No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Girls Return Home: Portrayal of Femininity in Popular Japanese Girls’ Manga and Anime Texts during the 1990s in Hana yori Dango and Fruits Basket
... In recent shoujo mangas and anime, more complex femininity has been shown in female characters with both "mother-like" and independent personalities. Choo (2008) talks about how Tsukushi in Hana Yori Dango and Toru in Fruits Basket, could have lived more comfortable domestic lives but instead chose to be independent and go through struggles while still showing domesticity as they act as mothers in the way they care for other characters. The study further discusses how these struggles between work and family could reflect the struggles of the shows' creators. ...
... The study further discusses how these struggles between work and family could reflect the struggles of the shows' creators. Choo (2008) added that the confusion in portraying a traditional woman or a modern woman (or even a mixed one) in anime comes from women's problems in that period. In the 1980s, shoujo anime mainly featured female characters who actively tried to pursue higher roles because of the lack of female representation in those positions. ...
... Due to women's pressure at the time, female artists wanted to show more motherly and domestic characters -a role that they considered not even "feminized males" could perform since it was traditionally intended for females. These studies by Liu (2010) and Choo (2008) showed how the portrayal of female characters in shoujo manga progressed from a limited to a broader scope when more women became comic artists. ...
Studio Ghibli has been known to produce animated films that tackle various important topics such as environmentalism, war, and Japanese history. These films also focus on female narratives and showcase strong and independent female characters who do not exhibit the stereotypical characteristics of traditional Japanese women, most of whom have secondary positions in many films. This research paper aims to determine if the female portrayals in the Studio Ghibli film Princess Mononoke reflect the traditional characteristics of a Japanese woman. It employed qualitative content analysis in comparing and contrasting the individual traits of the main and supporting characters and identified whether these conform to those of a traditional Japanese woman. This includes deductive approach/priori coding, which uses pre-established categories and quotes from the film to determine if the film's characters apply to such. While Princess Mononoke (San), Lady Eboshi, and the film's supporting characters personify the cultural and traditional settings of 14th-century Japan, they concurrently show their strength, courage, and decisiveness-characteristics that can be considered empowering. Future studies may survey whether these portrayals can be seen in other anime and examine their alignment with specific female images from Japanese history.
... Interestingly, many early shoujo manga were penned by male authors. The emergence of female artists within the genre was a significant shift, allowing for more nuanced and authentic portrayals of female characters and experiences (Choo, 2008). This transition from male to female authorship, itself, can be seen as a reflection of broader social changes in gender roles. ...
... Secondly, the themes explored in these series relate to women's independence, agency, and friendship. This relevance was determined through preliminary qualitative content analysis and review of literature including Ueno's linguistic analysis (Ueno, 2006) and Choo's study on femininity portrayal (Choo, 2008). Thirdly, These series were selected to represent different facets of gender roles, relationships, and societal expectations. ...
... Shoujo anime, by virtue of its distinct female perspective and thematic richness, serves as a cultural commentary on broader social changes in gender roles. The transition from male to female authorship within the genre, for instance, mirrors broader social changes, as noted by Choo (2008). Such shifts reflect a growing awareness and reevaluation of gender roles, in line with global feminist movements and societal transformations. ...
This study explores the complex portrayal of female characters in shoujo anime, focusing on how they challenge or subvert traditional gender roles and stereotypes in Japanese society. Through the examination of three popular shoujo anime series—“Nana”, “Skip and Loafer,” and “Violet Evergarden”—the paper investigates how the shoujo genre has evolved within the context of Japan’s cultural, historical, and political landscape. Utilizing a socialist feminist perspective, the research highlights the intersectionality of gender, class, and power, providing insights into gender equality’s universal challenges and opportunities. This investigation emphasizes shoujo anime’s potential to shape perceptions of gender roles among viewers, inspire alternative narratives, and contribute to the ongoing struggle for respectful and empowering representations of women. The study concludes with recommendations for fostering a culture that respects and values diversity in gender roles and expressions.
... Dumas suggests that Tomie can be interpreted as Ito's critique of the contemporary social phenomenon of kawaii culture, which led to the sexualization of shôjo.75 According to Choo, "kawaii is derived from the Japanese idea of cuteness includes a degree of weakness that makes the shôjo dependent on others."76 Choo explains that shôjo characters in manga and anime, featuring adorable traits, can imply a depiction of young females who lack sexual agency and show passivity and weakness. ...
