Female Subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga

female subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga (Japanese humorouss) Shoujo in Ladies Comics and issue Ladies Comics Fusami Ogi I. Sexist Reality and Ladies Comics Wo man advocates Lives and Experiences Shoujo manga get laidd a turning drumhead in the 1970s when much women began to choose dissimilar lives from those the traditional gender role system expected them to take. Although the Japanese genial system supports women as hearthst whizwives, the arrive of women who drop dead foreign the house has been increasing.In this article, I am going to survey the situation of women in Japan when ladies comics was born in the 1980s and consider how ladies comics could stimu youthful those womens voices. The ? rst subject of the musical style ladies comics is Be Love published by Kodansha in 1980. Its tar restore ref is an enceinte feminine approximately 25 to 30 years old. Generally, the target readers of ladies comics atomic number 18 adult women or shoujo who be al nig h adult. Ladies comics front to mother effected twain roles as a new kind of create verbally for women the ? st is to gravel womens desires when they be no foresightfuler girls and the second is to offer alternate role models to adult women. In these respects, ladies comics is a music literary musical music genre which ? rst requires identi? cation with the home cleaning lady, preferably than a genre which gives readers an objective point of ruling de? ned by the category fair sex. The number of ladies comics pickups increased as if re? ecting womens increased look up with their feature lives. There were scarcely two ladies comics in 1980, however the number went up to 8 in 1984, 19 in 1985, and 48 in 1991 (Shuppan 1996 201 1999 226).The 1980s, when ladies comics became quite popular, was a time in which acidulates women disrupted prejudiced myths which rescueed workings women as unattractive and cozyly frustrated (Buckley 1989 107). It is point outi? f orce outt that after 1985 the number of ladies comics increased dramatically, because in 780 egg-producing(prenominal) beativity and Shoujo Manga A 781 1985 Kikai kintou hou The Equal Employment Opportunity Law was passed in the Diet, which guarantees equal employment opportunities to two men and women. However, the justice was non strict and thither was no punishment stipulated if companies did non fol pitiful the police.Since the uprightness just assistd companies to arrange equal opportunities for both men and women, most women had to pertain their ? ght against the discrimination triggered by innovationness women (Shiota 2000 Ueno 1995 Ueno 1990 303 Sougou 1993 268 Bornoff 1991 452). Although the justness barred inner discrimination in the workplace, jobs and c arer expectations were hush gender coded. The law was passed on May 17 in 1985, and by April 1 in 1986 when the law became effective, companies man be ond to invent two new categories to classify full-time jobs sougou shoku managerial career track and ippan shoku regular service. correspond to Ueno Chizuko,1 in 1986, 99 % of male employees of new graduates were sedulous as sougou shoku, which complicates business trips and transfers to other sections or branches in the future, and 99% of pi thus farate employees recruited from among new graduates were employed as ippan shoku, which does non include the possibility of such transfer (Ueno 1990 303). A woman in an ippan shoku property is primarily called an O. L. , or of? ce lady. This position never allows the possibility of promotion. It is a position that re? ects the traditional womanish role as a housewife in a household.To cite Yuko Ogasawara Most of? ce ladies are non entrusted with work that fully exercises their abilities, but are instead assigned simple, routine clerical jobs. They excite little prospect of promotion, and their individuality is seldom respected, as evidenced by the situation that they are very muc h referred to as gifts. (1998 155) Of? ce work that included preparing and serving tea to male workers was mostly reserved for the of? ce ladies (Allison 1994 93). Ogasawara claims that Indeed, men in Japanese companies are dependent on women for their loyal and reliable assistance (1998 156). fit in to the data in 1996, women workers sate 8. 2% of all managerial posts in Japan, while in the US, 42. 7% of the managerial posts are held by women (Inoue 1999 115). The position of of? ce ladies further creates a glass ceiling. 782 A daybook of everyday cultivation The law was not a beaming avenue to equality between men and women. It was based on gender segregation. It forced female person workers to work as late hours and at as physical and demanding jobs as men, and raised the number of female take aparttime workers (Sougou 1993 268 Ueno 1995 702).According to Shiota Sakiko, in 1987, 48. 2% of wives of employees had a job, and more than than than 40% of the wives with a job were part-time workers (Shiota 2000 152). In fact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was not a law that encouraged women to trail long- condition careers. Rather, it was a law that aimed at protecting women who were withal set-aside(p) in housework. Protecting the position of housewives, the Japanese government has maintained women as a low cost, secondary labor force (Shiota 2000 175 Ueno 1995 700).Shiota declares that in the 1990s the easiest bearingstyle for a woman is remedy to choose the traditional female role, where a woman is economically supported by her keep up (Shiota 2000 165). Women who pursue careers have to choose either of two courses to give up housework or to ? nd a substitute in the legal residence for herself (Shiota 2000 87). In fact, it seems dif? cult for most women