Gender and girls' comics in Japan

Abstract

This case study of a shojo manga (young girls' comic) from Japan uses the series Yukan Kurabu (The Leisure Club) by Ichijo Yukari to evaluate what kinds of messages, if any, are being transmitted to young girls with respect to gender role patterns. The study compares the interpretation of the images in this manga from one reader's perspective with what one might expect to find in terms of the rigidly defined gender roles put forth by the so-called established experts on Japanese women and gender issues. Some aspects of the main characters in this series appear to reflect societal ideals as portrayed in Japan in many television shows, movies, books, and other manga. However, there does not seem to be any clearly defined message about gender roles, and the images in Yukan Kurabu do not conform neatly to the ideas of gender stereotypes from the accepted literature of Iwao Sumiko and Takie Sumiyama Lebra.Interested in young women and gender stereotypes in Japan, I believe that some understanding of the social norms of a society can be gained by looking at products of popular culture. Manga (comics) are a very important source of entertainment in Japan, and in this article I have used a popular Japanese manga to evaluate what kinds of messages, if any, young girls may be getting from the popular pastime of reading this manga. Since this is a very specific case study of one artist's series, broad general conclusions cannot be easily drawn from it. This investigation is meant to be a beginning for what I hope will be many more analyses of this type. What I am attempting here is an analysis of the images relating to gender in this manga from a reader's perspective in comparison with the theories of male/female roles in Japan proposed by the so-called established experts on Japanese women and gender issues.