This study examines the shifting meaning of subjectivity and the blurred boundaries between humans and nonhumans. Additionally, it explores the impact of technology intervention on gender, drawing from the principles of posthumanism philosophy. Cloning is one of the issues highlighted in the posthuman realm. This study seeks to examine the incorporation of posthumanism and technofeminism in the character Tomie in the anime Junji Ito Collection (2018, Itô Junji "Korekushon"), with the intention of challenging the sexualization of shôjo while remaining skeptical using the narrative analysis method. The results and findings show that Tomie presents a posthuman idea centered on her super regeneration ability and cloned creations to defy the limits of humanity. This idea also promotes elements of technofeminism that lead to the use of biotechnology related to reproduction. Nevertheless, in the end, Ito tries to invite the audience to remain critical in responding to the issue of technofeminism, both in terms of ethics and objectivity.
... From 1970-2015, although the portrayal of female characters showed a trend toward greater diversity, they could still be divided into three stereotypical categories: "women who need protection, women who need to fall in love, and women who conform to traditional gender distinctions" [2]. The female characters embody both qualities of an independent girl associating with sex and a motherly caregiver [3]. However, the January 2018 broadcast of Violet Evergarden, adapted and produced by Kyoto Animation, shows a different approach to portraying women than previous anime, fully reflecting the development of Japanese feminism cast off the shackles of traditional gender stereotypes [4]. ...
Anime can, to a certain extent, symbolize the growth of Japanese feminism as one of the most significant literary creative forms in contemporary Japan. Although the trend of female characterization in anime in recent years is diversified, there is a lack of independent female characters that break through the traditional gender division. A hugely popular anime called Violet Evergarden in 2018 tells the story of a young girl named Violet who lost her arms in a war, but fortunately regained robotic arms and started to help others write letters. In the process, she, who once knew only combat skills, gradually learned to express her emotions. Her story is a journey of seeking out the true meaning of love. The anime adaptation focuses on her growth and inner self, breaking the gender stereotype and showing Girl Power. This essay examines the feminist implications of Violet Evergarden, revealing its role in the growth of Japanese feminism by using Greimas' actantial model and the semiotic square following structuralism's theoretical thinking.
... 32 I have not been able to discover W:CR's total sales but as most academics know (wanly), anyone can see 'attention' metrics for articles. As of August 2020, these put Fiona Tolan on the Handmaid's Tale (as critique of second wave feminism) garnering the highest number of views (8,287), and Kukhee Choo's study of femininity in Japanese anime second (6,356) (Choo 2008;Tolan 2005). 33 Choo's article was chosen for promotion in a specially curated selection of Routledge journal articles on comic books and graphic novels, which was also 'Open Access' for a period. ...
Introducing a special issue about the business aspects of feminist and women’s movement publishing, this article surveys the perennial tensions between cultural and political aims and the economic models necessary for sustainable operation. Addressing a range of beloved periodicals and book publishing ventures, including Spare Rib, Ms, Red Rag, Virago, Des Femmes, Honno, Sheba, Bogle L’Ouverture, Onlywomen Outwrite, The F-Word, The Vagenda, Feminist Frequency, Feministing, The Establishment, Crunk Feminist Collective and Cassava Republic Press, I identify a shared scene of hopeful activist enterprise within a complex ecology embracing the market, public funding, philanthropy as well as the feminist ‘gift economy’ of voluntary work and bartering. I argue that, where ventures failed, they nevertheless generally acted as socially responsible businesses, producing publications with a long tail of value which includes and exceeds the economic. I apply this lens to the case of Women: A Cultural Review itself, revealing its former incarnation as a feminist arts magazine Women’s Review, which ran from 1985 to 1987, and the way its meaning, purpose and value has been preserved under new ownership. This raises general questions about the business of academic publishing, university markets and the paradoxes of platforms which enable protest about the terms of their production.
... The academic discourse on Japanese animation's impact on "Western" cultural environments tends to remain dominated today by the works of U.S. critics-most of them cultural anthropologists, Asian studies scholars, and/ or individuals with a long-term engagement in the genre's fan subcultureand (to a lesser extent) by scholars of Japanese origin operating within an Anglo American academic setting. This is due in part to the fact that cultural studies in the United States and Britain has raised the status of popular culture to a higher level than in other academic contexts, resulting in a situation in which Japanese academia has yet to fully enter the conversation (Choo, 2008). The historical significance of Japan's relationship to the United States also partly explains this situation. ...
