Among internet forms of fiction that have arisen in the twenty-first century, the Japanese cell phone novel (keitai shōsetsu) holds a unique position as a genre that can be created, disseminated, and read entirely via the medium of a cell phone. Since the online release of the first keitai novel in 2000, similar works have cropped up in other countries across the globe, but the undeniable commercial success of keitai novels—many of which have sold printed copies in the millions and spawned highly profitable media mixes extending to manga, television drama, and film—is a phenomenon unique to Japan.1 In its early years, the growing popularity of these works, created by amateurs and available as free downloads, went relatively unnoticed by mainstream media. Written primarily by and for teenaged girls and young women, keitai novels were dismissed as little more than a casual pastime, a trend that would soon run its course. However, in 2007, when the top three best-selling printed novels for the year turned out to be works originally published online as keitai novels, critics and scholars began to respond.2 This banner year was followed in 2008 by a flurry of studies on keitai novels, such as Yoshida Satobi’s Keitai shōsetsu ga ukeru riyū (Why cell phone novels are so well received) and Honda Tōru’s Naze keitai shōsetsu wa ureru no ka (Why do cell phone novels sell?). The primary focus of many of these studies has been to explain the baffling popularity of what appear to many to be little more than poorly written works with clichéd plots. Experts in a range of fields, from literature to anthropology and media studies, have
{"title":"Authenticity in Japanese Cell Phone Novel Discourse","authors":"Kelly Hansen","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Among internet forms of fiction that have arisen in the twenty-first century, the Japanese cell phone novel (keitai shōsetsu) holds a unique position as a genre that can be created, disseminated, and read entirely via the medium of a cell phone. Since the online release of the first keitai novel in 2000, similar works have cropped up in other countries across the globe, but the undeniable commercial success of keitai novels—many of which have sold printed copies in the millions and spawned highly profitable media mixes extending to manga, television drama, and film—is a phenomenon unique to Japan.1 In its early years, the growing popularity of these works, created by amateurs and available as free downloads, went relatively unnoticed by mainstream media. Written primarily by and for teenaged girls and young women, keitai novels were dismissed as little more than a casual pastime, a trend that would soon run its course. However, in 2007, when the top three best-selling printed novels for the year turned out to be works originally published online as keitai novels, critics and scholars began to respond.2 This banner year was followed in 2008 by a flurry of studies on keitai novels, such as Yoshida Satobi’s Keitai shōsetsu ga ukeru riyū (Why cell phone novels are so well received) and Honda Tōru’s Naze keitai shōsetsu wa ureru no ka (Why do cell phone novels sell?). The primary focus of many of these studies has been to explain the baffling popularity of what appear to many to be little more than poorly written works with clichéd plots. Experts in a range of fields, from literature to anthropology and media studies, have","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"600 1","pages":"60 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77240974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The literary career of Takeda Yuriko (1925–93; hereafter referred to by her given name, Yuriko, to distinguish her from her husband and daughter with the same family name) took flight immediately after the death of her husband, famed novelist Takeda Taijun (1912–76; hereafter Taijun). In 1977 she published her first book, Fuji nikki (Diary [at the foot of Mount] Fuji), and for it received the seventeenth Tamura Toshiko Shō (Tamura Toshiko Prize).1 This auspicious start was soon followed by Inu ga hoshi mita: Roshia ryokō (Like a dog gazing at stars: A journey to Russia; 1979), for which she was awarded the thirty-first Yomiuri Bungaku Shō (Yomiuri Prize for Literature) for the best book of the year in the category of essay/travelogue. This achievement was followed by three more monographs, all of which, along with the aforementioned two titles, were subsequently reprinted in paperback and posthumously collected in the seven-volume Takeda Yuriko zensakuhin (Complete works by Takeda Yuriko; Chūō kōronsha, 1994–95). She remained active as a writer throughout her life, with her last monograph, Hibi zakki (Daily miscellany), coming out in 1992, the year before her death. There were more essays in periodicals, some of which are photo–text collaborations with her and Taijun’s daughter, Takeda Hana (b. 1951; hereafter Hana), a photographer who in 1990 won the prestigious Kimura Ihei
