shoujo
- May 8, 2018
- 5 min read
The manga as we know today, developed after the WWII and US occupation of Japan. The Japan student movement of the 1960s symbolized the great rift between the pre-war and post-war generations. This younger generation was a product of a foreign and an entirely new curriculum and attended higher levels of schools by higher rates, thus these riots were generally known as a ‘student movement’ which protested Japan’s government, US occupation of Japan during the Vietnam wars and the traditional social hierarchy.
Manga was a subculture widely enjoyed by the Japanese youth at the time, since the baby boomers were numerous, the manga industry catered to them from an early age, gradually adjusting comic books as the boomers aged and the baby boomers contained the first generation of Japanese folks who did not stop reading manga in their late teens.
Reports of students from elite universities reading manga behind the barricades were first met with disbelief due to the notion that manga was simply comics for young children. Manga characters were used as mascots and painted on protest banners, placards and also on the activists’ helmets in order to identify their sect affiliation.
The riots were driven by a generation entering adulthood with a new ideological climate, questioning a culture that thought in terms of hierarchy, authority and social standing and emphasized on familial and national duties. It was also aware of itself as the first subculture to oppose cultural norms regarding love, sexuality and relationship in general.
The 1960s also saw the rise of Japan’s Feminist Movement, better known as ūman ribu. According to the scholar, Rebecca Copeland, “‘Woman’ was positioned as a metaphor for all that was backward and shameful in Japan.” Femininity was the symbol of the weakness Japan had to endure at the mercy of countries that were more powerful.
Femininity expressed in manners that did not align with traditional ways was unacceptable, women who strived for something beyond marriage, or showed any form of cultural disobedience were considered to be degenerates and were smeared in the public by the media. Hence the movement focused highly on criticizing the negative stigma, denouncing the male-centric Japanese National Imperialist ideologies where women were considered to be at the bottom and the state-promoted structural violence against women.
Liberation of sex and reclaiming derogatory slurs by denouncing the family system were one of the priorities of this movement. They were trying to change society by rejecting the
gendered expectations of their time, not removing themselves from it but offering up other possibilities, and had some what succeeded in removing the negative connotations with the word ‘woman’, and legitimizing the self-expression and self-determination of women as valid and authentic, paving the way for the shōjo culture to come to light
Although ūman ribu spearheaded the shōjo movement, the word shōjo and the shōjo culture can be traced back to the early 1900s, to when the Meiji government pushed to spread literacy among young girls by the creation of female-targeted literature and when middle-class and upper-class families sent their daughters to boarding school. The girls at boarding schools were instilled education that made them be the government-regulated standard for female behaviour and were expected to embody the peak of feminine goodness. These perfect wives were the original shōjo.
The works of Yoshiya Nobuko, an openly lesbian writer strongly influenced and helped shape the modern shōjo culture. She is also known as the founder of the shōjo culture and is well known for her celebration of the ultra-feminine. Her stories celebrated the lives and experiences of girls and women without violating the gendered expectations of her time, her resistance against the status quo of women was not by defamation of the family system but by the recognition of the values and virtues of the Japanese women.
Although these boarding schools were opened in order to mould young girls into the pinnacle of morality, an unintended side effect was created in the space independent of a father or a husband. This new development of modern life threatened the gendered expectations held for centuries. Women is this space began to be viewed as dangerous, and morally bereft, and their actions led them to be labelled as furyō shōjo which literally meant “bad girls” which not only implied badness, but also delinquency and inferiority.
Wifehood was still considered as the certain eventuality for these girls, if they did not desire to be married, the only other form of self expression was a child, hence we have the shōjo, an awkward contrast of a young woman experiencing sexual maturity for the first time while expressing herself with the semblance of a child. This infantilized visage helped a shōjo escape the responsibilities of adulthood also escape being sexualized.
According to author Mizuki Takahashi, a shōjo carries a certain implication of certain level of puberty. “A shōjo may be sexually mature physically but she is socially considered sexually immature.” taking her place almost as a third gender, the sexual immaturity making her “identifiable as neither a male or a female” and thus a shōjo is not only a distinction of gender but age, But however a shōjo can only be a shōjo for a certain period of time, she must eventually get over her anxiety about social obligations and become an adult.
The characteristic look of a shōjo -the thin frail look with dark eyes and the behavioural attributes, retain the sexuality without being sexualized or forced into traditional gender roles is known as burikko. It also involves an over emphasised high-pitched voice and feigned innocence and toddler like behaviour. It has evolved to become a defense mechanism of mature woman in situations that might stigmatize them sexually. A woman in this transitional, transformative state between a child an adult, is considered less accountable for her behaviour and can get away with performing burikko.
This performance, a transformative bid by Japanese women to control the way they are sexualised, at the price of being labelled “immature”, is the western equivalent of ‘Tomboyism’.
As Judith Halberstam, in her book Female Masculinity, states that “tomboyism is tolerated in the west as long as it is expressed by a child. However, “as soon as puberty begins… the full force of gender conformity descends on the girl until they are remodeled into compliant forms of femininity.” Shōjo culture is a form of resistance against these ‘complaint forms of femininity.’
With the rise of the feminist movement in Japan, shōjo culture became highly popularized, and broke into public consciousness in 1972, when young women began receiving attention for their very stylized handwriting, that was cursive, accented with hearts, small cartoons and common english words such as ‘love’. The cute handwriting universally loathed by educators and old generations alike was immediately adopted by popular media.
Sanrio began experimentally using this style of handwriting on stationery, which was a huge success. Today, Sario is well known as the creator and owner of the ‘Hello Kitty’ franchise.
Their products share certain attributes such as roundness, pastels and pink. This style can be described as kawaii (cute).
Cute cultures such as shōjo are often deemed as juvenile, feminine and tasteless. Women are often criticized for ‘feminizing’ Japanese culture, which is ironic compared to the intentional distance kept between traditional Japanese femininity and shōjo culture.
References
Oguma, E.,(2015) Japan's 1968: a Collective reaction to rapid economic growth in an age of turmoil.
Abbott,L., (2015) The Power Of Girlhood In 20th Century Japan
Halberstam,J, (1998) Female Masculinity, Durham and London: Duke University Press,
Smith, C.,(2017) The Routledge Companion to media, sex and sexuality, Routledge
Michael Fitzpatrick,(2004) "Hello Kitty at 40: The Cat That Conquered the World." BBC News
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