Based on a series of case studies of globally distributed media and their reception in different parts of the world, Imagining the Global reflects on what contemporary global culture can teach us about transnational cultural dynamics in the 21st century. A focused multisited cultural analysis that reflects on the symbiotic relationship between the local, the national, and the global, it also explores how individuals’ consumption of global media shapes their imagination of both faraway places and their own local lives. Chosen for their continuing influence, historical relationships, and different geopolitical positions, the case sites of France, Japan, and the United States provide opportunities to move beyond common dichotomies between East and West, or United States and “the rest.” From a theoretical point of view, Imagining the Global endeavors to answer the question of how one locale can help us understand another locale. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources—several years of fieldwork; extensive participant observation; more than 80 formal interviews with some 160 media consumers (and occasionally producers) in France, Japan, and the United States; and analyses of media in different languages—author Fabienne Darling-Wolf considers how global culture intersects with other significant identity factors, including gender, race, class, and geography. Imagining the Global investigates who gets to participate in and who gets excluded from global media representation, as well as how and why the distinction matters.
... Tabla 1. Resumen de los valores de las categorías de estrategias narrativas para los modos de narración clásico (Bordwell, 1996), postclásico (Thanouli, 2009) Estos recursos de la narración compleja -tan autoconsciente como el modo de narración postclásico, pero mucho más obtuso en términos de comunicabilidad efectiva-son esenciales para la representación ambigua de las brujas en los anime fantásticos analizados. En ambos casos, la ambivalencia y sentimientos negativos presentes en estas intrigantes representaciones de la shōjo rompen con la tendencia hacia la representación mainstream de la feminidad relacionada con lo kawaii (Dumas, 2018: 26) o con lo doméstico (Choo, 2008). Al mismo tiempo, dentro de la relación entre representación mediática japonesa y su tradición cultural, es notable en ambos casos la hibridación de referentes con respecto a esos roles femeninos. ...
El fantástico es uno de los principales marcos temáticos de las producciones de la animación comercial japonesa. Dentro de este género, las diversas adaptaciones y reelaboraciones de mitos y cuentos tradicionales suponen recursos fértiles con los que cubrir las demandas de una industria extremadamente prolífica. Sin embargo, pese a su popularidad como objeto de estudio, las exploraciones textuales sobre anime fantástico rara vez se aventuran más allá de las coordenadas temáticas o históricas de sus argumentos. El presente artículo persigue atender a la relación entre la intricada narración de dos series televisivas significativas dentro del fantástico en el anime —Kurozuka y Madoka Magica— y la representación de las brujas que las protagonizan. Mediante el uso de las categorías narratológicas de la autoconsciencia y de la cognoscibilidad indagamos en la relación entre la tradición representacional japonesa y la narración compleja del audiovisual contemporáneo.
... Thus, a typical respondent could be described as a female with a Bachelor degree with about HK$20,000 of monthly income. While some studies have identified male dominance in Japanese anime interest groups in the American context (Newitz, 1994), other studies such as those by Choo (2008) report how Japanese Shōjo manga such as the Peach Girl has risen in the global market with its content reconstructing the role of femininity in the Asian context, addressing the issue of gender stereotypes in a passive but effective manner. Such female-centered narratives may account for the preponderance of female Hong Kong Generation Y respondents among the sample. ...
The ‘Cool Japan’ strategy was launched in 2012 as a ‘soft-power’ initiative to promote the unique culture of Japan. Tourism motivated by Japanese animation, or anime, plays an important role in this campaign. While this aspect of Japanese popular culture has been a particular element of attraction, especially for youth travelers, little is known empirically about the degree to which it actually motivates desire to travel to Japan. This paper examines the influence of anime on Hong Kong Generation Y travel to Japan. Based on a quantitative approach, respondents were divided into four clusters – enthusiastic, interested, low viewers, and indifferent – distinguished by varying degrees of interest in anime and corresponding travel motivation. This study contributes to the existing literature by elucidating how anime serves as a travel motivator, proposing a conceptual framing of the relation between anime consumption and travel to Japan in terms of ‘soft power,’ the application of cultural ideas and artifacts to encourage positive associations with a country and its values. The findings have implications for destination marketing organization in developing anime products and events that meet the unique needs and preferences of different groups of anime fans, constituting different potential tourism subniches.
