Masafumi Monden

The University of Sydney · Department of Japanese Studies

Alice’s image in Japan—where Carroll’s famous heroine has occupied a prominent place—is strongly intertwined with the concept of shōjo, a representation of liminal femininity and girlhood. This chapter examines how the imagery of Alice is used in mainstream Japanese culture, particularly by women artists, to construct a performance of specific shōj...

The second volume of Toyota Yuu’s highly popular manga series Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (2019) has a bonus episode in which 30-year-old inconspicuous salaryman Adachi goes on a company trip where he bathes in an onsen with his male work mates. One of his colleagues, the handsome and ever popular Kurosawa, turns...

Fairy-tales and romantic ballet have a prominent relationship with the material culture concerning girls’ lives. Because of their association with “princess culture,” often accused of imposing the ideology of heteroromantic love and asymmetrical gender roles onto their main, female consumers, both ballet and fairy-tale-inspired fictions have been s...

Fashion has been a feature of shōjo manga (girls' comics) since the beginning of the genre in the 1950s. However, the topic has received scant scholarly attention. This is possibly due both to fashion's ubiquity and to the bias that things like dresses are merely "feminine vanity." Yet exploring the varied uses of clothing in shōjo manga has become...

This chapter examines male beauty in contemporary Japan, specifically related to the fully clothed body. It argues that male beauty is often understood, especially outside Japan, in a binary of muscular maturity and slender youthfulness. However, in reality, male beauty is a continuum, as recent TV commercials created for the Shiseido men’s groomin...

Since the introduction of ballet to Japan in the early 1900s, male dancers have figured prominently, with a profile equal to that of female dancers. Despite this, the association between ballet and girls’ cultures has been dominant in Japan, as in other cultures. As a consequence, ballet is often considered to be a highly ‘feminine’ activity, with...

The image of shōjo is largely conveyed through visual cues of dress, gesture, and appearance. With the exception of the now well-documented Japanese Lolita fashion, however, theoretical analysis of the association between shōjo and dress is still a rarity. Paying particular attention to fashion brand Milk, and romantic ballerinas and Victorian girl...

Men increasingly define themselves through the management of their bodies in today’s media-driven society, and bodily ideals operate as a major point of cultural reference — influencing men’s perceptions of their own bodies, and indeed their selfidentities. One of the dominant modes of ideal male beauty in contemporary Japan, as embodied by many of...

Asada Mao’s life recounts a dramatic narrative of suffering and triumph. It follows a girl considered beautiful during her meteoric rise to skating stardom, a period of hardships she confronts tacitly, and the performance of her life at the 2014 Olympics that touched many around the world. This chapter reconsiders Asada’s public persona as a dilige...

This paper aims to expand the scope of studies of Japanese shōjo manga (girls’ comics) by examining early 1980s and 1990s shōjo manga that were primarily targeted at the youngest band of readers, stories with early adolescent heroines in light, romantic, and fairytale-like narratives. These have been paid comparatively little scholarly attention th...

Тема девичества, зачастую тесно соотносимая с концептами красоты и неуловимости, наделенная поэтической аурой, издавна привлекает внимание людей искусства. В современных голливудских фильмах, од­нако, она, напротив, ассоциируется с деградацией. За редким исклю­чением героини голливудских фильмов, ориентированных на девушек и молодых женщин (наприме...

少女マンガのスタイルは多様性に富んでいるが、花、リボン、ひらひらしたドレス、そしてきらきら光る星のようなハイライトの入った大きな瞳を持つ純真無垢な少女 といった、少女マンガ特有とされる視覚的表現が存在する。しかし、それによる少女マンガ観を具現化した作品群は、ほとんど研究対象とされてこなかった。少女マンガ研究はむしろ、既存のジェンダー概念から逸脱する「オルタナティブ」な作品に注目してきたのである。 本論では、まず「男性性」を装う、つまりは「女性性」を拒絶するキャラクターを通して性的役割のステレオタイプを打破しようとした試みを中心とした少女マンガ研究の主流を確認する。その功績は評価に値するが、それによって「少女らしい」視覚表現と「極度に女の子らしく」描かれた主人公を特徴とする、「メインストリーム...

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 Knigh...

Мать участницы балетного конкурса считает, что свадебный танец Авроры из «Спящей красавицы» (1890) Чайковского — это очаровательная, но «несложная» вещь в сравнении с партией Медоры из балета «Корсар» (второй половины XIX века), требующей поистине виртуозного мастерства. Эпиграфом к этой статье взяты слова ее дочери, 17-летней балерины Мидори, кото...

From Rococo to Edwardian fashions, Japanese street style has reinvented many western dress styles, reinterpreting and altering their meanings and messages in a different cultural and historical context. This wide ranging and original study reveals the complex exchange of styles and what they represent in Japan and beyond, contesting common percepti...

Classical ballet, which was first introduced to Japan in the early 1900s and popularized by Russian émigre ballerinas, has been an icon of romantic imagination in Japanese culture especially since the end of Second World War. This is particularly owing to the popularity of shōjo manga (girls’ comics). Its unofficial (sub)genre “ballet manga,” both...

The popularity of classical ballet as a cultural form grows apace in a global context. Even in a country like Japan, which has not been previously identified as a “ballet capital,” it is receiving wide public attention. As a conventionally female-dominated arena, ballet and the ideas that circulate around it reveal the complex interrelationship bet...

There is a certain curiosity inscribed to the character Alice of Lewis Carroll's famous children's books. Perhaps reflecting the ‘enigmatic’ sexuality of the author, Alice herself has been perceived and interpreted in a dualistic way, namely as an innocent child and as a self-assertively sexualized ‘Lolita’. However, Alice can also be perceived as...

Derived from Vladimir Nabokov’s eponymous 1955 novel and its pre-adolescent heroine, seen by the older male narrator as a ‘nymphet’, the ‘Lolita’ look typical in the United States, for example—generally characterized by highly eroticized adolescent or preadolescent girls—has stirred controversy in many Western societies. Japanese Lolita fashion, on...

Sofia Coppola’s film The Virgin Suicides (1999) can be viewed as visualizing the (re)negotiation process of the twinned aspects of girlish ‘autonomy’ and ‘restriction’. Although the film’s references to more established images of girlhood are observable, its vague, narrative neutrality, supported by cinematic aesthetics with a dreamy and melancholi...

East Asia covers an area that is home to a quarter of the world’s population. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the region, followed by separate sections on China, Korea, and Japan. The section on China covers the Han people, China’s ethnic majority, as well as most of China’s fifty-five minority groups. Festive dress, China’s reputa...

Readers unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese media might be puzzled by the appearance of men in fashion magazines. This is particularly the case for images of Japanese young men whose strong concerns over their appearance and slender physicality seem to enhance their (hetero)sexual desirability. These publications suggest to their male readers tha...

The process of cultural globalisation does not always imply cultural homogenisation. Rather, it can be seen as a process of cultural ‘glocalisation’ and hybridisation where cultures continuously interact with and interpret each other to engender a hybrid cultural form. As Arjun Appadurai (1993) contends, neither centrality nor peripherality of cult...