{"title":"From Muse to Dandy to Guerrilla: Takeda Yuriko’s Photographic Eye","authors":"A. Sakaki","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The literary career of Takeda Yuriko (1925–93; hereafter referred to by her given name, Yuriko, to distinguish her from her husband and daughter with the same family name) took flight immediately after the death of her husband, famed novelist Takeda Taijun (1912–76; hereafter Taijun). In 1977 she published her first book, Fuji nikki (Diary [at the foot of Mount] Fuji), and for it received the seventeenth Tamura Toshiko Shō (Tamura Toshiko Prize).1 This auspicious start was soon followed by Inu ga hoshi mita: Roshia ryokō (Like a dog gazing at stars: A journey to Russia; 1979), for which she was awarded the thirty-first Yomiuri Bungaku Shō (Yomiuri Prize for Literature) for the best book of the year in the category of essay/travelogue. This achievement was followed by three more monographs, all of which, along with the aforementioned two titles, were subsequently reprinted in paperback and posthumously collected in the seven-volume Takeda Yuriko zensakuhin (Complete works by Takeda Yuriko; Chūō kōronsha, 1994–95). She remained active as a writer throughout her life, with her last monograph, Hibi zakki (Daily miscellany), coming out in 1992, the year before her death. There were more essays in periodicals, some of which are photo–text collaborations with her and Taijun’s daughter, Takeda Hana (b. 1951; hereafter Hana), a photographer who in 1990 won the prestigious Kimura Ihei","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"16 1","pages":"33 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87885624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Womenomics: Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s ambitious plan to increase the number of women in Japan’s work force and government has generated a great deal of international media attention and scrutiny. The term “womenomics” has now become associated with Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs Japan and her 1999 report, in which she argued that Japan could grow its economy by 13 percent if it increased the number of women in its work force (Matsui 2006). Because Japan has the fastest-aging and fastest-shrinking population in the world, it faces a daunting labor shortage and a complex set of policy challenges for maintaining its long-term economic stability and competitiveness. One quarter of Japan’s population is now 65 or older, which means that there are fewer than two people at work for every retiree (Ezrati 1997: 1; Japan Times 2014a). In an op-ed piece that Abe wrote in September 2013 for the Wall Street Journal, he explained that he was impressed by Matsui’s analysis and eager to include her recommendations when he became prime minister again (Abe 2013). Abe had served a brief term as prime minister in 2006–2007. He left the post early because of health problems and had never really escaped the shadow of his predecessor, Koizumi Junichirō. Koizumi was quite charismatic and celebrated for his bold leadership style and reforms. It was not easy to follow such a persona and one with such a memorable political legacy, but on September 26, 2012, Abe received a second chance at the most important political office in Japan, and another opportunity to
{"title":"Gender Gaiatsu: An Institutional Perspective on Womenomics","authors":"Linda C. Hasunuma","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Womenomics: Prime Minister Abe Shinzō’s ambitious plan to increase the number of women in Japan’s work force and government has generated a great deal of international media attention and scrutiny. The term “womenomics” has now become associated with Kathy Matsui of Goldman Sachs Japan and her 1999 report, in which she argued that Japan could grow its economy by 13 percent if it increased the number of women in its work force (Matsui 2006). Because Japan has the fastest-aging and fastest-shrinking population in the world, it faces a daunting labor shortage and a complex set of policy challenges for maintaining its long-term economic stability and competitiveness. One quarter of Japan’s population is now 65 or older, which means that there are fewer than two people at work for every retiree (Ezrati 1997: 1; Japan Times 2014a). In an op-ed piece that Abe wrote in September 2013 for the Wall Street Journal, he explained that he was impressed by Matsui’s analysis and eager to include her recommendations when he became prime minister again (Abe 2013). Abe had served a brief term as prime minister in 2006–2007. He left the post early because of health problems and had never really escaped the shadow of his predecessor, Koizumi Junichirō. Koizumi was quite charismatic and celebrated for his bold leadership style and reforms. It was not easy to follow such a persona and one with such a memorable political legacy, but on September 26, 2012, Abe received a second chance at the most important political office in Japan, and another opportunity to","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"39 1","pages":"114 - 79"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73158772","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