... La questione è stata esaminata da diversi punti di vista (Signorielli, 1990;Leaper, Breed, Hoffman, Perlman et all. 2002;Choo, 2008). Per ciò che riguarda gli effetti prodotti dai cartoni sugli stereotipi legati ai ruoli di genere, rilevante è lo studio di Davidson, Yasuna e Tower (1979) condotto su un pubblico di bambine di 5-6 anni. ...
Gender-oriented imagery of evil in anime from late 70's to present day. This paper examines the specific traits that evil developed within Japanese anime that became very popular in Italy from late 70's to present day. The aim of the study is to focus on the representation of evil that may take an evident or concealed gender-oriented stereotyped characterisation which is different in anime developed for boys or for girls. A content and frame analysis has been carried out on 16 case-studies in order to explore the features which define an imagery of evil differentiated by male or female audience. Some examples of this occurrence are: physical and psychological evil traits; rhetoric; metaphors; gender stereotypes; punitive actions against evil; the reasons why evil develops etc.
Our results showed that gender stereotyping persists in the latest anime and is portrayed through the way the main and secondary evil characters are described. Furthermore, latent patterns of gender-oriented imagery of evil emerge through evil characters’ ability to neutralize the empowerment conquered by female leads during conflicts.
... Sadece kadın karakterlere giydirilen geleneksel roller değil, aynı zamanda fiziksel güzellikte sosyal statüyü arttıran bir özellik olarak biz izleyicilere ve okuyuculara sunulmaktadır. Yine bu animelerde, kadın karakterler, sosyal konumlarını arttırmak, erkeklerle eĢit statüde olabilmek ve onlar tarafından değerli görünebilmek için, anaç rollerini geliĢtirmeye ve diĢilik özelliklerini kullanmaya çalıĢmaktadırlar (Choo, 2008). ...
Misogyny which has been created by elements of popular culture and reflected to the society emerges as the existing hostility against women, hatred, humiliation or contempt of women in due to their gender features, being seen a sexual object (objectification), the legitimation of all type of violence against women and commodification of the women’s body. Women, as a result of legitimization of misogynistic discourse and practice in patriarchal and male-dominated society, can be exposed to violence, sexual discrimination, all type of sexual harassment and rape. In this context, It it said that misogynistic contents which exist in popular culture affect social life and especially create a negative image in children’s and men’s mind. Especially children grow up with the image of women created in popular cartoon/animations, popular songs or movies and as an element of society, patriarchal women roles can be internalized by them through popular culture. Men also legitimate the misogynistic discourse and practice which exist in traditional and patriarchal society structure through showing attitudes or behaviors which damaging women’s personality integrity. This article discusses the concept of misogyny which has been ingrained as women hatred or hostility in our literature in the context of popular culture and it intends to put forth the misogyny in the facts of existing popular culture. Therefore, this article is to try to explain how misogyny is presented in music, songs, cartoons and computer games and how this presentation effect s the society’s social, economical and political structure or how society’s existing patriarchal and male-dominated structure reveal and support the misogyny.
... and while there appear to have been changes towards less clichéd plot lines in recent (see Shamoon (2004) for an overview of this topic), to a large degree, the depiction of relationships is still fairly conservative, with girls often taking on traditional roles associated with motherhood in blossoming shoujo romances (Choo, 2008). In this way, interaction in shoujo-manga by nature requires male characters-which is not the case in more actionoriented shounen-manga. ...
... What, then, is known about how characters in manga are depicted? While some research seems to suggest that female characters in either genre are somewhat stereotypical - Choo (2008) finds that female protagonists in shōjomanga from the 1990s often took on maternal roles; Harrell (2007) argues that even female characters in shōnen-manga possessing non-stereotypical capabilities are still placed in situations aligning them with traditionally feminine characters; Ito (1994) shows that female characters in men's comic magazines are stereotypically feminine in personality, roles and occupations -in general, the changes observed above in shōjo-manga in the 1970s led to changes in narratives and the characterization of female characters in both genres. Ogi (2003: 780) describes the 1970s as a 'turning point' for shōjo-manga, with advances of women into the working force leading to a diversification of narratives and the narrative roles being taken by female characters. ...
The manner in which manga can reflect and influence readers’ gender perceptions has been a frequently researched issue. This article is an attempt to consider those questions through language, a traditionally less-examined element, in order to shed new light on how male and female characters are used in manga. To do so, I use a linguistic corpus of ten popular shōjo-manga and shōnen-manga to look at (1) how much of the text found in speech bubbles was spoken by male and female characters; and (2) how many characters were seen. With regards to approximately 80% of all text, the corpus shows that shōnen-manga are extremely skewed towards male characters, compared to shōjo-manga, which is more balanced between female and male characters. While many more characters appear in shōnen-manga, the majority are male. Furthermore, only two female characters in all of the shōnen-manga series account for more than 10% of text, whereas all the shōjo-manga have male characters accounting for over 12%.
