as within the ethnographic accounts in the dissertation and academic writing about shojo manga in general. Personal narratives are utilized to illustrate how the author's own academic writing (and this dissertation) form yet another layer of ...
Shoujo manga and gender identity
At the worldwide level, Japan is renowned for many things that compile its culture, one of them being the ever-growing popularity of manga (which briefly translates to Japanese comics). A cultural phenomenon which has greatly spread across the Globe for the last decades, it has come to many groups of people's attention through the almost overwhelming provided variety of manga content on the market, reaching audiences of all ages and genders. In fact, the classification of manga is made by taking these two factors into consideration. This explains the way in which manga sections of Japanese bookstores are arranged, "first by the gender and age of the target audience, then by publisher, then by imprint, and finally alphabetized by author, surname and title", an arrangement which "represents the ranked priorities of manga publishing in Japan" (Brienza 2014: 470). Such gendered genres include shōunen (for boys), shōjo (for girls), seinen (for men), josei or redisu (for women) and kodomo (for very young children). Out of all of these, shōjo is a remarkable one, having managed to spark the interest of an international audience and to offer an outlook on what it means to be a young woman in modern Japan. From a gender studies point of view, the question of shōjo manga arises: is it really all just pink ribbons and frills or does it manage to overcome generic gender identities, in an attempt to counteract Japan's current gender issues?
2017
Since the early 1970s, female readers have enjoyed stories of romance between beautiful adolescent boys in the form of shōnen ai manga. Initially characterised by exotic locations, all-boys schools, and tragic narratives, the genre has since expanded to include a wide range of subjects and themes, and is now referred to boys’ love (hereafter BL) manga. Written largely by women for a presumed female audience, BL manga is a subgenre of shōjo (girls’) manga centred on male-male romance and eroticism. Scholars have argued that, as a romance genre for women featuring male homoeroticism, BL manga provide alternatives to formulaic depictions of heteronormative sexuality prevalent throughout phallogocentric media. While BL manga has become an increasingly global phenomenon and growing field of research over the past two or so decades, BL manga studies has largely focused on why women read BL manga and what the genre means for women and society. By approaching BL manga from an intertextual perspective, this thesis offers an alternative method to understanding how these texts engage with issues of gender and sexuality in Japan. Situated in cultural and gender studies, this thesis utilises research from theorists of BL and shōjo manga, as well as literary studies. Thus, this research meets a need for more textual analysis in the field of BL manga studies. The aim of this research is to investigate the following question: how do girls and women who read and write male homoerotic manga experience pleasure through intertextual transformations? Through a close textual analysis of select shōjo, BL, and BL-informed manga, this thesis traces a genealogy of intertextual practices from Japanese literature through to shōjo manga and BL manga. In addition, many of the texts examined are not classified as “BL manga”, but what this thesis terms “BL-informed” texts, or manga that exhibit similar graphic and/or thematic elements as BL manga while also incorporating intertextual practices. How BL-informed manga transform existing conventions, and the pleasures of readers who move between such texts, are of particular interest to this thesis. As far back as Genji monogatari (ca. 1010), girls and women in Japan have been writing, reading, and re-writing texts and sharing them with one another. For just as long, these same texts have played with notions of gender and sexuality. Continuing the tradition of reading/writing/re-writing in shōjo culture, female writers and readers of BL narratives reimagine existing texts, incorporating criticism of gender and issues of inequality, while simultaneously transforming them into sources of pleasure. Girls’ reading/writing practices have historically been maligned by “mainstream” male-dominated media, but through the eroticisation of existing texts and traditionally homosocial environments, female readers are able to escape from the oppressions of reality. Essential to this query is an examination of how girls and women who read manga narratives featuring male homoeroticism experience pleasure. Not only is the act of reading the texts themselves a source of pleasure, but many BL readers are also writers. Such fans create derivative dōjinshi (amateur publications) that reposition “mainstream” manga, prose fiction, and even live-action film narratives around imagined romantic and sexual scenarios between male characters. Thus, distinctions between genre, creator/fan, and original/derivative text are but some of the boundaries that are transformed through girls' intertextual reading/writing practices. The pleasures of textual transformations are also closely associated with transformations of gendered and sexual identities in BL manga. As such, this research considers how the pleasures experienced by BL-literate readers enhance the constructions and/or deconstructions of gender and explorations of sexuality present in shōjo, BL, and BL-informed texts. In so doing, this thesis argues that intertextuality is a key factor of the pleasures for girls and women who read/write manga narratives of male homoeroticsm.
Shōjo Manga Elements Imported to Contemporary Japanese Literature - A Case Study of Miura Shion
Estudios de Traducción, 2021
The present paper discusses how various elements in shōjo manga (Japanese comics for girls) have been incorporated in works of Japanese contemporary literature. The connection between shōjo manga and literature was pointed out for the first time when the novel Kitchen by Yoshimoto Banana was published in 1987. This paper argues that this connection has developed further since then, focusing on one of the most active writers in contemporary Japanese literature, Miura Shion[1]. The paper briefly introduces the genre shōjo manga and describes its connection with the novel Kitchen before analysing a short story and an essay by Miura Shion, focusing both on their motifs and styles, to identify elements influenced by shōjo manga.