“Since the 2000s, the Japanese word shōjo has gained global currency, accompanying the transcultural spread of other popular Japanese media such as manga and anime. The term refers to both a character type specifically, as well as commercial genres marketed to female audiences more generally. Through its diverse chapters this edited collection introduces the two main currents of shōjo research: on the one hand, historical investigations of Japan’s modern girl culture and its representations, informed by Japanese-studies and gender-studies concerns; on the other hand, explorations of the transcultural performativity of shōjo as a crafted concept and affect-prone code, shaped by media studies, genre theory, and fan-culture research.
While acknowledging that shōjo has mediated multiple discourses throughout the twentieth century—discourses on Japan and its modernity, consumption and consumerism, non-hegemonic gender, and also technology—this volume shifts the focus to shōjo mediations, stretching from media by and for actual girls, to shōjo as media. As a result, the Japan-derived concept, while still situated, begins to offer possibilities for broader conceptualizations of girlness within the contemporary global digital mediascape.”
Editors: Jaqueline Berndt, Kazumi Nagaike, Fusami Ogi
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (Cham, Switzerland)
Contents:
Berndt, Jaqueline. Introduction: Shojo meditations
Part I: Shojo Manga
2. Freedman, Alisa. Romance of the Taisho schoolgirl in shojo manga: Here Comes Miss Modern (pp. 25-48).
3. Unser-Schutz, Giancarla. Redefining shojo and shonen manga through language patterns (pp. 49-82).
4. Antononoka, Olga. Shojo manga beyond shojo manga: The “female mode of address” in Kabukimon (pp. 83-105).
Part II: Shojo Beyond Manga
8. Sugawa-Shimada, Akiko. Shojo in anime: Beyond the objects of men’s desire (pp. 181-206).
Part III: Shojo Performances
10. King, Emerald L. Sakura ga meijiru – Unlocking the shojo wardrobe: Cosplay, manga, 2.5D space (pp. 233-260).
Part IV: Shojo Fans
14. Norris, Craig. Shojo fantasies of inhabiting Cool Japan: Reimagining Fukuoka through shojo and otome ideals with cosplay tourism (pp. 331-353).
15. Galbraith, Patrick W. Seeking an alternative: “Male” shojo fans since the 1970s (pp. 355-390).