In examining why this might be, I suggest that the focus on interpersonal relationships – including both friendship and romance – in shōjo-manga may lead to a smaller cast of characters and better balance between male and female characters. However, with authors usually writing for their own gender, I also maintain that it is related to differences in the roles of women and men in Japanese society. These distributions also have an impact on characterization itself, particularly in regards to the use of gendered speech patterns. With insight from Kinsui’s yakuwari-go, or role-playing language (2003), I specifically argue that the results predict that shōnen-manga will use more stereotypical speech, particularly in depicting female characters. In offering supporting evidence for this hypothesis, I suggest that this may affect how readers engage with the characters, thus creating different types of reading experiences within the genres. Through this discussion, it will become clear that linguistic data can shed light into how characters are manipulated in manga on a variety of levels, thus appealing to its potential as a legitimate and unique approach to manga research.
... This genre remains a subject of great interest to scholars across the spectrum of the humanities because it is both written by and for women. (Orbaugh 2003;Treat 1996;Choo 2008) The production cycle of manga makes it possible for former fans to easily enter the professional market and respond to the work that inspired them such that the subject matter of the genre remains continually relevant to the readership. (Kinsella 2000) Most shojo narrative revolves around the border crisis when shojo heroines symbolically cross out of girlhood -the heroine's first love. ...
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2009. "June 2009." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-125). In an age of globalization, texts increasingly migrate not only out of their native medium, but their native countries as well. Within the East Asian region, a booming television program trade circulates television texts, both as programs and as formats for re-making within the native culture industry. In this paper, I examine the program Hana Yori Dango, a Japanese manga turned television program that has been produced in Taiwan, Japan, and recently Korea. In particular, the Korean adaptation called Boys over Flowers, which simultaneous caters to a national and export market, exists in cultural and historical tension with the originating authority of the Japanese version. Texts then, in this process of industrial adaptation and cultural indigenization, may be understood as contact zones where asymmetries of historical power battle. Examining the mismatch of Korean form and Japanese narrative in this television melodrama, the narrative traversal of modern spaces, and the reparative capacity of nostalgia in fiction, I expose a contested process of adaptation that defies the easy descriptor of "hybridity." Reading the text historically and comparatively, I locate not only the cultural specificities and anxieties that mark this program as Korean, but also the phantom of a common, regional imaginary of the Asian modern. by Lan Xuan Le. S.M.
This article explores the fan-dubbing practice of ‘abridged anime’ on YouTube and considers the implications involving the creators’ cultural distance from their transnational source material. In this case study, I argue that the practice of parody and fan appropriation can be viewed within the context of global media flows and cultural reinterpretation, suggesting a toxic fan culture that either trivializes or distorts the original text. By focusing on numerous abridged anime series and creator interviews, and framing that analysis within the theorization of parodic transgression, I demonstrate that these fan practices can take on either orientalist or sexist perspectives and move us further from a nuanced cultural understanding of the text itself.