����� ��� The belief that women and men should use different first-person referent terms in casual, everyday contexts in Japan is a linguistic ideology based on the ideological construct that “women’s language” does and should exist. 1 While women’s language is imagined to have been an eternal feature of the Japanese language, it is, in fact, a contemporary construct, an ideology about gender and gendered expression that assumed a particular form during the Meiji period. What constitutes women’s language or other linguistic practices is not static, however, and the symbolic meanings particular terms assume continue to be reworked. At the same time, particular meanings that persist do so because they are actively reproduced. Historically, perceived linguistic corruption has been linked to moral corruption in Japanese women. Because women stand as symbolic barometers of cultural change and the loss of tradition, the perceived waning of women’s language presents an overt sign of (national) disorder. 2 As Shigeko Okamoto, Hideko Reynolds, Miyako Inoue, and others have found, both men and women continue to monitor and evaluate the degree to which women’s actual speech follows the norms of women’s language. 3 At the root of the critique and monitoring of women’s speech are ideas about who women are and should be. Public fear over the corruption of women’s language takes various forms, illustrating that the construct of women’s language is alive and well in Japan today. In this paper, I examine how middle-school girls navigate the gendered world of self and self-reference through their choice of self-referent terms. The students’ exegesis
{"title":"Gender, Maturity, and “Going out into the World”: Self-Referent Term Choice at Ogasawara Middle School","authors":"Nona Moskowitz","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0002","url":null,"abstract":"����� ��� The belief that women and men should use different first-person referent terms in casual, everyday contexts in Japan is a linguistic ideology based on the ideological construct that “women’s language” does and should exist. 1 While women’s language is imagined to have been an eternal feature of the Japanese language, it is, in fact, a contemporary construct, an ideology about gender and gendered expression that assumed a particular form during the Meiji period. What constitutes women’s language or other linguistic practices is not static, however, and the symbolic meanings particular terms assume continue to be reworked. At the same time, particular meanings that persist do so because they are actively reproduced. Historically, perceived linguistic corruption has been linked to moral corruption in Japanese women. Because women stand as symbolic barometers of cultural change and the loss of tradition, the perceived waning of women’s language presents an overt sign of (national) disorder. 2 As Shigeko Okamoto, Hideko Reynolds, Miyako Inoue, and others have found, both men and women continue to monitor and evaluate the degree to which women’s actual speech follows the norms of women’s language. 3 At the root of the critique and monitoring of women’s speech are ideas about who women are and should be. Public fear over the corruption of women’s language takes various forms, illustrating that the construct of women’s language is alive and well in Japan today. In this paper, I examine how middle-school girls navigate the gendered world of self and self-reference through their choice of self-referent terms. The students’ exegesis","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"6 1","pages":"73 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74187415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yosano Akiko (born Hō Shō, 1878-1942) became a literary sensation in 1901 when she defied conventions of poetic style and morals to glorify a young woman's passionate love in the 399 tanka of Midaregami (Tangled hair). Her transformation into a goddess of poetry—and the key to understanding so many of her perplexing poems—was incubated by her rivalry with the poet Yamakawa Tomiko (1879-1909) for the love of Yosano Tekkan (1873-1935), founder of the Tokyo Shinshisha (New Poetry Society). 1 Akiko married Tekkan shortly after Midaregami was published, and she soon outshone her husband as a poet. In her distinguished and productive career, she also made major contributions as a feminist social critic and as a scholar of classical literature—all while raising eleven children. Those are the familiar contours of a story that is repeated in many biographical studies, annotated anthologies of poetry, and histories of modern Japanese literature. Yet Midaregami, arguably the single most celebrated poetry collection since the Meiji Restoration (1868), is still undervalued and misunderstood. 2 Critics characteristically extol the putative immediacy and unrestrained passion of Akiko's poems. But it is not their passion alone that causes the spark to ignite in the reception of these poems, although they are certainly more explicit and suggestive than their precursors: it is their particular investment of supernatural, religious, and moral meanings in matters of passion. Akiko expands the scope of what her tanka can do by creating friction between her religious metaphors and her sensuous descriptions. The poems stand both sexual and religious mores on their heads. Carnal desire is more than just physical; it is spiritual, and it is augmented by the multiple, tangled metaphysical associations to which the individual tanka of Midaregami commit to different degrees.
