Shōjo manga

Japanese magazines specifically for girls, known as shōjo magazines, first appeared in 1902 with the founding of Shōjo-kai (少女界, lit. "Girls' World") and continued with others such as Shōjo Sekai (少女世界, lit. "Girls' World") (1906) and the long-running Shōjo no Tomo (少女の友, lit. "Girls' Friend") (1908).[2][4]

The roots of the wide-eyed look commonly associated with shōjo manga date back to shōjo magazine illustrations during the early 20th century. The most important illustrators associated with this style at the time were Yumeji Takehisa and particularly Jun'ichi Nakahara, who, influenced by his work as a doll creator, frequently drew female characters with big eyes in the early 20th century. This had a significant influence on early shōjo manga, evident in the work of influential manga artists such as Macoto Takahashi and Riyoko Ikeda.[5]

Simple, single-page manga began to appear in these magazines by 1910, and by the 1930s more sophisticated humor-strips had become an essential feature of most girls' magazines. The most popular manga, Katsuji Matsumoto's Kurukuru Kurumi-chan (くるくるクルミちゃん), debuted on the pages of Shōjo no Tomo in 1938.[6] As World War II progressed, however, "comics, perhaps regarded as frivolous, began to disappear".[7]

Postwar shōjo manga, such as Shosuke Kurakane's popular Anmitsu Hime (あんみつ姫, lit. "Princess Anmitsu"),[8] initially followed the pre-war pattern of simple humor-strips. But Osamu Tezuka's postwar revolution, introducing intense drama and serious themes to children's manga, spread quickly to shōjo manga, particularly after the enormous success of his seminal Princess Knight (リボンの騎士, Ribon no Kishi).[7]

Until the mid-1960s, men vastly outnumbered the women (for example: Toshiko Ueda, Hideko Mizuno, Masako Watanabe, and Miyako Maki) among the artists working on shōjo manga. Many male manga artists, such as Tetsuya Chiba,[9] functioned as rookies, waiting for an opportunity to move over to shōnen (少年 "boys'") manga. Chiba asked his wife about girls' feelings for research for his manga. At this time, conventional job opportunities for Japanese women did not include becoming a manga artist.[10] Adapting Tezuka's dynamic style to shōjo manga (which had always been domestic in nature) proved challenging. According to Rachel Thorn:

While some chose to simply create longer humor-strips, others turned to popular girls' novels of the day as a model for melodramatic shōjo manga. These manga featured sweet, innocent pre-teen heroines, torn from the safety of family and tossed from one perilous circumstance to another, until finally rescued (usually by a kind, handsome young man) and re-united with their families.[11]

These early shōjo manga almost invariably had pre-adolescent girls as both heroines and readers. Unless they used a fantastic setting (as in Princess Knight) or a backdrop of a distant time or place, romantic love for the heroine remained essentially taboo. But the average age of the readership rose, and its interests changed. In the mid-1960s one of the few female artists in the field, Yoshiko Nishitani, began to draw stories featuring contemporary Japanese teenagers in love. This signaled a dramatic transformation of the genre.[12][13] This may have been due to the baby boomers becoming teens, and the industry trying to keep them as readers.[13]

Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at adolescent boys and shōjo manga aimed at adolescent girls.[1][7] These romantic comedy shōjo manga were inspired by American TV dramas of the time.[14] The success of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and the gold medal won by the Japan women's national volleyball team, influenced a series of sports shōjo manga, such as Attack No. 1 (アタックNo.1, Atakku Nanbā Wan). On December 5, 1966, the first shōjo anime series, Sally the Witch (魔法使いサリー, Mahōtsukai Sarī), premiered in Japan on NET TV.[15] In May 1967, shōjo manga began being published in tankōbon format.[16]