La década de los noventa comenzó en España con la ampliación del panorama televisivo mediante la incorporación de tres nuevos canales de titularidad privada. En este contexto, las emisiones de animación japonesa se convirtieron en habituales de las distintas parrillas televisivas, constituyéndose como un producto rentable en términos económicos, con un desarrollo argumental seriado que favoreció la fidelización de las audiencias. La presente investigación se estructura en torno a la idea central de la existencia generalizada de una modificación o censura de toda identidad no heteronormativa mostrada en las producciones de animación japonesa original y eliminadas de las versiones emitidas en la España de los noventa, utilizando principalmente el doblaje como herramienta para dicha supresión. Estructurada en torno a los objetivos de analizar y definir dichas representaciones de género en las producciones originales y sus correspondientes versiones dobladas para establecer la existencia de dicha censura, diferenciar las concepciones de género atribuibles al producto original de aquellas mediadas por la traducción, comprobar si, en caso de existir dicha censura, se trató de un proceso exclusivamente español o se produjo también en países del entorno europeo y occidental y analizar la evolución de las representaciones de género en las producciones distribuidas con posterioridad a la década de los noventa, se realiza una aproximación metodológica al corpus de estudio desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar estructurada en torno a los estudios de traducción, los estudios de recepción y los estudios de la cultura fan, todo ello desde la perspectiva de los estudios de género y, más concretamente, desde la teoría queer. Analizando las parrillas televisivas de las cadenas de cobertura nacional de la década de los noventa, y estableciendo cuáles son las series emitidas durante la misma, así como los porcentajes de cada una de las mismas, en función de la división que puede hacerse por los sectores demográficos en los que se divide su audiencia en el contexto original japonés, se han analizado un total de doce series, concluyendo que existe una clara diferenciación entre las producciones originales y las emitidas en la España de los noventa en cuestiones de representación de identidades no normativas, que existe una concepción sexista en la configuración de los personajes desde el propio contexto productivo, que las modificaciones observadas en las modalidades textuales distribuidas en las cadenas de cobertura nacional en la década de los noventa responden en su mayoría a alteraciones producidas previamente en procesos de traducción efectuados en países del entorno y, muy especialmente, Italia y Francia, y que, ya en el transcurso de la década, pero sobre todo a partir de los años dos mil, se observa un mayor grado de correspondencia entres las versiones originales y las dobladas, produciéndose paulatinamente la aceptación de la animación japonesa como producto cultural y de la representación de identidades no normativas en el contexto sociocultural receptor español.
Geek culture is full of stories in which heroes receive their due reward, often embodied in the form of a woman alongside property, status, and wealth. These narratives are often translated into a perception of action and reward within communities: just as Jaime Lannister is expected to be rewarded for his rescue of Brienne or Littlefinger for his “rescue” of Sansa Stark, so too do geek men expect to be rewarded for their “white knighting.” White knights, or men to the rescue, are a common form of advocate in geek communities. The very concept of white knighting is tied to rewards and spoils and is often used in contradictory ways within social groups. This chapter will trace how the belief that men should be rewarded for their “good behaviour” is often a point of internal conflict within masculine geek groups when issues dealing with women or marginalized groups arise. For many the just rewards should be delivered to the dominant group simply because they are the good guys. But when conflict arises and some men splinter to support women they are seen as acting against the good of the group, or selfishly hogging the anticipated rewards of attention and female flesh for themselves in an inherently hypocritical move.
For a "plain language" abstract, see https://link.growkudos.com/1hiomd3oge8
Afuganisu-tan is an online manga by Timaking, published in English online in 2005, that presents selected historical events of modern Afghanistan in a series of 29 episodes plus an appendix. An episode consists of a four-panel micro-narrative in which Afghanistan and the countries with which its history is intertwined are consistently personified as young girls. Each manga episode is accompanied by a short, textual ‘memo’ describing historical events in a neutral, factual way. In this paper, we (1) propose that the extended personification of Afghanistan and other countries in this manga can be understood in terms of ‘allegory’; (2) sketch and evaluate how the manga part affects the construal of the country’s history; (3) consider some of the consequences of combining the manga part with memo text for the informative and educational value of Afuganisu-tan.
This book review provides a brief overview of the collection 'Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan', edited by Mark Mclelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma and James Welker (University Press of Mississippi, 2015). The review offers a summary of the main topics covered in the collection, and discusses its strengths, weaknesses and implications for other academic fields from the perspective of a scholar specializing in Education, Children’s Literature, Literacy and Diversity.
The rise of what has been called ‘new television’ or ‘media regionalism’ in East Asia has occurred in a context in which the production of media networks ‒ both infrastructures (broadcast and relay stations, satellites, cable systems) and media devices or platforms (tv sets, vcr, vcd, and mobile phones) ‒ outstrips the production of contents. The essay considers the question: what is coming into common through this emerging sense of media regionalism? Looking at the highly popular series Hana yori dango or ‘Boys over Flowers’, which has been formatted across media forms (such as manga, animated tv series, animated films, television dramas, and theatrical release cinema) and across nations (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China, and the Philippines), this essay finds that the feeling of media regionalism is related to both the gap between infrastructures (of distribution and production) and the gap within media distribution (between mobility and privatization).
