1st Edition

Girl Reading Girl in Japan

Edited By Tomoko Aoyama, Barbara Hartley Copyright 2010
    244 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    256 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Girl Reading Girl provides the first overview of the cultural significance of girls and reading in modern and contemporary Japan with emphasis on the processes involved when girls read about other girls.

    The collection examines the reading practices of real life girls from differing social backgrounds throughout the twentieth century while a number of chapters also consider how fictional girls read attention is given to the diverse cultural representations of the girl, or shôjo, who are the objects of the reading desires of Japan’s real life and fictional girls. These representations appear in various genres, including prose fiction, such as Yoshiya Nobuko’s Flower Stories and Takemoto Nobara’s Kamikaze Girls, and manga, such as Yoshida Akimi’s The Cherry Orchard. This volume presents the work of pioneering women scholars in the field of girl studies including translations of a ground-breaking essay by Honda Masuko on reading girls and Kawasaki Kenko’s response to prejudicial masculine critiques of best-selling novelist, Yoshimoto Banana. Other topics range from the reception of Anne of Green Gables in Japan to girls who write and read male homoerotic narratives.

     

    Introduction Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley  Part 1: Genealogy of the Reading Girl  1. The Genealogy of Hirahira: Liminality and the Girl Honda Masuko  2. The Genealogy of the "Girl" Critic Reading Girl Tomoko Aoyama  3. The Climate of the Girl in Yoshimoto Banana Kawasaki Kenko  Part 2: Reading against Social Constraint  4. Volatility and Diversity: Shiraki Shizu and the Reading Girl Barbara Hartley  5. Ribbons Undone: The Shôjo Story Debates in Prewar Japan Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase  6. Japanese Girls’ Comfort Reading of Anne of Green Gables, Akiko Uchiyama  Part 3: The Erotic Reading Girl  7. Matsuura Rieko’s The Reverse Version: The Theme of "Girl-Addressing-Girl" and Male Homosexual Fantasies Kazumi Nagaike  8. Murakami Haruki’s Shôjo: Kasahara Mei Maria Flutsch  9. A Girl with Her Writing Machine Rio Otomo  Part 4: Reading the Performing and Visual Girl  10. Transcending Gender in Pictorial Representations of Miyazawa Kenji’s "Marivuron and the Girl" (Marivuron to Shôjo) Helen Kilpatrick  11. From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono: Translation and the Transfiguration of Gender and Sexuality in Shôjo Manga, James Welker  12. Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shôjo Reading Practices Sharalyn Orbaugh  13. Reading Lolita in Japan Vera Mackie

    Biography

    Tomoko Aoyama is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia.

    Barbara Hartley is a Lecturer in the School of Asian Languages and Studies at the University of Tasmania, Australia.