| The Function of Woman-Authored Manga in Japanese Society
by Brian Ruh IntroductionIn its year 2000 White Paper, Japan’s Ministry of Education ranked anime (animation) and manga (comics) “among the most important forms of artistic expression in the modern Japanese cultural environment” (“Education White Paper”). Some anime and manga fans have praised this pronouncement because they perceive it to mean the two media are finally receiving the critical attention they so richly deserve. However, along with official recognition can come increased homogenization of the medium as it becomes a cultural product ready for consumption; it stands to reason that manga and anime would not be lauded so highly if they did not represent sanctioned cultural norms. Far from being exclusively a subcultural phenomenon, as it is in the United States, many people from all walks of life read manga in Japan, and there are manga stories for nearly every possible interest. Manga comprise nearly 40 percent of all books and magazines sold in Japan (Schodt 1996: 19), and has been likened to air, in that it has “permeated every crevice of the contemporary environment” (Kinsella 2000: 4). Because of manga’s omnipresence, the role of the manga medium as a means of acculturating the reader within society must be examined closely. It is common for manga to be divided into clearly marked categories, often by the sex of the intended audience, such as shōnen manga (“boys’ comics”) and shōjo manga (“girls’ comics.”) Manga specifically targeted at girls has a much shorter history than manga targeted at boys. The first modern shōjo manga is generally considered to be Ribon no Kishi (“Princess Knight”), begun in 1953 by Osamu Tezuka (Schodt 1986: 96). Although Tezuka was a male, since that time, shōjo manga has usually been considered a genre written by females for a female audience. As one can see by the sales and circulation figures (see Figures 1 and 2), the market for shōjo manga is still small compared to boys’ comics. The increased role of girls’ comics within the manga industry as a whole could be a result of the new purchasing power wielded by girls and young women in a late capitalist economy such as Japan’s. Japanese feminist Saitō Chiyo admits that while “[Y]ou could argue that if women constitute a major market force, then they have considerable influence” and that “[W]omen are gradually finding their way into more and more senior positions of influence,” she fears that such women would be unwilling to work to further the women’s movement because they fear risking the social and financial security that have gained (Buckley 1997: 256). Thus the emergence of women as a powerful consumer force does not necessarily mean there has been an emergence of women in other sectors as well, nor does it necessarily mean there has been a change in media representations of women. The purpose of this research project is to analyze how manga written by women functions in Japanese society, including how gender roles are presented. Sharon Kinsella (2000) argues that manga has become another form of pro-establishment media. If manga has become mainstream and “pro-establishment” as Kinsella claims, then many of the customary depictions of women found in general Japanese mass media and society should be present in manga as well, even those created by female manga artists. Manga could then be seen as another kind of acculturation to society, much like Japanese daytime television functions to promote intimacy (Painter 1996). Because manga is so highly accepted by Japanese society, as well as being actively put forth as a representative work of Japanese culture by the Japanese government, it stands to reason that manga in general does not present ideas that run contrary to the commonly held ideology. Manga may actually serve as a way of presenting and reinforcing such ideas to the general public. Previous studies have been made concerning how manga functions in Japanese society and how this reflects and influences behavior. Grigsby (1999) begins with an analysis of how the character merchandise for the two manga series Sailor Moon and Crayon Shin-chan are marketed. She then looks at the traditional roles women have played in the history of Japan, arriving at the conclusion that the character of Sailor Moon is depicted in none of the traditional roles of “wife, mother, or sexual playmate” (196). However, Grigsby says that the character of Sailor Moon does have a sexual allure, both in the way she is drawn and the way in which readers, especially men, recontextualize the images. Grigsby also says that the characters in Sailor Moon illustrate the values of a consumer culture, and that women and girls are particularly vulnerable to this consumer culture because of their often-subordinate position in society. In Crayon Shin-chan, Grigsby looks at how the mother is responsible for instilling in her son a sense of a proper way of behaving, themes echoed by Anne Allison’s (1996) findings in her study of Japanese comics. Maia
Tsurumi (1997) examines the depictions of gender roles in one specific manga for