to give up housework. Therefore, jibe to Shiota, if she cannot ? nd a substitute in the home for herself, she has to do with both housework and outside employment.However, the number of women who are pursuing careers has been increasing. The Equal Employment Opportunity Law opened opportunities for some women. The number of women whose work is not secondary is increasing (Konno 2000 218-19). Moreover, the traditional form of marriage, in which men go out to work and women hang on at home, is becoming obsolete. Anne E. Imamura remarks In the 1990s The cost of living pushed women into the labor force, but the sluggish domestic economy skim into womens gains in the job market.Womens age at ? rst marriage rose to twenty-six, crossing the whoremonger number of twenty-? ve, when womenFthe the likes of Christmas cakesF were supposed to become stale. Women were in no hurry to marry, and once married had fewer children. (1996 4) despite the reality of the authoritative Japanese community, in which the birth rate (Inoue 1999 5)2 is decreasing, according to Shiota, most women who work outside the house regard child raising as a part of their future happiness (2000 84) . According to Shiota, egg-producing(prenominal) Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 783 n Japanese society, which values housework only in relation to housewives, women need different role models for their current lives from that of the conventional lifestyle for women, because more and more women do not conform to the conventional role models the society endorses. Ladies comics whitethorn provide women with such models and possible appraisals for their futures. This genre may help women to generate a plaza where they can amuse themselves as women and too consider their dif? culties in reality in the process of pursuing a more satisfying, ful? lling way of life.The increase in ladies comics magazines seems to re? ect womens consciousness-raising vis a vis their position both within and outside the house. As we have seen, the Japanese social system has been more supportive of the position of housewife, which resulted in the increase in the number of housewives who in like manne r worked outside the home as part-time workers. The position as a part-time worker oblige a double bind on a woman housework has continued being regarded as a womans duty and the womans labor force outside the house has been kept as secondary.However, the number of housewives who are engaged only in housework is decreasing and more women are participating in work outside the home. The Employment Equal Opportunity Law did not bring many an(prenominal) bene? ts to working women, but as Ueno points out, the law permitted companies to require women to work outside the home as hard as men (Ueno 1995 702). This meant that women had to be like men to work outside, but it in addition gave both men and women an opportunity to reconsider actual gender roles.That is to say, the law ironically exposed the fact that women were not the only angiotensin converting enzymes that had suffered from traditional gender roles. Shoujo in Ladies Comics Ladies comics has become a genre which re? ects t he coetaneous dif? culties of womens lives and their pleasures. In order to present women, the women hold openrs each pursue the image in their own manner. As I pointed out ahead, the next two roles are crucial to examining ladies comics as writing for women the ? st is to present womens desires when they are no longer girls and the second is to offer role models to adult women. In this section, I would like to look for 784 A Journal of universal coating these two points in turn, considering how ladies comics, as intended intelligiblely for a woman who is no longer a shoujo, is autonomous of shoujo manga, if they cool off share some aspects, I would like to examine how they rework the innovation of gender and how the social background has been re? ected in those aspects. 1.A Woman as Sexual Subject The most crucial reason for the popularity of ladies comics in the 1980s, according to critics (Matsuzawa 1999 29 Ishida 1992 76), is the introduction of the al-Qaida of sex activity. Because shoujo is a common word in Japanese meaning a teen-aged female before marriage, it was very dif? cult to bay window with the theme of inner urge in shoujo manga, in spite of its being a genre for women, by women, and near women. As a result, in the 1970s shoujo manga created a supererogatory way to use the male body in order to introduce the theme of versedity.Ladies comics visualizes the theme of sexuality using adult womens bodies. Ladies comics offered the theme of sexuality to both women importrs and readers in a more adequate way for their age (Yonezawa 1988 168) and the issues positively represent sexuality, showing women who frankly enjoy their sexual affairs (Fujimoto 1999b 84). Employing womens own bodies, ladies comics provided women, who were not allowed to be in a subject position for their sexuality and pleasure, with a space in which they can acknowledge and accept their sexuality.However at this point, we have a problem with ladies comics in t hat the text editions represent womens roles only from womens points of posture. For example, explicit sexual encounters from a female adorers point of charm are oftentimes depicted in ladies comics, which seem to challenge the adult give-and-take of maleoriented publishers. This may heighten womans consciousness, suggesting that women can in any case gain a subject position from which they can look at and objectify males.But we cannot say that the texts do not reinscribe the man/woman power relationship because they are written for female readers alone and thus do not modify male readers in any way. As long as these texts explore women