Fantasy Worlds: the Development of Shojo Manga (Girls’ Comics) as a Vehicle for Dreaming and Identity Formation

When Japanese girls’ manga (shojo manga) first appeared as a genre in the 1950’s,  influences included boy’s comics as well as girls’ novels, such as Yoshiya Nobuko’s serialized Hana monogatari ( Flower Tales, 1916–1924). They depicted traditional feminine ideals, such becoming gunkoku no haha (the mother of a militant nation) and ryosai kenbo (good wife and wise mother). Over the course of the 1960’s and 70’s, however, as more women became shojo manga writers (originally most writers were men), the genre underwent a dramatic transformation, shifting away from the old ideals and giving expression to previously taboo sentiments, such as personal ambition, emotional conflict, and a longing for new roles and possibilities. At the zenith of the genre in the 1970’s, female shojo manga writers invested their work with unprecedented personal subjectivity, venting their private fantasies and neuroses for a massive adolescent readership and, in the process, creating a new vehicle for self-exploration, not unlike what Meiji writers did with the I-novel.