{"title":"Tangled Kami: Yosano Akiko’s Supernatural Symbolism","authors":"N. Albertson","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Yosano Akiko (born Hō Shō, 1878-1942) became a literary sensation in 1901 when she defied conventions of poetic style and morals to glorify a young woman's passionate love in the 399 tanka of Midaregami (Tangled hair). Her transformation into a goddess of poetry—and the key to understanding so many of her perplexing poems—was incubated by her rivalry with the poet Yamakawa Tomiko (1879-1909) for the love of Yosano Tekkan (1873-1935), founder of the Tokyo Shinshisha (New Poetry Society). 1 Akiko married Tekkan shortly after Midaregami was published, and she soon outshone her husband as a poet. In her distinguished and productive career, she also made major contributions as a feminist social critic and as a scholar of classical literature—all while raising eleven children. Those are the familiar contours of a story that is repeated in many biographical studies, annotated anthologies of poetry, and histories of modern Japanese literature. Yet Midaregami, arguably the single most celebrated poetry collection since the Meiji Restoration (1868), is still undervalued and misunderstood. 2 Critics characteristically extol the putative immediacy and unrestrained passion of Akiko's poems. But it is not their passion alone that causes the spark to ignite in the reception of these poems, although they are certainly more explicit and suggestive than their precursors: it is their particular investment of supernatural, religious, and moral meanings in matters of passion. Akiko expands the scope of what her tanka can do by creating friction between her religious metaphors and her sensuous descriptions. The poems stand both sexual and religious mores on their heads. Carnal desire is more than just physical; it is spiritual, and it is augmented by the multiple, tangled metaphysical associations to which the individual tanka of Midaregami commit to different degrees.","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"9 6 1","pages":"28 - 44"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78517524","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Premodern Japanese tea culture has been depicted overwhelmingly as a male activity. Reading any standard history of tea culture, we learn about the merchants who formalized the practice in the late sixteenth century and the warlords they served; the warrior tea masters who continued to develop the practice and philosophy throughout Japan’s early modern period; the wealthy industrialist-connoisseurs in the early twentieth century; and the grand masters of the now dominant Sen-family schools of tea (Urasenke, Omotesenke, and Mushanokojisenke).1 When women do feature in either popular or academic discussion of tea culture, they generally figure as middle-class housewives in modern Japan who are learning tea culture as a way of cultivating gender and national identity, the assumption being that by studying tea they learn how to be a proper Japanese woman.2 Female tea practitioners from the early modern period (1600–1868) are generally presented as exceptions to the norm, such as women of the imperial family who were able to practice tea because of their high status.3 Even then, a divide is perceived between men’s tea practice, whether historically or in the modern period, and women’s tea practice. Men’s tea practice is said to be focused on connoisseurship, the collecting of tea utensils as art, and an intellectual or philosophical understanding of tea culture. Women’s tea practice is said to be about learning comportment, etiquette, and manners—a mode of practice that encompasses neither the rational, intellectual dimensions of male practice nor the aesthetic
{"title":"Crafting Identity as a Tea Practitioner in Early Modern Japan: Ōtagaki Rengetsu and Tagami Kikusha","authors":"Rebecca Corbett","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Premodern Japanese tea culture has been depicted overwhelmingly as a male activity. Reading any standard history of tea culture, we learn about the merchants who formalized the practice in the late sixteenth century and the warlords they served; the warrior tea masters who continued to develop the practice and philosophy throughout Japan’s early modern period; the wealthy industrialist-connoisseurs in the early twentieth century; and the grand masters of the now dominant Sen-family schools of tea (Urasenke, Omotesenke, and Mushanokojisenke).1 When women do feature in either popular or academic discussion of tea culture, they generally figure as middle-class housewives in modern Japan who are learning tea culture as a way of cultivating gender and national identity, the assumption being that by studying tea they learn how to be a proper Japanese woman.2 Female tea practitioners from the early modern period (1600–1868) are generally presented as exceptions to the norm, such as women of the imperial family who were able to practice tea because of their high status.3 Even then, a divide is perceived between men’s tea practice, whether historically