Between roughly 1969 and 1971, a flood of young female manga artists transformed the genre again. Some, including Moto Hagio, Yumiko Ōshima, and Keiko Takemiya, became known as the Year 24 Group (24年組, Nijūyo-nen Gumi), or the Fabulous Year 24 Group (花の24年組, Hana no Nijūyo-nen Gumi), so named from the approximate year of birth many of them shared: Shōwa 24, or 1949. This loosely defined group experimented with content and form, inventing such subgenres such as shōnen-ai (boys' love), and earning the long-maligned shōjo manga unprecedented critical praise.[17] Other female artists of the same generation, such as Riyoko Ikeda, Yukari Ichijo, and Sumika Yamamoto, garnered unprecedented popular support with such hits (respectively) as The Rose of Versailles (ベルサイユのばら, Berusaiyu no Bara), Dezainaa (デザイナー, lit. "Designer"), and Aim for the Ace! (エースをねらえ!, Ēsu o Nerae!).[1][2][12][13][7][18][19] During that era, women's roles in Japanese society were changing, and women were being elected to the National Diet, and publishers responded by employing more female talent.[13] Since the mid-1970s, women have created the vast majority of shōjo manga; notable exceptions include Mineo Maya and Shinji Wada.

From 1975, shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously branching out into different but overlapping subgenres.[20] Meiji University professor Yukari Fujimoto writes that during the 1990s, shōjo manga became concerned with self-fulfillment. She intimates that the 1990–1991 Gulf War influenced the development of female characters "who fight to protect the destiny of a community", such as Red River, Basara, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Sailor Moon. Fujimoto opines that the shōjo manga of the 1990s depicted emotional bonds between women as stronger than the bonds between a man and a woman.[21] Major subgenres include romance, science fiction, fantasy, magical girls, yaoi, and "ladies comics" (in Japanese, redisu レディース, redikomi レディコミ, and josei 女性).[22][23]

As shōjo literally means "girl" in Japanese, the equivalent of the Western usage will generally include the term: girls' manga (少女漫画, shōjo manga), or anime for girls (少女向けアニメ shōjo-muke anime). The parallel terms shōnen, seinen, and josei also occur in the categorization of manga and anime, with similar qualification. Though the terminology originates with the Japanese publishers and advertisers,[24] cultural differences with the West mean that labeling in English tends to vary wildly, with the types often confused and misapplied.

Due to vagaries in the romanization of Japanese, publishers may transcribe 少女 (written しょうじょ in hiragana) in a wide variety of ways. By far the most common form, shoujo, follows English phonology, preserves the spelling, and requires only ASCII input. The Hepburn romanization shōjo uses a macron for the long vowel, though the prevalence of Latin-1 fonts often results in a circumflex instead, as in shôjo. Many English-language texts just ignore long vowels, using shojo, potentially leading to confusion with 処女 (shojo, lit. "virgin") as well as other possible meanings. Finally, transliterators may use Nihon-shiki-type mirroring of the kana spelling: syôjyo, or syoujyo.

Western fans classify a wide variety of titles as shōjo, even though their Japanese creators label them differently. Anything non-offensive and featuring female characters may classify as shōjo manga, such as the shōnen comedy series Azumanga Daioh.[25] Similarly, as romance has become a common element of many shōjo works, any title with romance – such as the shōnen series Love Hina[26] or the seinen series Oh My Goddess! – tend to get mislabeled.

This confusion also extends beyond the fan community; articles aimed at the mainstream also widely misrepresent the terms. In an introduction to anime and manga, British writer Jon Courtenay Grimwood writes: "Maison Ikkoku comes from Rumiko Takahashi, one of the best-known of all shôjo writers. Imagine a very Japanese equivalent of Sweet Valley High or Melrose Place. It has Takahashi's usual and highly successful mix of teenagers and romance, with darker clouds of adolescence hovering."[27] Takahashi is a famous shōnen manga artist, but Maison Ikkoku, one of her few seinen titles and serialized in Big Comic Spirits magazine, is aimed at males in their 20s.

Rachel Thorn, who has made a career out of studying girls' comics, attempts to clarify the matter by explaining that "shôjo manga are manga published in shôjo magazines (as defined by their publishers)".[3] However, English publishers and stores have problems retailing shōjo titles, including its spelling. Licensees such as Dark Horse Comics have misidentified several of the seinen titles, and in particular, manga and anime intended for a younger audience in Japan often contains violent or mature themes that would be targeted toward an older demographic in the US.[28] In this way licensees often either voluntarily censor titles or re-market them toward an older audience. In the less conservative European markets, content that might be heavily edited or cut in an English-language release often remains in French, German, and other translated editions.