only from the point of view of straightaway women, the use of women by women is not much different from mens use of women for purposes of sexual titillation (Pollock 1977 142), which Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 785 retains the hierarchical power relationship they remain mere image-promoters rather than image-makers.This limitatio n of ladies comics is re? ected in the fact that ladies comics present marriage as a natural closing for a woman. As Arimitsu Mamiko remarks, ladies comics mainly functioned as a reinscription of patriarchal values and a female pas seul of pornography (Arimitsu 1991 154). As long as the sections in ladies comics enquiry whether they can get married or continue their marriage safely, they never question the system itself. To envision a womans future position as a happy housewife and mother major power even enhance the myth of motherhood as a natural result of marriage.Here women objectify themselves according to patriarchal codes, reinforcing heterosexual gender roles and preserving a ? xed ideology. Considering that the genre ladies comics does not abandon the traditional view of women but perpetuates it, we cannot help but see the genre reinscribing the existing value of gender. However, considering the turning point in shoujo manga in ground of sexuality in the 1970s, it is crucial to note that ladies comics provided women with a space in which they could confront and acknowledge their own bodies.Although most ladies comics aptitude only represent the traditional power relationship between men and women, the space of women in manga for women has been changing, generating different forms. The history of shoujo manga as womens space has existed for only a few decades and has offered various ship canal to challenge the existing gender roles. After the turning point in the 1970s, in which shoujo manga introduced the subversive theme of sexuality, shoujo as a female body has been secured by employing a boys body to explore the theme of sexuality. In experimental conditions of the theme of sexuality, ladies comics is one of the failures of shoujo manga. adies comics is a genre which can deal with explicit sexuality that shoujo manga could not handle. As a gendered category for women, ladies comics is a progenyer sister of shoujo manga. But ladies comics is not a genre which takes over the distinctives of shoujo manga regarding sexuality. Instead, dealing with a taboo subject for shoujos sexuality, ladies comics is a genre for a woman who fails to be a shoujo. Shoujo manga has interpellated readers and writers in terms of gender, while portraying taboo subjects in the form of the absence of the shoujo.The category ladies comics as a womens genre would alike tell women how to perform as 786 A Journal of Popular Culture women and signal writers and readers that they are reading what has been written for adult women, while portraying what shoujo cannot be or do. Here, the existence of ladies comics, which promises womens sexual pleasure, seemingly performs what adult women want, and reinscribes the existing power relationship between man and woman merely by replacing male gazes with female gazes.However, as a failure of the category shoujo manga, it overly disturbs a woman when she sees her sexuality in a traditional way. As a suppo sedly sexual subject in pornographic representations for women in ladies comics, a female reader may enjoy her sexual desire, but may in addition see her sexual desire of an adult woman as a failure of a shoujo or what is not shoujo. The female sexual subject of ladies comics destabilizes the idea of shoujo, which does not contain female sexuality of women and does not present womens bodies.Ladies comics, as a category for women, reinscribes the traditional values of women, but at the similar time, as a failure of shoujo manga, promising to introduce what shoujo or a future woman should not have, stimulates the humankind of comics for women. This characteristic of ladies comics, which presents what shoujo manga cannot contain, might emphasize and give away ladies comics as pornographic representations of womens bodies, which could not directly be represent in shoujo manga and needed to be transformed into other bodies.In this reek, pornographic representations of ladies comic s are part of the concept of shoujo and its absence, rather than a result of a mere reversal of a male and female power relationship which merely looks at a womans body as a sexual object. 2. Role Models to Women Another function of ladies comics has been to present various images of womens lifestyles as role models for other women. in the main dealing with themes which closely report womens daily lives such as deal, marriage, and work (Yonezawa 2000 1009), the purpose of the genre has been to describe real womens lives (cf.Fujimoto 1990 193-94). A shoujo manga writer, Shouji Masako, who is currently writing ladies comics, comments that writing shoujo manga is easier than writing ladies comics, because in shoujo manga you can Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 787 pursue dreams and readers would not recognize them as breathes (Shouji Masako 1983 110). A realist perspective on womens lives is one difference between shoujo manga and ladies comics. Since the 1970s, one of the cr ucial reasons for shoujo manga to be treated as stark ? ction has been its use of fantastic illusions in addition to realistic concepts.As Fujimoto Yukari remarks, in the valet de chambre of shoujo manga, most of the working womens occupations are special ones such as designers, pianists, actresses, or models, where talent and originality matter ladies comics, however, even in the late 1980s, depict common womens daily lives (Fujimoto 1994). Offering various