or in the modern period, and women’s tea practice. Men’s tea practice is said to be focused on connoisseurship, the collecting of tea utensils as art, and an intellectual or philosophical understanding of tea culture. Women’s tea practice is said to be about learning comportment, etiquette, and manners—a mode of practice that encompasses neither the rational, intellectual dimensions of male practice nor the aesthetic","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"27 1","pages":"27 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86556976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Shōjo manga are filled with rivalries between innocent and naive young girls and evil older women. Antagonism between pure-hearted young women and villainous older women has been communicated to shōjo manga from bishōjo manga written by and for men through the process of narrative consumption and reproduction. To understand why this is so, this essay examines the work of three Japanese cultural theorists on the topic of the bishōjo, or beautiful girl, character type. The ultimate goal of this essay, however, is to argue that female manga artists are fully aware of the cycle of narrative consumption and reproduction, and are thus able to intervene in and disrupt the process and offer new interpretations of female character types that are empowering to female readers. On February 9, 2011, the New York Times published an article entitled “In Tokyo, a Crackdown on Sexual Images of Minors.”1 Although the “sexual images” in question come from a variety of media, such as adult films and role-playing video games, the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Minors (Tōkyō-to Seishōnen no Kenzen Naikusei ni Kan Suru Jōrei), or the “Tokyo Youth Ordinance Act,” passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on December 15, 2010, specifically targets manga featuring young female characters in what are deemed to be sexually compromising poses or situations.2 The journalist who penned the article, Hiroko Tabuchi, quotes Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintarō as saying of the manga in question that “these are for abnormal people, for perverts.” The article sensationalizes the media that Ishihara hopes to censor as child pornography by emphasizing the young ages and sexual exploitation of its models
Shōjo漫画充满了天真和天真的年轻女孩和邪恶的老年妇女之间的竞争。纯洁的年轻女性和邪恶的老年女性之间的对抗，通过叙事消费和复制的过程，从bishōjo的男性漫画传播到shōjo漫画。为了理解为什么会这样，本文考察了三位日本文化理论家关于bishōjo，或美丽女孩，角色类型主题的作品。然而，本文的最终目的是论证女性漫画艺术家充分意识到叙事消费和再生产的循环，因此能够介入和破坏这一过程，并为女性读者提供新的女性角色类型解释。2011年2月9日，《纽约时报》发表题为《东京打击未成年人色情图片》的文章。尽管这些“性形象”来自各种媒体，如成人电影和角色扮演电子游戏，但2010年12月15日东京都议会通过的《东京都未成年人健康发展条例》(Tōkyō-to Seishōnen no Kenzen Naikusei ni Kan Suru Jōrei)或《东京青年条例法》专门针对以年轻女性角色为主角的漫画，这些漫画被认为是性妥协的姿势或情境撰写这篇文章的记者Hiroko Tabuchi引用东京都知事石原慎太郎的话说:“这些漫画是给不正常的人看的，是给变态看的。”这篇文章通过强调模特的年龄和性剥削，使石原希望审查为儿童色情的媒体引起轰动
{"title":"Short Skirts and Superpowers: The Evolution of the Beautiful Fighting Girl","authors":"Kathryn Hemmann","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2015.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2015.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Shōjo manga are filled with rivalries between innocent and naive young girls and evil older women. Antagonism between pure-hearted young women and villainous older women has been communicated to shōjo manga from bishōjo manga written by and for men through the process of narrative consumption and reproduction. To understand why this is so, this essay examines the work of three Japanese cultural theorists on the topic of the bishōjo, or beautiful girl, character type. The ultimate goal of this essay, however, is to argue that female manga artists are fully aware of the cycle of narrative consumption and reproduction, and are thus able to intervene in and disrupt the process and offer new interpretations of female character types that are empowering to female readers. On February 9, 2011, the New York Times published an article entitled “In Tokyo, a Crackdown on Sexual Images of Minors.”1 Although the “sexual images” in question come from a variety of media, such as adult films and role-playing video games, the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Minors (Tōkyō-to Seishōnen no Kenzen Naikusei ni Kan Suru Jōrei), or the “Tokyo Youth Ordinance Act,” passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on December 15, 2010, specifically targets manga featuring young female characters in what are deemed to be sexually compromising poses or situations.2 The journalist who penned the article, Hiroko Tabuchi, quotes Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintarō as saying of the manga in question that “these are for abnormal people, for perverts.” The article sensationalizes the media that Ishihara hopes to censor as child pornography by emphasizing the young ages and sexual exploitation of its models","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"1 1","pages":"45 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90207715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction In 1906, at the height of the Tōhoku famine in