Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Images of Japanese women have drastically changed during the global spread of Japanese media since World War II, from subservient wives and geishas in kimonos to a large variety of female characters emerging from the increasingly accessible market of Japanese popular culture where innovative technology and fetish visual culture intersect. Today, the prominence of fighting female characters, most visible in the relatively unrealistic side of Japanese media culture, such as anime, manga, and video games, generates a new stereotype of Japanese women--although they are "Japanese" only so far as their putative origin is Japan. The difficulty of approaching these new venues of popular culture lies in their art of "misrepresentation," that is, flat and exaggerated visual styles, fantastic storylines, and, most importantly, their general disjunction from real-life women in Japanese society. Whereas interpretive links between female characters and women, well established in feminist studies of film and literature, remain essential resources for understanding functions of gender in text, this new phase of pop culture challenges established scholarly approaches to studies of the relationship between media and society.
One of the most striking gaps between Japanese women and female characters in Japanese popular visuals can be observed in how the underrepresentation of "real" women, as reported in statistics and confirmed by common stereotypes, is contrasted to visual representations where empowered female heroes effortlessly surpass men in physical power and social status.1One of the key elements that largely helped spread these contradictory images of Japanese culture is the "magical girl," a well-established genre that has grown and birthed offshoots in its half-century-long history in Japan's television market.
Magical girl animation, called mahÅ shÅjo and majokko anime in Japan, is a mainstay of television animation programming that distinctly targets female prepubescent viewers. The conventions of the magical girl genre, especially the elaborate description of metamorphosis that enables an ordinary girl to turn into a supergirl, have been widely imitated across various genres and media categories. The success of Sailor Moon in the North American market triggered the first wave of cute female-hero action programs, such as Powerpuff Girls (1998-2005) and Totally Spies (2001-present), in the United States and Europe (Loos 2000, 1-2). The ages, genders, and nationalities of anime...