familiar lifestyles and their problems, ladies comics becomes a field of force in which women can see their own lives as women. However, ladies comics, as well as shoujo manga, does not unendingly encourage women to be independent (Matsuzawa 1999 29) and to ? ht traditional, patriarchal values, which compel women to stay within a subsidiary position. For example, Waru A evil Girl, a long-run ladies comic from 1988 to 1997 in Be Love, presents the success story of a woman who constantly overcomes the dif? culties of her low er status as an of? ce lady and at the same time never gives up her live. Some readers regard Waru as an example of ladies comics with a feminist point of view which encourages women readers to be independent (Sakamoto 1999 27).At the same time, this work has been criticized in that the heroine is totally passive and merely lucky (Erino 1991 177). Erino Miya claims that the heroine does not do anything to further her career. The protagonist only accepts other peoples advice, and never doubts it, and she is asked to do things which seem to have no relation to her career, such as to remember a sweepers name. This work only regards a woman as a person who cannot do anything without help and never discovers her life by herself, but always thinks nearly love.Although some ladies comics depict the severe and unequal reality which women may appear at the of? ce, most stories end with a happy marriage to a nice husband. tho according to Murakami Tomohiko, since the 1990s, ladies comics began to be regarded as a genre which also deals with social issues. Until then, ladies comics had drawn attention only to its pornographic and radically sexual scenes (Murakami 2000 1006). As a genre which deals with womens 788 A Journal of Popular Culture eality, ladies comics began to focus on more social and political issues, such as domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, and so on, presenting how the woman character tackles the problems, suffers, and sometimes makes mistakes, rather than clearly suggesting which solution she should take. Ladies comics draws both womens reality and their fantasies in a more serious way than shoujo manga, in that shoujo are at an age when they can still enjoy illusions of gender, while the reality faced by readers of ladies comics requires them to consider marriage as if it were a social obligation.The theme of marriage in ladies comics begins to appear as one social and political issue, while shoujo manga deals only with a process to marri age. Moreover, differently from shoujo manga, ladies comics can present issues after marriage, including divorce as a adept theme. For example, Amane Kazumi, one of the most harvest-feastive ladies comics writers, deals with current womens issues in a serious way. Shelter, one of her ladies comics, depicts a woman who is beaten by her husband (see manikin 1). They had two daughters. The spring chickener daughter was very alacrity and her fathers favorite.After she died in an accident on her way home with her mother, the fathers violence toward his family erupts. His violence unveils his male-centered values and contempt toward his wife. The wife and their elder daughter escape from the husband and go to a shelter for battered women. Shelter depicts how the female protagonist overcomes her problem, recovers her con? dence, and regains an independent life, which she once had as a lawyer. Presenting other women who share the same problem, this work considers different cases of dom estic violence.As we see in this manga, ladies comics as a genre about women living in reality as adults, seems to show more concern about the process of how the heroine and other women assortment their lives, rather than about a solution lead story to a happy ending. This work not only reveals male dominance within society, but also portrays each womans ? aws and how she easily spoils her partner and their relationship without knowing it, for example, by only being touch on about her ? nancial status and being supported by her husband although she does not love her husband any more.In this work, each story ends when a woman decides to change her life in a positive way, which leaves an impression of a happy ending. Yet in fact, it is not simply a happy ending. It is a new beginning for her life, Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 789 Figure 1. Amane Kazumi. Shelter. capital of Japan Hakusensha, 2001. 26-27. r 2000 Kazumi Amane/Hakusenha. which is not guaranteed to be a better life than before. However, some reference to the actual law related to womens status and reliable comments by the heroine as a lawyer may suggest to readers that this manga could help and encourage women who are in reality suffering from a problem.Thus, ladies comics develops as a genre for female readers and their issues, which shoujo manga could not take up. Nevertheless, ladies comics seems still to contain a conventional sense of femininity, which shoujo manga also displays as a genre. The following two points especially emphasize the traditional concept of femininity in ladies comics. First, as I suggested before, ladies comics presents many women who depend upon their husbands or partners and are waiting for someone who would lead them and love them.Second, ladies comics rarely present ripened or middle-aged female protagonists, although the genre was generated from womens need to grow up. 790 A Journal of Popular Culture The ? rst point supports a passive femininity like t hat of Cinderella which can be seen in shoujo manga. As we have examined, it also re? ects the current status of Japanese women, in which, as Shiota and other critics remark, the traditional womans life as a housewife totally supported by her husband has been the easiest, most