As one effect of these variations, American companies have moved to use the borrowed words that have gained name-value in fan communities, but to separate them from the Japanese meaning. In their shōjo manga range, publisher Viz Media attempted a re-appropriation of the term, providing the following definition:

shô·jo (sho'jo) n. 1. Manga appealing to both female and male readers. 2. Exciting stories with true-to-life characters and the thrill of exotic locales. 3. Connecting the heart and mind through real human relationships.

— Here Is Greenwood, Vol. 1 by Yukie Nasu[29]

The desire to disassociate the word shōjo from its meaning, "girl", seems largely driven by fear of putting off potential new readers, particularly male ones.

Manga and anime labeled as shōjo need not only interest girls; some titles gain a following outside the traditional audience. For instance, Frederik L. Schodt identifies Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish as:

...one of the few girls' manga a red-blooded Japanese male adult could admit to reading without blushing. Yoshida, while adhering to the conventions of girls' comics in her emphasis on gay male love, made this possible by eschewing flowers and bug eyes in favor of tight bold strokes, action scenes, and speed lines.[23]

However, such successful "crossover" titles remain the exception rather than the rule: the archetypal shōjo manga magazine Hana to Yume has a 95% female readership, with a majority aged 17 or under.[30]

The growing popularity of romantic shōjo manga in North America encouraged Toronto-based publisher Harlequin, in agreement with Dark Horse Comics, to release manga-styled romantic comics starting in 2005. Harlequin's executive vice president Pam Laycok stated that the market has "vast potential".[31]

The reported average circulations for some of the top-selling shōjo manga magazines in 2007 included:

For comparison, circulations for the top-selling magazines in other categories for 2007 included:

(Source for all circulation figures: Japan Magazine Publishers Association[32])

In a strict sense, the term "shōjo manga" refers to a manga serialized in a shōjo manga magazine. The list below contains past and current Japanese shōjo manga magazines, grouped according to their publishers. Such magazines can appear on a variety of schedules, including bi-weekly (Margaret, Hana to Yume, Shōjo Comic), monthly (Ribon, Bessatsu Margaret, Bessatsu Friend, LaLa), bi-monthly (Deluxe Margaret, LaLa DX, The Dessert), and quarterly (Cookie Box, Unpoko).

• Bishōjo (lit. "beautiful girl") – descriptive of the character type rather than the audience
• Class S – historical homoerotic genre about passionate friendships between girls for a female audience
• History of manga
• Josei manga – intended for adult women
• List of shōjo manga magazines
• Magical girl – a genre featuring girls with magical powers or who use magic, initially aimed at a young female audience
• Otome game – story-based video games targeted towards women, often romantic in nature
• Seinen manga – intended for adult men
• Shōnen manga – intended for boys
• Shoujocon – an anime convention held annually from 2000 to 2003
• Sunjung manhwa – Korean shōjo-style manga
• Yaoi – homoerotic stories about men in love
• Yuri (genre) – homoerotic stories about women in love

• Ultimate Manga Guide (zip), version 13.6, last modified July 31, 2004
• Shōjo Anime List, last modified February 14, 1995
• Napier, Susan J. (2001). Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-23862-9.
• Thorn, Rachel Matt (2001). "Shôjo Manga—Something for the Girls". The Japan Quarterly. Tokyo, Japan: Asahi Shimbun. 48 (3).
• Garrity, Shaenon K. (2008). "The Boys of Shojo Manga". Comixology.
• Shamoon, Deborah (2007). "Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga". Mechademia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. 2: 3–17. doi:10.1353/mec.0.0009.
• Takahashi, Mizuki (2008). "Opening the Closed World of Shojo Manga". In MacWilliams, Mark W. (ed.). Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime. M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-7656-1601-2.

• Ōgi, Fusami (2001). "Beyond Shoujo, Blending Gender: Subverting the Homogendered World in Shoujo Manga (Japanese Comics for Girls)". International Journal of Comic Art. 3 (2): 151–161.
• Prough, Jennifer S. (2011). Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shōjo Manga. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3528-6.
• Saito, Kumiko (2014). "Magic, 'Shōjo', and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society". The Journal of Asian Studies. 73 (1): 143–164. doi:10.1017/S0021911813001708. ISSN 0021-9118. JSTOR 43553398.
• Toku, Masami, ed. (2015). International Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga: The Influence of Girl Culture. New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-80948-2.

• Media related to Shōjo at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of 少女 at Wiktionary