girls – Yukan Kurabu (The Leisure Club) by Ichijo Yukari – and
compares her findings to what she might expect to discover based on the work of
scholars who have studied Japanese gender roles in depth. In Yukan Kurabu,
Tsurumi perceives a mixed message about gender roles; there are men who display
typically female gender characteristics and vice versa. Additionally, these
characters are not ostracized for these displays, but rather are depicted in a
positive light. While Tsurumi admits that the nature of the manga medium cannot
be concluded based on the contents of a single manga series, she considers the
possibilities that manga are more strongly based on the author’s own
experiences than the dictates of society, and that the previously held gender
role theories may no longer hold true. Women in MangaThere have been an increasing number of female artists producing works in both the manga industry and the amateur manga subculture since the late 1950s (Schodt 1983: 97). One may wonder if stereotypical gender representations are perpetuated in such works created by women. An initial inclination would be to theorize that manga written by female artists would have a much more positive attitude toward the depiction of women. However, because of the structured way in which the manga industry operates, this may not necessarily be the case. While there may be more female manga authors now than before, their portrayals of gender types does not seem to be as clear-cut as one might think. In order to determine how female manga artists depict gender roles, representative samples of manga will need to be examined. The three manga I will be sampling are the first volumes of Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP, Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida, and Ranma ½ by Rumiko Takahashi. CLAMP, a collective of four female artists, is unique because few artists have risen from drawing amateur manga into professional manga publishing. In addition to Magic Knight Rayearth, CLAMP has written such popular manga as X/1999 and Cardcaptor Sakura. Banana Fish was serialized for ten years, and, although published in a shōjo manga magazine (and thus ostensibly a series for girls), was enjoyed by fans of both sexes (Schodt 1996: 207). Finally, Rumiko Takahashi is probably one of the most famous manga artists in Japan, the author of works such as Urusei Yatsura, Mezon Ikkoku, and Inu-Yasha, and has sold “one hundred million copies of her compiled works—approximately one of her books for every person living in Japan” (Horibuchi 1997: 22-3). While Takahashi’s works are stylistically closer to that of comics intended for boys, she has said that her series Ranma ½ has been more popular with girls (Horibuchi 1997: 19-20). Each manga series can be read as reinforcing customarily held ideas of women while simultaneously playing with and subverting such ideas. When investigating a medium such as manga, one must be careful how the samples are chosen, as this could seriously skew the results of any analysis. First of all, by the time restraints of this research project, I am limited to manga works that have been translated into English; original Japanese works are more difficult to obtain in the United States, as well as being time-consuming to translate. Of the five best selling graphic novels in Japan for the year 1997, not one is yet available in an English translation (Thompson 1999: 43-4). One must then trust that the translators of the manga have produced an accurate translation that does not obfuscate too many of the nuances. Also, the fact that these particular manga have been issued in English validates them in a certain way. It may be that these manga are the ones that are more popular in Japan, and thus there is a demand from American fans to bring them over here. Conversely, it may be that the U.S. manga industry decided these particular series might sell well domestically, regardless of how they are perceived in Japan. Because of this, I have attempted to choose for analysis titles that seem to have been rather successful in the Japanese market. Part of the reason why, historically, so few women have produced and consumed comics in America may be due to its classification as both an infantile and macho-dominated medium, although this situation is changing (Sabin 1993). On the other hand, in Japan, the reason there is such a strong market for manga written by women for girls is that such manga does not rely solely on male-oriented violence but rather concentrates on the relationships among the characters. This is not to say, however, that the Japanese manga industry does not have its share of sexist and violent comics. It is interesting to note that, in both English-speaking countries and Japan, female comic writers are much more highly concentrated in the underground or avant-garde circles (Sabin 1993: 230). However, in spite of the fact that Japanese manga written by women continue to sell well (to which the combined sales figures of Rumiko Takahashi’s work can well attest), female manga writers still continue to