Japan, four-year-old Tetsu1 was abruptly swept off the street by volunteer relief workers from the Okayama Orphanage with nothing but the clothes on her back. As she later recalled, “One day two men came by just as the streetcar pulled up and said ‘We’re taking you with us,’ and they grabbed me up.”2 Although Tetsu had a mother, stepfather, and seven siblings, because of her malnourished condition and impoverished status the Okayama Orphanage targeted her, with the approval of local authorities, as a child who needed saving. With the exception of her older brother Kichiya, who was also collected by orphanage volunteers and sent to Okayama, Tetsu was instantly severed from her family and would not reunite with any living relatives until adulthood. As is evident in her testimony translated below, this first encounter with the institutional power of the Okayama Orphanage, though perhaps the most dramatic, was only the first of many times the orphanage made crucial decisions that determined Tetsu’s economic and social fate as a woman. Tetsu was born in Fukushima City, Fukushima prefecture, in the Tōhoku region in 1901. Her family lived at the economic and social margins. Tetsu’s father and mother
{"title":"The Recollections of Tetsu: A Translation of Her Testimonial Narrative with Commentary","authors":"T. Maus","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2014.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2014.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction In 1906, at the height of the Tōhoku famine in Japan, four-year-old Tetsu1 was abruptly swept off the street by volunteer relief workers from the Okayama Orphanage with nothing but the clothes on her back. As she later recalled, “One day two men came by just as the streetcar pulled up and said ‘We’re taking you with us,’ and they grabbed me up.”2 Although Tetsu had a mother, stepfather, and seven siblings, because of her malnourished condition and impoverished status the Okayama Orphanage targeted her, with the approval of local authorities, as a child who needed saving. With the exception of her older brother Kichiya, who was also collected by orphanage volunteers and sent to Okayama, Tetsu was instantly severed from her family and would not reunite with any living relatives until adulthood. As is evident in her testimony translated below, this first encounter with the institutional power of the Okayama Orphanage, though perhaps the most dramatic, was only the first of many times the orphanage made crucial decisions that determined Tetsu’s economic and social fate as a woman. Tetsu was born in Fukushima City, Fukushima prefecture, in the Tōhoku region in 1901. Her family lived at the economic and social margins. Tetsu’s father and mother","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"76 1","pages":"101 - 126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73506857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the July 1934 issue of Taiwan fujinkai (Taiwan women’s world), a journal meant for women living in colonial Taiwan, the Japanese editor, Kakinuma Fumiaki (or Bunmei),1 published a story by an obscure Japanese woman writer. The story is “Sora wa kurenai” (The crimson sky), written by Ono Shizuko (dates unknown). It is about the trials and tribulations of three women who lead distinctly different lives—as a housewife, a moga (modern girl), and a political journalist—in the modern space of Tokyo. This essay examines the significance of this story about women in the naichi (Japan’s metropole), and of the decision to publish it in a colonial magazine meant mainly for Japanese women and elite Taiwanese women living in the gaichi (outer land or periphery). Specifically, I consider the complex gender and racial dynamic of this story written by and about Japanese women but published in a journal read by a colonial audience. I argue that discontinuity is a recurring theme both in the story’s meaning and in the circumstances under which it was published. This discontinuity reveals various layers of anxiety on the part both of the author of the story, who most likely wrote it for a Japanese audience, and of the editor of Taiwan fujinkai, who circulated it among a wider audience of Japanese and Taiwanese. The primary questions I address are (1) What was the author trying to articulate in her story about the role of women in 1930s Japan? and (2) What are the implications of publishing this story in