traditional, and socially acceptable life for women to choose.This may explain why ladies comics are more concerned with marriage, than with women living independently of marriage. However, as we have seen in Shelter, the treatment of marriage has been changing and ladies comics is becoming a genre which shows the problems of current social issues about women who can be part of an unhappy marriage. The second point also re? ects traditional femininity. That is to say, in the world of ladies comics, the concept of youth seems still effective as a break concept of ideal femininity, just like in the world of shoujo.In simile with mens comics which presents many middle-aged male main characters, ladies comics, w hich rarely show older females as main characters, seem a part of shoujo manga, rather than an independent genre. One of the characteristics of the genre for adults might lie in its treatment of various types of characters in part de? ned by age. In this respect, ladies comics as a genre for women could have foc utilize on widely aged female characters and have even expanded a sense of femininity regarding age.However, middle-aged women, as Susan Napier points out, have been excluded from the world of manga It is also interesting to note that there seem to be relatively few manga concerning middleaged women or mothers in contemporary Japan (Napier 1998 105). Nevertheless, in affinity to other genres, we ? nd more middle-aged and older women characters in ladies comics as subcharacters. Their problems are depicted from the recenter heroines point of view, and in that sense, ladies comics at least do not ignore elder women, but include them.Thus, ladies comics still maintains the tr aditional sense of femininity, which shoujo manga also holds as part of its conventional sense of shoujo. In this respect, ladies comics has not made a genre of manga for women in a general sense yet. Rather, ladies comics is a genre which presents what shoujo manga cannot do. In other words, dealing with both tradition and sub mutant to the existing notion of shoujo and making a racket between them to destabilize the existing system must be a way which ladies comics takes over from shoujo manga. Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 791Promising to show women who are not shoujo any more, ladies comics stimulates readers existing notion about women who still recognize imaginary shoujo in themselves. However these days, we see the term josei manga, which means manga for women, and which tries to replace the term ladies comics. Although it has not emerged yet, in a strict sense that there are no manga for women of different ages, this genre is gradually moving away from shoujo manga to a womens genre. Performing what cannot be shoujo and promising the emergence of a genre of manga for women, the genre adies comics may also continuously urge women not to depend on the variant anymore between shoujo manga for shoujo and ladies comics for women who are not shoujo, which divides women into only two types that supposedly never merge. Writing Women and Shoujo Manga The number of ladies comics magazines increased from two in 1980 to 48 in 1991, and to 57 in 1993, as I celebrated earlier. By 1998 the number had shrunk somewhat to 54. They still have a large readership, although their publication was reduced in the late 1990s.The total publication including special issues of ladies comics in 1998 was 103,820,000, which comprises 7% of all manga publication the highest total publication of ladies comics was 133,520,000 in 1991 (Shuppan 1999 226). However, the concept of ladies comics has gradually changed. As we have seen, the contents of ladies comics have experience d some change in that ladies comics also became a genre of political and social issues. Further, other genre of manga for women emerged from ladies comics and shoujo manga.In the late 1980s and 1990s, a different type of commercial magazine of manga for women came out Young You in 1987, Young Rose in 1990, and Feel Young in 1991. While some data count these magazines as ladies comics, they have been regarded by critics and readers as another genre (Ishida 1992 76 Fujimoto 1999a 28). Since these early magazines share the word childlike in their titles, the new genre has been called Young ladies comics. 3 Their target readers range from girls in their late teens to women under(a) thirty.Yet the genre seems to cover a wider range of readers, since there are characters over thirty and readers pages often show letters from middle-aged 792 A Journal of Popular Culture women. Although we manage to distinguish these deuce-ace genres, the actual boundaries regarding contents, readers, an d writers among shoujo manga, issue ladies comics, and ladies comics are somewhat vague, perhaps except for shoujo manga for lower teens and the special interest of ladies comics in pornography, horror comics, mothering, and so on (Yonezawa 2000 1009). Besides, some early days ladies comics magazines call themselves shoujo manga. For example, a phrase of the copy for Chorus, one of the popular young ladies comics magazines, signi? es the status of young ladies comics shoujo manga mo otona ni naru shoujo manga also grows up. Young ladies comics is a contradictory genre which at once contains sexuality, shoujo, and adult women. How might we explain the contradictory impulses at work in the new genre, which has both characteristics of shoujo manga and ladies comics, and at the same time, is different from the existing two genres in terms of womens lives?I will explore what enables this alternative perspective, which can share and separate the two genres at the same time, considering how the genre young ladies comics can open a different perspective in the world of manga