interact with the medium in a marginalized way. Perhaps the best way of viewing this marginalization is by examining the amateur comics phenomenon and how it interacts with manga publication through more mainstream avenues. The term for printed amateur manga is dōjinshi, which first began in the 1970s and rapidly increased during the 1990s (Kinsella 2000:105), and both CLAMP and Rumiko Takahashi were once dōjinshi artists. However, the fact that they have become professional manga artists is the exception rather than the rule; rather than recruiting new manga artists up through the ranks of the dōjinshi artists, manga companies generally find new talent through a series of talent competitions (Kinsella 2000: 52). Thus amateur manga can be seen as a separate cultural environment in its own right, rather than people who are trying to make it big as professional manga artists. Dōjinshi is unmediated by large publishing companies, meaning that they are freer to publish risky material or material that does not necessarily advocate dominant Japanese cultural values. This is especially the case with regard to the depiction of gender roles. “Many of the men involved in the amateur manga medium perceive girls’ manga, and the female milieu surrounding it, to be a progressive cultural scene within contemporary society” (Kinsella 2000: 121). Anne Allison does not attribute the increase in female heroes in Japanese popular culture to a “greater feminist consciousness in Japanese society,” but instead to an “increase in female manga artists in recent years as well as to the large consumer audience of girls who read, watch, and even write their own, fantasy stories” (2000: 268). Thus, the promulgation of female-written manga may be merely an attempt to widen the fan base for manga in general, as well as increase sales of goods associated with the manga. It
is difficult to find consumption data on manga written by women. Because of the
way manga are categorized by intended audience, it is much easier to find data
on shōjo manga. Almost all of the shōjo manga being produced have been
written and drawn by women (Schodt 1996: 155). Currently, there are few men
drawing comics for girls, and one has even assumed a female pen name (Schodt
1986: 97). Thus, when we discuss shōjo manga, we are generally speaking of
comics written and drawn by females, intended for a female audience. Even though
such demarcations as shōjo manga and shōnen manga (comics for girls
and boys, respectively) do still appear, there is a growing amount of crossover
readership with stories appealing to readers of both sexes (Cooper-Chen 1997:
102). Additionally, it has often been more common for girls to read boys comics
than vice versa, perhaps owing to the greater percentage of boys’ comics on
the market and in circulation (Shiokawa 107). Adding to the problem of obtaining
data on the readership demographics of certain manga are the phenomena of tachiyomi
(standing while reading manga in the store without purchasing it) and mawashiyomi
(passing an already read manga magazine on to a friend or family member). Japanese Media and Gender RolesManga are a unique form of communication occurring in modern Japan; they are partly the creativity of the individual artist (or artists), and partly a result of the editorial decision making process. Manga stories come out on a regular basis and are subject to deadline pressures. Because of this, are in some ways like personalized forms of communication, such as literature, and in some ways like more commercially-driven periodicals such as newspapers or magazines. Due to the manner in which manga is produced, its influence can be compared to that of other forms of mass communication. Therefore, in order to determine how gender roles are depicted in manga drawn by women, it is helpful to examine how gender roles are presented in Japanese mass media in general. In Midori Fukunishi Suzuki’s study on women on television (1995), she looks at the problems of how women are portrayed on Japanese television and what is being done to combat the inadequacies. First, she says there is a lack of critical thinking about television and especially television commercials among girls and women (77). On the television itself, there are, generally speaking, two men for every one woman onscreen (78). When women are onscreen, they are often shown in “traditional” roles such as housekeeping or shopping, and mainstream gender role stereotyping is reinforced (79). Additionally, women are also used as sexual objects, both in commercials and actual television shows (81). The age range of women onscreen is also much more narrow that that of men (78-9). Through constant reporting on events surrounding the emperor and the royal family, the media reinforces the idea of a deeply rooted patriarchy in Japan (82-3). Finally, she says that women are not often on the staffs of Japanese television stations, and end up in positions of negligible authority when they are (83). She then illustrates how organizations such as Women’s Action Group and the Forum for Citizen’s Television