War-Themed Shōjo Manga as a Site for Female Subjectivity: An Aesthetic Analysis of Mothers and Daughters Narrating War = 女性の主体性構築の場としての戦争少女マンガ： 少女マンガ表現論による母娘の戦争の語りの分析

Abstract

Abstract:Shōjo manga (comics for girls) have been written primarily by and for women since the 1970s and have provided a space for women to express their subjectivity, innermost thoughts, and personal experiences. Shōjo manga does so through distinctive aesthetic and narrative styles and themes important to young female readers. One dominant theme has been mother-daughter relationships. This article explores what happens when manga creators use this theme in warthemed shōjo manga to complicate the idea that women were merely victims of war and to show the complexity of experiences and emotions women may have felt. The lack of women's perspectives in Japanese postwar fictional narratives about the war leads to an androcentric discourse in the narration of the past; however, we show that war-themed shōjo manga take a different approach. In order to investigate how war-themed shōjo manga potentially destabilize the androcentric narrative of war fiction and function as an expressive tool for women's own experiences, this article uses theories of shōjo manga expression (shōjo manga hyōgen-ron), Hélène Cixous' notion of écriture feminine, and Susan Sontag's writings about photography to analyze three shōjo manga works that portray wartime Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and are premised on different kinds of mother-daughter relationships: Takemiya Keiko's The Odor of Crimson (Kurenai nihofu, 1993–95), Matsuo Shiyori's Between the Sky and the Sea (Sora to umi no aida, 1998–2000), and Satonaka Machiko's The Memory of My Love (Waga ai no kiroku, 1984). Our investigation shows that in these manga, war is presented in a way in which female protagonists can achieve psychological maturity and establish a sense of female subjectivity.