International Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga

The Influence of Girl Culture

Masami Toku

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317610755
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Volkskultur in der Kunst

This collaborative book explores the artistic and aesthetic development of shojo, or girl, manga and discusses the significance of both shojo manga and the concept of shojo, or girl culture. It features contributions from manga critics, educators, and researchers from both manga's home country of Japan and abroad, looking at shojo and shojo manga's influence both locally and globally. Finally, it presents original interviews of shojo manga-ka, or artists, who discuss their work and their views on this distinct type of popular visual culture.

Part I
Local Perspectives of Shojo and Shojo Manga

Historical Components

1 Power of Shojo Manga

Origins and Influences in Children’s Artistic and Aesthetic Development

Masami Toku

Children tend to draw what they know rather than what they see

(Goodnow, 1977)

INTRODUCTION

Through research and cross-cultural analysis of children’s artistic and aesthetic development in 1998, I discovered that characteristics of Japanese children’s pictorial worlds (first through sixth graders), such as visual compositions (space) and expressions (figures), seldom appeared in the drawings of children from other cultures. What was the reason for this impact on Japanese children’s drawings? It seems likely that manga (Japanese comics) and anime (animation) were prime influences, since the aesthetics of those media were reflected in the children’s images. Interestingly, the influences have started to appear in other children’s work, for example, in that of US children, since anime and manga have gained world popularity. Since then I have been observing the phenomenon of the power of Japanese visual pop culture, its characteristics, and the influence on children’s minds and society.

In this chapter, I’d like to discuss three topics: (1) the relationship between universal tendency and sociocultural influences that appear in children’s drawings; (2) the influences of manga on children’s aesthetics; and (3) the significance of shojo manga (girls’ comics) as one of the major genres of manga.

UNIVERSALITY VERSUS CULTURAL SPECIFICITY IN CHILDREN’S ARTISTIC AND AESTHETIC DEVELOPMENT

In the 1980s, more art educators began to question the stage theory of universality and universal tendency in children’s artistic development put forth by, for example, Arnheim (1969), Gardner (1980), Kellogg (1969), Lowenfeld and Brittain (1970), Piaget and Inhelder (1956), and Read (1974). The multiculturalism movement was gathering steam, and art educators began to argue the importance of cultural and social impacts on children’s artistic tendencies, an influence that they called cultural specificity (Toku, 1998). Although children’s drawings in their early stages indicate a universal pattern in artistic development, their drawings also show another important characteristic: the influence of culture and society. Thus, the universal tendency of artistic development is generally limited to the early years, from toddler to about five or six years of age, before cultural and educational influences strongly appear. Children have a tendency to be influenced by their cultures and societies, and the influences start to emerge in their drawings as characteristic patterns (see, for example, Alland, 1983; Duncum, 2010; Golomb, 1992; Kindler & Darras, 1997; Toku, 2001b; Wilson & Wilson, 1982). The influence of culture and technology emerges strongly in children’s drawings, especially in elementary school, leading them to produce new and different characteristics in their drawing patterns, depending on the cultural and social contexts.

Questions remain about the relationship between universality and cultural specificity in the study of artistic development. First, what kinds of universal patterns do exist in children’s drawings regardless of sociocultural contexts? Second, if the developmental pattern in children’s drawings is different depending on the particular culture and society, what do the differences reveal and how are they revealed?

In response to these questions, I conducted cross-cultural research of children’s artistic development from 1995 to 1997 by collecting about 3,000 drawings (2,000 from Japan and 1,000 from the US) from elementary students (first to sixth grades). I requested that the children draw the theme of “Me and My Friends Playing in the Schoolyard.” Using Elliot Eisner’s 14 spatial categories (1967), I compared and statistically analyzed the development of spatial patterns in their drawings. The study found significant differences between those two cultures. Although more than 95% of US children’s drawings still fit into Eisner’s 14 categories, Japanese children’s drawings did not (at that time in 1998). For example, more than 40% of Japanese sixth-grade students did not fit into any category. I analyzed those uncategorized drawings and found at least three characteristic patterns: (1) exaggerated view, (2) photographic view, and (3) multiperspective view. The exaggerated view is to draw an enlargement of parts of the body, such as hands or legs, even omitting the head or face. The photographic view looks as if it were taken with a camera, so that part of the body is extrapolated past the edge of the paper. The multiperspective view (including bird’s eye view) is a drawing from multiple perspectives, not a single point of view (Toku, 1998, 2001b).

In addition to the spatial treatment style that appeared in Japanese children’s drawings, significant differences were found between boys’ and girls’ drawings of the subject itself. For the research, I requested clearly and simply that the children draw a scene showing them playing in their schoolyard to discover what kind of play they were doing and how they re-created three-dimensional space on the two-dimensional surface of the drawing paper. Almost all the boys drew an active playing scene; some of the girls did not, instead drawing more psychological scenes such as “looking at cherry blossoms” and “broken glass and scolding by a teacher.” Most boys portrayed direct scenes of playing by themselves or with their friends, but some girls drew indirect playing scenes showing behind-the-story scenes of before or after playing.