are trying to change institutionalized gender biases and ways of presenting women, but the pace of change within the industry is very slow (84-9). This study corroborates another study on women in Japanese media, which found five principles of how women are portrayed: Women and men are evaluated differently, women are objects, women are subordinate, a woman’s ability is low, and a woman’s place is in the home (Cooper-Chen 1997: 211-212). Even though these studies do not focus on manga specifically, they are helpful because they work to establish the general climate and attitudes toward gender role differentiation in Japan and help to put the portrayal of women in manga in context. Shōjo MangaWhile the stories of shōjo manga differ from that of male-centered comics, the artistic style differs as well. In her article “Cute But Deadly: Women and Violence in Japanese Comics,” Kanako Shiokawa analyzes the meaning and usage of kawaii, or cute, the hallmark of typical manga for girls. When something is cute it is “round, flat, simple, and smiling – not threatening, in other words” (Shiokawa 1999: 97). The three manga we are examining all present different artistic styles and ways of portraying their subject matter. Magic Knight Rayearth is the most typically shōjo of the three manga we are examining. The characters all have extraordinarily large eyes and express a charming naiveté about the situations in which they find themselves. Banana Fish, while called a shōjo comic, is not drawn in a shōjo style at all; rather, it bears more resemblance to the European-influenced manga of Katsuhiro Ōtomo (Schodt 1996: 206-7). It is drawn in a more realistic style with none of the large-eyed characters one has come to associate with girls’ manga. This stylistic difference could be a function of the type of story Banana Fish tells; the manga is very heavy on plot, while much lighter on actual emotion. Therefore, the large eyes, which are often used as devices to portray emotional expressions, are not used. Also, the cast of Banana Fish is almost entirely male, which could be another reason why the large, customarily female eyes are not used. Ranma ½ bypasses many typical shōjo conventions, and seems to strike a balance between the artistic styles of girls’ and boys’ comics.
Many of the
shōjo manga stories deal with worlds that are centered on the young female.
Surprisingly, quite a number of shōjo manga stories take place in an
entirely masculine world and deal with the romantic involvements of homosexual
males. Such stories are often called yaoi, an acronym standing for
“yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi,” or “no buildup, no foreclosure, no
meaning” (Kinsella 2000: 113) or “no climax, no resolution, no meaning”
(Thorn 1999: 139), or shōnen ai, meaning love between boys. Such
characterizations have been seen as a way of introducing a love story that is
not threatening or intimidating to a young girl. Alternate explanations have
been given by cultural anthropologist Matt Thorn:
Some readers have told me they
enjoy the stories because they present and idealized masculine world. Some speak
of despising femininity and even of wishing they had been born male, rather than
female. For most such women, yaoi and shonen ai allow them to indulge in the
fantasy of loving a man as a man, or, to rephrase it, as an equal, free of
predefined gender expectations. Nonetheless, I think there is an undeniable
voyeuristic element, because the readers and artists are in fact females (Thorn
1999). Such an analysis
brings up a multitude of conflicting interpretations of gender portrayals in
manga intended for females. It is essential to keep in mind that this is
generally a discourse within the realm of the female, that such products are
produced and consumed almost exclusively by females. First there is an element
of self-loathing, perhaps brought about by other facets of the Japanese mass
media – because females are not often depicted in a positive light, perhaps
writing about such male characters is a way for female manga artists to express
desires they do not feel comfortable expressing through a female character. Magic Knight Rayearth
The first example, Magic Knight Rayearth, is an example of how manga can function to foster a sense of bonding and community among its readers, who are presumably young girls. Painter (1996) shows how Japanese daytime television shows are used to promote a sense of inclusiveness and belonging among their viewers, and this manga functions in a similar manner. However, the intimacy fostered in Magic Knight Rayearth can be seen as a combative one, as the story involves females uniting to fight an evil man who has usurped a previously peaceful female power structure. Magic Knight Rayearth was written and drawn by the all-female manga team CLAMP, consisting of Nanase Ohkawa, who wrote the story, Mokona Apapa, who drew the character and background art, Satsuki Igarashi, who is the assistant designer and production coordinator, and Mikku Nekoi, who does the final editing and direction (CLAMP 1998: 199-200). The inner workings