This article offers a feminist critique of three user-generated texts designed to protest Internet censorship in China: the “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse,” the “Green Dam Girl,” and “My Elder Brother Works for SARFT.” These have been widely celebrated as offering democratic potential in a highly regulated political environment, yet what has been overlooked is how all three deploy a masculinist discourse and visual style that position the female body and the feminine as the site of subordination, penetration, and insult. Utilizing Harriet Evans' notion of the “limits of gender” as an analytical tool, I argue that while these texts' subversive character challenges the state's ideological and technological dominance, their language and visual style reinstantiate structural gender inequality that is pervasive in China. Their reinscription of patriarchal constructions of gender thus ultimately diminishes their truly emancipatory potential. Moreover, the uncritical celebration of these media—the way visible gender essentialism is invisible in public discourse around them—reveals the limits of gender in China and the tendency to fetishize any form of resistance in authoritarian contexts.
This article is a theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into intimate communication and friendship among young women in contemporary Japan. The group I am considering consumes, produces, and reproduces mainstream manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation), similar to the phenomenon of fan fiction and fan art in the United States and Europe, with a focus on imagining unintended romance and relationships between male characters, much like slash fiction. Fans produce works not only for personal pleasure but also to share them, facilitate interaction, and bridge a shared imaginary. In Japan, as elsewhere, women account for the majority of this activity, but unique to Japan is the relative autonomy this group has achieved and the high visibility of their activities. The existence of overlapping spheres of virtual and physical fan activity on the present scale in Japan provides a unique opportunity to analyze emergent patterns of intimacy at a time when interactions with media and technology are playing an increasingly important role in shaping communication and friendship. My case study is a group of young women who identify as fujoshi, or “rotten girls.” This article examines how they produce, consume, and share fiction, as well as the discussions and relationships that these practices make possible across physical and virtual space. The major focus is on playful interactions with the text and with other fujoshi, which contributes to “getting out of hand” and exploring what I call “transgressive intimacy,” which is imagined between characters and between fujoshi themselves. I apply the theory of “neta communication” and develop an alternative, “moe communication,” to explain this phenomenon.
Comics and manga have many ways to convey the expression of emotion, ranging from exaggerated facial expressions and hand/arm positions to the squiggles around body parts that Kennedy (1982) calls ‘pictorial runes’. According to Ekman at least some emotions – happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, anger, disgust – are universal, but this is not necessarily the case for their expression in comics and manga. While many of the iconic markers and pictorial runes that Forceville charted in an Asterix album to indicate that a character is angry occur also in Japanese manga, Shinohara and Matsunaka also found markers and runes that appear to be typical for manga. In this article we examine an unusual signal conveying that a character is emotionally affected in volume 4 of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Azumanga Daioh: the ‘loss of hands’. Our findings (1) show how non-facial information helps express emotion in manga; (2) demonstrate how hand loss contributes to the characterization of Azuma’s heroines; (3) support the theorization of emotion in Conceptual Metaphor Theory.
This study of gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan investigates elements of Japanese popular culture including erotic comic books, stories of mother–son incest, lunchboxes—or obentō—that mothers ritualistically prepare for schoolchildren, and children's cartoons. The book brings recent feminist psychoanalytic and Marxist theory to bear on representations of sexuality, motherhood, and gender in these and other aspects of Japanese culture. Based on five years of fieldwork in a middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, this theoretically informed ethnographic study provides an analysis of how sexuality, dominance, and desire are reproduced and enacted in late-capitalistic Japan.
Uniforms are not unique to Japan, but their popularity there suggests important linkages: material culture, politico-economic projects, bodily management, and the construction of subjectivity are all connected to the wearing of uniforms. This book examines what the donning of uniforms says about cultural psychology and the expression of economic nationalism in Japan. Conformity in dress is especially apparent amongst students, who are required to wear uniforms by most schools. Drawing on concrete examples, the author focuses particularly on student uniforms, which are key socializing objects in Japan's politico-economic order, but also examines ‘office ladies' (secretaries), ‘salary men' (white collar workers), service personnel, and housewives, who wear a type of uniformed dress. Arguing that uniforms can be viewed as material markers of a life cycle managed by powerful politico-economic institutions, he also shows that resistance to official state projects is expressed by ‘anti-uniforming' modes of self
There is a phrase that still resonates from childhood. Who says it? The mother’s voice—not my own mother’s, perhaps, but the voice of an aunt, an older sister, or the mother of a friend. It is a harsh, matronizing phrase, and it is directed toward the behavior of other women:
“She” [the other woman] is making a spectacle out of herself.
The majority of amateur manga artists are women in their teens and twenties and most of what they draw is homoerotica based on parodies of leading commercial manga series for men. From 1988, the amateur manga movement expanded so rapidly that by 1992 amateur manga conventions in Tokyo were being attended by over a quarter of a million young people. This paper traces the origins and genres of amateur manga and asks why its fans and producers became the source of nationwide controversy and social discourse about otaku in the first half of the 1990s.
