Full Description

Since the 2000s, the Japanese word shōjo has gained global currency, accompanying the transcultural spread of other popular Japanese media such as manga and anime. The term refers to both a character type specifically, as well as commercial genres marketed to female audiences more generally. Through its diverse chapters this edited collection introduces the two main currents of shōjo research: on the one hand, historical investigations of Japan’s modern girl culture and its representations, informed by Japanese-studies and gender-studies concerns; on the other hand, explorations of the transcultural performativity of shōjo as a crafted concept and affect-prone code, shaped by media studies, genre theory, and fan-culture research.

While acknowledging that shōjo has mediated multiple discourses throughout the twentieth century—discourses on Japan and its modernity, consumption and consumerism, non-hegemonic gender, and also technology—this volume shifts the focus to shōjo mediations, stretching from media by and for actual girls, to shōjo as media. As a result, the Japan-derived concept, while still situated, begins to offer possibilities for broader conceptualizations of girlness within the contemporary global digital mediascape.

Table of Contents

Part I: Shōjo Manga.- 1. Romance of the Taishō School Girl in Shōjo Manga: Here Comes Miss Modern (Alisa Freedman).- 2. Redefining Shōjo and Shōnen Manga through Language Patterns (Giancarla Unser-Schutz).- 3. Shōjo Manga Beyond Shōjo Manga: The “Female Mode of Address” in Kabukumon (Olga Antononoka).- Part II: Shōjo beyond Manga.- 4. Practicing Shōjo in Japanese New Media and Cyberculture: Analyses of the Cell Phone Novel and Dream Novel (Kazumi Nagaike and Raymond Langley).- 5. The Shōjo in the Rōjo: Enchi Fumiko’s Representation of the Rōjo Who Refused to Grow Old (Sohyun Chun).- 6. Mediating Otome in the Discourse of War Memory: Complexity of Memory-Making through Postwar Japanese War Films (Kaori Yoshida).- 7. Shōjo in Anime: Beyond the Object of Men’s Desire(Akiko Sugawa-Shimada).- Part III: Shōjo Performances.- 8. A Dream Dress for Girls: Milk, Fashion and Shōjo Identity (Masafumi Monden).- 9. Sakura ga meijiru—Unlocking the Shōjo Wardrobe: Cosplay, Manga, 2.5D Space(Emerald L. King).- 10. Multilayered Performers: The Takarazuka Musical Revue as Media (Sonoko Azuma, Translated by Raymond Langley and Nick Hall).- 11. Sounds and Sighs: “Voice Porn” for Women (Minori Ishida, Translated by Nick Hall).- Part IV: Shōjo Fans.- 12. From Shōjo to Bangya(ru): Women and Visual Kei (Adrienne Johnson).- 13. Shōjo Fantasies of Inhabiting Cool Japan: Reimagining Fukuoka Through Shōjo and Otome Ideals with Cosplay Tourism(Craig Norris).- 14. Seeking an Alternative: “Male” Shōjo Fans since the 1970s (Patrick W. Galbraith).