for women, and how the term shoujo, which these troika genres share, functions upon this genre to create a new writing. Since the genre contains shoujo, young ladies comics can be regarded as a part of shoujo manga, but it also contains adult women and their issues and has characteristics of ladies comics. In this sense, young ladies comics is a genre between shoujo manga and ladies comics.As Fujimoto remarks, the concept of marriage seems to play an important role to distinguish these three genres. shoujo manga represents women before marriage and ladies comics deals with women after marriage, while young ladies comics represents both womens lives before and after marriage. Fujimotos idea of the division between shoujo manga and ladies comics, i. e. , marriage, suggests that both shoujo manga and ladies comics are patriarchal products. Ishida Saeko also sees young ladies comics as a product be tween shoujo manga and ladies comics.Yet Ishida regards young ladies comics as manga closer to shoujo manga. According to Ishida, although it contains sexuality, the genre takes over the world of shoujo manga, which is more concerned with shoujos inner mind and cannot escape the narrow and personal world of herself. In this respect, young ladies comics is not a totally new genre. That is because shoujo manga as the ? rst genre of Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 793 manga for women has firmly affected other genres of manga in terms of women, especially this genre which employs shoujo as main characters.Yet simultaneously, we may also ? nd some signi? cant characteristics in young ladies comics, in its treatment of the same term shoujo. These three genres share the concept of shoujo, but their modes of representation are different. Shoujo manga has shoujo, ladies comics has a taboo concept for shoujo in the form of sexuality, and young ladies comics has shoujo, although it de als with sexuality. They are all manga, for women, by women, of women, but make use of the concept of women in terms of shoujo differently .The characteristic of young ladies comics appears in its treatment of shoujo and reality, which distinguishes this new genre from shoujo manga and ladies comics. On the one hand, shoujo manga visualizes the concept of shoujo and, as I suggested, even if it introduces taboo concepts like displacement into male bodies to shoujo, readers would notice their existence in the form of the absence of shoujo. On the other hand, ladies comics deals with what is taboo to shoujo as a counter category to shoujo manga and tries to depict adult womens real lives and issues which shoujo manga cannot imagine.Young ladies comics maintains a shoujos point of view, but it also inherits a characteristic from ladies comics, which surveys reality rather than fantasy and tries to present shoujos life and issues as part of the reality surrounding them, just like ladies comics tries to deal with womens issues and lives from their own perspective as women. schooling works published as young ladies comics, we would never think at least at the ? rst peek that they are presenting reality. Many elements remind readers of shoujo manga their valued characters with big eyes, their concern for love and inner feelings, and special situations or happenings which would rarely occur to actual girls. Yet their concern for reality makes young ladies comics unique and different from shoujo manga. For example, let us examine Onna tachi no miyako Womens Utopia (1992-1994) by Matsunae Akemi, one of the most productive and popular shoujo manga writers who also writes for young ladies comics. In the late 1980s, an early series of this manga was published as shoujo manga.From 1988 to 1990, Katorea na onna tachi Women Like Cattleya, which employs the same characters, was published in LaLa, and from 1992 to 1994, Onna tachi no miyako was published in posy. 794 A Jou rnal of Popular Culture LaLa and Bouquet are both shoujo manga magazines. In 1993, the series was also published in a new magazine Chorus, which has been one of the popular young ladies magazines. This work experienced a transition from shoujo manga to young ladies comics. It is about three women characters running a nursing home for elderly people. At ? rst glance, this work may seem to present typical cute shoujo characters. because without delay, we notice that this manga uses the term shoujo in a double sense. One is shoujo in their teens and the other is shoujo in an ideologic sense, which signi? es women who have either shoujos mind and feelings or display despite their age, even if they are in their seventies. In Figure 2, an interviewer mistakenly asks them a question for girls. The interviewer immediately runs away after she notices that she made a mistake, but the aged girls complain why the interviewer does not de? ne a girls age up to 74, instead of 24. Using aged prot agonists, this manga unveils how the term shoujo is ? ated on the notion of youth. Simultaneously, this manga portrays issues of old age and sometimes depicts aged characters pasts, Figure 2. Matsunae Akemi. Onna tachi no miyako. Vol. 1. Tokyo Shueisha, 1994. 7-8. r 1994 Matsunae Akemi/SHUEISHA, Inc. Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 795 in which they were physically shoujo. Not seriously, but comically, this work depicts how they had to suffer as shoujo in a traditional world under the patriarchal society before the war, suggesting a contrast with the current meaning of shoujo, which appears totally liberal in the story.This disruption of the notion of age in the world of shoujo manga, which after moved into the category young ladies comics, might tell us how the term shoujo began to become a sign which can ? oat step down from the body of shoujo. The characters insist that they are still shoujo. Yet their existence as shoujo might subvert our notion of the existing shoujo a nd the traditional shoujo image. In this work, shoujo is not a body anymore, but is an ideological concept that suggests that everyone can be shoujo if they want. Young ladies comics is a genre which visually uses shoujo mangas technique and presents cute girls.Like ladies comics, the genre centers on female characters and their issues, but its representation offers ? exible images of shoujo, which does not always show the aright aged shoujo. The notion of shoujo can be applied to any body beyond its physical sense of being a teenaged female before marriage. A con? ict between the notion of shoujo and what is in truth presented as shoujo subjects gives a twist to the world of shoujo. Young ladies comics is about shoujo, and does not always show a taboo concept to the category shoujo, as ladies comics tries to show.This aspect of young ladies comics, once again, refers to the fact that shoujo can be a signi? er which freely moves from the existing bodies of shoujo, emphasizing itsel f as an ideological notion, from which readers may take and get out whatever they want. Furthermore, such different treatments of reality among these three genres will appear in their different endings. A typical shoujo manga has been regarded as the story, of a prince and a princess with a happy ending to a love story such as Cinderella, in which a lower-status girl gains a higher-status husband through magic.Ladies comics present their works as part of real lives and expect the ending to provide readers with an actual solution which they would also have in their lives. Young ladies comics also concerns reality and many women writers for this genre claim that they want to write manga which does not end but continues in the same way as the real life that they are having now continues. In general, they regard shoujo manga as a limited genre which does not allow them to write what they are writing currently. The concept of the real 796 A Journal of Popular Culture ppears as if it were a common key word among them regarding their comments on the limit of shoujo manga. However, the concept of the real, which young ladies comics deals with, also seems to have a unique message, because young ladies comics does not abandon shoujos point of view, which also allows readers to see dreams. Despite its concern about real lives of women, the concept of shoujo still remains in young ladies comics. Yet, the difference between shoujo manga and young ladies comics can be found in their treatment of this shoujo. Basically, shoujo manga shows the world of a girl before the age of social duty.Young ladies comics seemingly present a similar world in which a character can appear as shoujo without any social obligations. However, young ladies comics also emphasize some aspects of the protagonist, which focus that she has also been living in a real life. In reality, she gets hurt, gets old, or gets changed in some way. She also witnesses somebody experiencing a change. A shoujo prot agonist in young ladies comics appears not as a fugitive existence which will ? nish once the story ends, but as an actual existence, just like the readers who are living and continue their lives after the story ends.This perspective, which sees shoujos life as one that will continue after the story ends, is common among popular authors in the ? eld of young ladies comics. For example, a wellreceived young ladies comics, Happy-Mania, by Anno Moyoko, which started in 1995 and ended in July 2001, presents a unique shoujo character, who easily makes love but cannot ? nd a boy whom she can trust. Unlike the existing type of shoujo, this heroine uses her body as her ? rst step to love. Anno says that she now writes a real love story with sexual scenes which Anno herself could have experienced but shoujo manga discourages (Anno 1999 160).For example, in Figure 3, the protagonist is excited about her new love, while her friend, who is drawn as a smaller ? gure, asks her if they used a cond om or not. Tracing this protagonist, who is easily blinded by her love, this story continues to show various cases of love affairs which young women might experience. Figure 4 shows a moment when she ? nds out that her boyfriend has another girlfriend. That does not end her love, and the story continues showing her pursuing her boyfriend until she becomes something like a stalker and ? nally notices what she is doing for a worthless male she decides to ? d another lover. And then, another story Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 797 Figure 3. Anno Moyoko. Happy-Mania. Vol. 1. Tokyo Shodensha, 1996. 97. r 1996 Anno Moyoko/Shodensha. 798 A Journal of Popular Culture Figure 4. Anno Moyoko. Happy-Mania. Vol 1. Tokyo Shodensha, 1996. 112. r 1996 Anno Moyoko/Shodensha. Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 799 about this protagonist begins. Although readers of shoujo manga may expect a happy ending, the readers here do not necessarily expect one (Anno 1999 164). Moreover, Minami Qta, one of the popular young ladies comics writers, denies the concept of ending itself.Her work is quite different from typical shounen (boys) and shoujo manga which offer a clear ending. According to her (Minami 1997 196), typical shounen and shoujo manga are stories about gaining something. Shounen manga deal with the pursuit of power, money, or a position, while shoujo manga aims at attracting a handsome boy. Yet, to her, reality does not cease the moment something has been attained. Makimura Satoru, a popular and renowned shoujo manga writer who has written for shoujo manga since the 1970s, refers to how she felt when she began writing for young ladies comics (Makimura 1999).She thought that she could not write any more dream-like works for manga. She handleed to write reality, in which as long as she lived, she would face more uncomfortable facts. At the same time, she did not totally abandon shoujo manga. Yet she composed her works in a different way, using some aspects of shou jo manga. She began research outside the world of shoujo manga. Researching readers by herself, she found how deceitful and ? ctitious what she had written as shoujo manga was. Here, what she notes as the importance in the category genre of young ladies comics is to present reality. These young ladies comics writers ? nd shoujo manga full of deceits which tell only comforting myths to entertain shoujo with dreamlike ideas young ladies comics allow them to write something other than fantasy. In fact, many popular young ladies comics writers share this wish for the real. Onozuka Kahori, another popular young ladies comics writer, also makes similar comments that she is writing a life, not a story, with upheavals, which might even hurt you. They wish to show how shoujo will be if she continues her life. Even after the story ends, their characters lives would continue.Onozuka suggests that she would like to send a message to readers, which suggests that even if they can be hurt, they will be ? ne, and such experience will give them power to continue their lives (Onozuka 1999 30). However, in speaking about the real that shoujo manga cannot present, we should note that these young ladies comics 800 A Journal of Popular Culture writers point out facts. On the one hand, they have shoujo, and on the other hand, they want the shoujo to grow up, move, and change. Can shoujo grow up? The term shoujo is a category for girls during a special period in which they are neither children nor adults.Yet some heroines in young ladies comics seem to already have grown up because they deal with the theme of sexuality. Considering the ideological function of the category shoujo, which has used even her absence as her substance, we note a similar function of the category shoujo in young ladies comics, which uses shoujos absence, rather than showing a heroine who is shoujo. By offering a heroine who grows up enough to deal with sexuality, but has not found a way to settle down herse lf in accordance with the social codes which her gender requires, such as marriage, young ladies comics make use of the concept of shoujo.This heroine, who already has a sexual body of a woman, offers shoujos absence, rather than her existence. The absence of shoujo functions here again as a key to perceiving the connection of the manga with a real life, which shoujo does not have young ladies comics resists idealization which portrays only one part of her life as if it were the best moment. The genre of ladies comics, which employs the theme of sexuality and womens bodies and their issues, has been a practice of how to develop what shoujo manga has treated in the form of the absence of shoujo to describe womens sexuality and their adult lives.Ladies comics enabled what shoujo manga could not contain. Then young ladies comics was born and dealt with what ladies comics could not contain. exhibit both what ladies comics cannot contain and what shoujo manga cannot contain, the new gen re, temporarily called young ladies comics, seems to occupy a place in between shoujo manga and ladies comics, but it is more than that, rooted in the term shoujo. Showing the body of shoujo, it alters the meaning of shoujo into that of a future adult woman, who is still in the process of changing and considering her life in reality.In 1999, the Kikai kintou hou The Equal Employment Opportunity Law of 1985 was amended. A clause concerning sexual harassment was added and the law became stricter. The older version of the law only encouraged companies not to discriminate against women, but the revised law bans discrimination in promotion, education, and so on. It becomes a companys duty not to discriminate against employees in terms Female Subjectivity and Shoujo Manga A 801 of gender. However, there are still many points which need to be amended.For example, the new clause concerning sexual harassment does not ban sexual harassment. According to the new version of the law, it is a com panys duty to take sexual harassment into consideration. Under such circumstances, womens struggle at work will continue. The category shoujo functions as an ideological apparatus for women to be free from social obligations such as marriage. Womens world of manga began with the term of shoujo. Even a new genre for adult women has been formed out of shoujo manga and seems to be still part of shoujo, which could escape from the reality and social obligation. houjo still functions as an important aspect of comics for women. When will women in Japan escape the world of shoujo? The Japanese society imposes many problems on women although women are trying to get out of the category shoujo, which they claim ignores reality. However, women continue to question the disconnection between the category shoujo and themselves as adult women, allowing them both to think of their actual lives from the point of view of a shoujo who has not been involved in social obligations yet, and to imagine th emselves as shoujo.In that sense, the category shoujo still gives female readers a performative power by promising to show another perspective which is the reality in which they live, in a process of their search for their own way of living. Notes Japanese names appear in the same order as they appear in their articles or books. 2 Number of children to whom one woman shall give birth when she is between the ages of 15 and 49 years old. 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