In response to my requested theme of “Me and My Friends Playing in the Schoolyard,” some students asked me if they should follow the academic way of drawing in a realistic manner or if they could draw whatever they liked. (I told them to do whatever they liked.) From their questions, I came to understand that Japanese children used two different styles of drawing depending on the situation: one a realistic manner for drawing in the classroom, and the other a manga style that was not accepted in schools at the time of the research in 1995–1997. In 1998, the Ministry of Education and Science in Japan decided to adopt Japanese visual-pop culture in the national art education curriculum; as a result, manga finally became accepted as an art education subject in theory and practice. Manga curricula in art education have been taught in national textbooks officially since 2002 (Toku, 2001a). However, at the time the drawings were collected from four elementary schools from northern to southern areas of Japan, drawing in the manga style was not appreciated in the art education classroom. Manga style, such as exaggerated views, out-of-proportion figures, and cartoon-like images in distorted spaces, was not accepted in public schools. Nevertheless, outside the classroom in their own worlds, children never stopped mimicking manga’s characters in the manga style they loved. Goodnow’s famous words are that children tend to draw what they know rather than what they see (1977), but I’d like to affirm that children tend to draw what they like more than what they see and know.

After examining other possibilities, manga remained the most likely potential influence in the visual world. What made the Japanese children draw in such specific manga styles? In other words, why did they like the manga style so much? More importantly, why weren’t American children’s drawings influenced by their own American comics? Are there any significant differences between manga and other comic styles?

MANGA’S INFLUENCES ON YOUTH’S MINDS AND SOCIETY

One characteristic of manga is its diversification over the last 60 years, based on gender, into boys’ and girls’ manga. I questioned whether the stylistic differences in boys’ and girls’ manga really influenced each gender differently or whether it depended on the subject matter.

Boys’ versus Girls’ Manga: Characteristics that Appear in Children’s and Adolescents’ Pictorial Worlds

Manga developed uniquely in Japan after World War II as entertainment for children. It eventually diversified to please various audiences of different ages, genders, and favorite themes. One of the major characteristics of manga is its split into boys’ (shonen) and girls’ (shojo) manga. Each has developed in its own way in response to readers’ expectations, and each has its own themes. Generally speaking, regardless of the subject, the main theme in shonen manga is competitive fighting, how the heroes become men by protecting women, family, country, or the earth from enemies.

Shojo manga, on the other hand, was highly influenced by shojo zassi’s (girls’ magazines’) visual images of beautiful girls with big eyes and slender bodies with narrow arms and legs (Masuda, 2008). As a result, the semiotic signs of beauty in shojo manga developed uniquely, including just a dot for a nose, a tiny mouth, and big eyes with stars in them. These characteristics appear strongly in almost all Japanese girls’ drawings as their favorite drawing styles, and it was very recognizable in the Japanese girls’ drawings in the study. Unlike boys’ manga, the theme of girls’ manga is simply love, but “Love” in all its complexity.

Manga Literacy: Semiotic and Semantic Signs in Shojo and Shonen Manga

Regarding the visual images, the visual grammar of Japanese manga is also highly developed, with semiotic signs and semantic usage of composition diverging after the 1960s into boys and girls manga. The influence of American comics (especially Disney) on Japanese manga dates back to the end of World War II. Ironically, the advanced visual grammar seen in Japanese comics seldom appears in American comics nowadays and seldom develops in any other comics around the world. What are the semiotic signs and semantic usages of composition in manga? Why and how did they develop differently from that of any other comic style?

According to Natsume (1997, 1999), comics are composed of three elements: pictures, words (with or without bubbles), and frames (panels). Pictures are the images of figures and the backgrounds. Words appear in the picture and independently outside of the frame with or without balloons, representing internal thoughts or external speech. Frame is simply a container that includes the picture and the words, but often integrates time and space as a kind of metacognition in manga.

The limitation of manga’s medium encouraged the artists to devise new methods in their creations. Manga is a very cheap format, originally targeting children who did not have much money to spend to purchase the manga (e.g., a monthly magazine including 15 to 20 stories with 500 pages was around $5 in 2013 [Manga Zasshi, http://www.zasshi-data.com]). Manga had to be created in a cheap format in black and white except for cover pages in full color. Unlike the full-color American comics that can represent visual characteristics with colors, Japanese manga had to make do with black and white. The limitation on the usage of color forced the artists to invent a new manga literacy to represent visual images, depending on the situation (Yomota, 1994).

The shapes of word bubbles, such as square, round, and spiky, can also represent the speakers’ emotions as external voices or internal thoughts surface (Otsuka, 1995). The usage of frames (panels) is developed in shojo manga. To describe the psychological complexity in diverse stories, the angle, size, and shapes of frames are displayed effectively on the two-dimensional flat surface. The way diverse frames are used often effectively represent past, present, and future (Ito, 2005; Masuda, 2002; Natsume, 1997). For example, in Rosalindo, created by Watanabe in 1973, we can see complex visual signs in a scene where a woman is falling down. On the top right corner in a square is an enlarged woman’s face that represents a moment immediately before the tragedy happens. In the center without a frame, we can see the treacherous moment that the woman is killed. The usage of word bubbles is also unique here. The square shape of the bubbles indicates that these are the inner voices of the lady and the narration. More interestingly, the size of the square bubbles gets smaller from the top right diagonally to the left bottom of the page, which represents the passage of time and the direction of her fall. This usage of multiperspective views, the photographic view...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction The Power of Shojo and Shojo Manga
• Part I Local Perspectives of Shojo and Shojo Manga Historical Components
• Part II Global Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga New Approaches
• Part III Shojo Mangaka Profiles and Interviews with Manga Critics and Shojo Mangaka (Girls' Comic Artists)
• Contributors
• Glossary
• Index