Sailormoon est une bande-dessinee et une serie de dessins animes japonais dont l'heroine est une adolescente de 14 ans. Cet article examine ce qui peut expliquer la popularite de Sailormoon et aider a sa diffusion mondiale. L'A. montre en quoi cette serie reflete et resoud les tensions existant entre la culture traditionnelle idealisee et la culture occidentale ou moderne idealisee. Sailormoon apparait donc comme un produit idealement adapte a la mondialisation et l'A. en etudie les strategies de commercialisation notamment a travers les produits associes ou pirates. Enfin, le role des geants de l'industrie culturelle dans la reproduction culturelle est examine, notamment a travers la reproduction de stereotypes feminins : la femme y est largement infantilisee et erotisee
This revised edition of a now classic text includes a new introduction by Henry Jenkins, explaining 'Why Fiske Still Matters' for today's students, followed by a discussion between former Fiske students Kevin Glynn, Jonathan Gray, and Pamela Wilson on the theme of 'Reading Fiske and Understanding the Popular'. Both underline the continuing relevance of this foundational text in the study of popular culture. What is popular culture? How does it differ from mass culture? And what do popular "texts" reveal about class, race, and gender dynamics in a society? John Fiske answers these and a host of other questions in Understanding Popular Culture. When it was first written, Understanding Popular Culture took a groundbreaking approach to studying such cultural artifacts as jeans, shopping malls, tabloid newspapers, and TV game shows, which remains relevant today. Fiske differentiates between mass culture - the cultural "products" put out by an industrialized, capitalist society - and popular culture - the ways in which people use, abuse, and subvert these products to create their own meanings and messages. Rather than focusing on mass culture's attempts to dominate and homogenize, he prefers to look at (and revel in) popular culture's evasions and manipulations of these attempts. Designed as a companion to Reading the Popular, Understanding Popular Culture presents a radically different theory of what it means for culture to be popular: that it is, literally, of the people. It is not imposed on them, it is created by them, and its pleasures and meanings reflect popular tastes and concerns - and a rejection of those fostered by mass culture. With wit, clarity, and insight, Professor Fiske debunks the myth of the mindless mass audience, and demonstrates that, in myriad ways, popular culture thrives because that audience is more aware than anyone guesses.
Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke
- S J Napier
Napier, S. J. (2000), Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke, New York: Palgrave.
Okesutora'' no Manga riki' ('The Manga power of Ochestra Manga wa Ima Dounatte Orunoka? ('What is Happening to Manga Now
- T Ninomiya
Ninomiya, T. (2005), '''Okesutora'' no Manga riki' ('The Manga power of Ochestra') in F. Natsume (ed.), Manga wa Ima Dounatte Orunoka? ('What is Happening to Manga Now?'), Tokyo: Media Select, pp. 8Á12.
Busty Battlin' Babes: the Evolution of the Sho ¯ jo in 1990s Visual CulturePrince's Brunch', video recording)
- S Orbaugh
Orbaugh, S. (2003), 'Busty Battlin' Babes: the Evolution of the Sho ¯ jo in 1990s Visual Culture', in Norman Bryson, Maribeth Graybill and Joshua Mostow (eds), Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, pp. 200Á28. O ¯ sama no Buranchi ('Prince's Brunch', video recording) (2007), TBS, 23 February.
Omoikkiri O ¯ zappana ''Rabukome''/Shiron' ('A Completely Tentative ''Love-Comedy
- O Tsuki
O ¯ tsuki, T. (2003), 'Omoikkiri O ¯ zappana ''Rabukome''/Shiron' ('A Completely Tentative ''Love-Comedy'' Analysis'), in S. O ¯ tsuka (ed.), Datsu Bungaku to Cho¯ Bungaku (Post Literature and Super Literature), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, pp. 147Á76.
Male'' in Japan: The Takarazuka Revue
- J........................................................................ Robertson
Robertson, J. (1992), 'Doing and Undoing ''Female'' and ''Male'' in Japan: The Takarazuka Revue', in Takie Lebra (ed.), Japanese Social Organization, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, pp. 165Á93. GIRLS RETURN HOME × 295....................................................................................................... Downloaded by [University of Arizona] at 07:27 13 May 2013
Information Media White Papers
- Jōhō Media Hakusho
What is Happening to Manga Now?
- T Ninomiya