{"title":"Reading the Bodies and Voices of Naichi Women in Japanese-Ruled Taiwan","authors":"Anne Sokolsky","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2014.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2014.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In the July 1934 issue of Taiwan fujinkai (Taiwan women’s world), a journal meant for women living in colonial Taiwan, the Japanese editor, Kakinuma Fumiaki (or Bunmei),1 published a story by an obscure Japanese woman writer. The story is “Sora wa kurenai” (The crimson sky), written by Ono Shizuko (dates unknown). It is about the trials and tribulations of three women who lead distinctly different lives—as a housewife, a moga (modern girl), and a political journalist—in the modern space of Tokyo. This essay examines the significance of this story about women in the naichi (Japan’s metropole), and of the decision to publish it in a colonial magazine meant mainly for Japanese women and elite Taiwanese women living in the gaichi (outer land or periphery). Specifically, I consider the complex gender and racial dynamic of this story written by and about Japanese women but published in a journal read by a colonial audience. I argue that discontinuity is a recurring theme both in the story’s meaning and in the circumstances under which it was published. This discontinuity reveals various layers of anxiety on the part both of the author of the story, who most likely wrote it for a Japanese audience, and of the editor of Taiwan fujinkai, who circulated it among a wider audience of Japanese and Taiwanese. The primary questions I address are (1) What was the author trying to articulate in her story about the role of women in 1930s Japan? and (2) What are the implications of publishing this story in","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"61 1","pages":"51 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79614053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
After Japan's defeat in World War II, Occupation authorities extended to women a host of new rights that abolished the legal authority of the prewar paternalistic household (ie) system. The U.S.-authored draft of the postwar Japanese Constitution included an article explicitly mandating "the essential equality of the sexes," which required the Japanese to rewrite those parts of their Civil Code that conflicted with this basic precept. 1 As a result, Japanese women were granted many new rights, including the rights to vote and hold office, to choose their own spouses, and to enjoy equal opportunity in education. But while these Occupation-era reforms established a legal basis for gender equality, women attempting to exercise these newly awarded rights found that these efforts conflicted with persistent cultural values and beliefs upholding more conventional roles for women in Japanese society. In the early 1950s, as the Occupation ended and Japan reevaluated its postwar legacy, conservatives began organizing to repeal some of the more progressive legal reforms. They were met with fierce resistance from grassroots organizations of citizens from all walks of life, who feared a return to prewar militarist autocracy and passionately defended the new freedoms granted to them by these reforms. 2 In this heated debate between conservative and progressive camps, the "problem" of new roles for women in Japanese society featured prominently. Men fretted that their wives had become "scary" by failing to behave with due deference to the household patriarch. An influx of women into the workplace incited heated debate about women's role
{"title":"“Female Students Ruining the Nation”: The Debate over Coeducation in Postwar Japan","authors":"J. Bullock","doi":"10.1353/JWJ.2014.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/JWJ.2014.0000","url":null,"abstract":"After Japan's defeat in World War II, Occupation authorities extended to women a host of new rights that abolished the legal authority of the prewar paternalistic household (ie) system. The U.S.-authored draft of the postwar Japanese Constitution included an article explicitly mandating \"the essential equality of the sexes,\" which required the Japanese to rewrite those parts of their Civil Code that conflicted with this basic precept. 1 As a result, Japanese women were granted many new rights, including the rights to vote and hold office, to choose their own spouses, and to enjoy equal opportunity in education. But while these Occupation-era reforms established a legal basis for gender equality, women attempting to exercise these newly awarded rights found that these efforts conflicted with persistent cultural values and beliefs upholding more conventional roles for women in Japanese society. In the early 1950s, as the Occupation ended and Japan reevaluated its postwar legacy, conservatives began organizing to repeal some of the more progressive legal reforms. They were met with fierce resistance from grassroots organizations of citizens from all walks of life, who feared a return to prewar militarist autocracy and passionately defended the new freedoms granted to them by these reforms. 2 In this heated debate between conservative and progressive camps, the \"problem\" of new roles for women in Japanese society featured prominently. Men fretted that their wives had become \"scary\" by failing to behave with due deference to the household patriarch. An influx of women into the workplace incited heated debate about women's role","PeriodicalId":88338,"journal":{"name":"U.S.-Japan women's journal. English supplement = Nichi-Bei josei janaru. English supplement","volume":"1 1","pages":"23 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76336695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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