of CLAMP can be compared to the editorial production system, only that it is all done “in-house” (see Kinsella 2000: 50-69 for a summary of how manga is produced). The members of CLAMP originally began as amateur manga artists, but decided to become professional, which is, in the current environment, an increasingly rare occurrence. The manga was first serialized in 1993 under the title Mahō Kishi Reiāsu in the magazine Nakayoshi, published by Kodansha, the same comic magazine in which Sailor Moon was originally published, and one member of CLAMP has said that she did not think Rayearth would have been serialized had it not been for the influence of Sailor Moon (Oshiguchi 1997: 176). In the story of Magic Knight Rayearth, eighth grade school girls Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are all on a field trip to Tokyo Tower with their respective schools. They wander around, but when all three of them get into close proximity to each other, there is a giant flash of light and the cry “Help save our world, Magic Knights!” They are transported to another world called Cephiro, and find out from the sorcerer Guru Clef that they have been summoned to this world by Princess Emeraude to become the Legendary Magic Knights. The Princess is the pillar of Cephiro, keeping the world together through her prayers, but she has been kidnapped by the evil Priest Zagato. The three girls discover that they must revive the Spirits and save Cephiro in order to return home to their world. Before Guru Clef can fully give them their magic powers, they are attacked by one of Zagato’s henchmen, and Clef sends the girls away to find Presea, Chief Artisan of Cephiro. Presea meets with the girls and sends them to find a special mineral so she can fashion proper weapons for them. On their way to find the mineral, they encounter a demon, which they are able to defeat with the weapons Presea lent to them. Another monster appears immediately afterward, which is quickly dispatched by a mysterious boy who shows up unexpectedly. It is when the mysterious stranger asks the bewildered Magic Knights whom they are that this first volume ends. While the three girls are all the protagonists of the story, it is Hikaru who seems to be the main character. We can see through the way in which she is depicted what kind of story this is to be. We are introduced to her character first, and we view the other two characters through her eyes. Hikaru comes from a “normal” high school, while Umi and Fuu both come from more famous private prep schools. They are also portrayed as being very beautiful, while her classmates describe Hikaru as being pretty “[i]n a boyish kind of way” (CLAMP 1998:13). Hikaru clearly meets Shiokawa’s criteria for shōjo manga heroines, which say that the heroine is supposed to be “very ordinary in just about every aspect with the exception of either her athletic or artistic potential or the strength of her character” (Shiokawa 1999: 105). Because of the accessibility of the heroine’s character, the reader is encouraged to identify with her and to empathize with her situation. Such traits as being “cute” and relatively “normal” are then represented as gender ideals to the reading audience. The manga sets up an interesting sexual dichotomy of characters. The saviors of Cephiro, the Magic Knights, are all female, as are Princess Emeraude, upon whose powers Cephiro depends, and Presea, who is skilled at making very powerful weapons. The minion Zagato sends to attack Guru Clef and the Magic Knights is also female. The three males who appear in this first volume are Guru Clef, Zagato, and the mysterious boy at the very end. Of these three, only Zagato appears immediately identifiable as a male character, although he is still drawn in a very bishōnen (or “beautiful boy”) style. Thus, while there are males on the side of good, they have a very feminine appearance; the main antagonist of the story is the only character appearing in this first volume that seems to be masculine. In addition to being the most shōjo of all the manga being examined, it is also the most conservative. Through the interactions of the three main characters, it fashions a feeling of camaraderie and acceptance. This is illustrated by the ways in which Umi and Fuu relate to Hikaru. While Hikaru is the main character, she is much smaller and looks much younger than the other two girls. In fact, when they are introducing themselves, Umi and Fuu are shocked when she says she is fourteen and in the eighth grade like they are. Toward the end of this first book, after they defeat their first monster together, they have a moment of bonding. Umi asks Hikaru if she will be her little sister, and Fuu says the “adorable,” “cute,” and “innocent” Hikaru must work to protect her big sisters. Because the target audience for Rayearth was elementary and junior high school students (Oshiguchi 1997: 176), some of the themes are developed in a rather expositional fashion. Such interactions among the characters generate a sense of solidarity, with the readers identifying with the main character of Hikaru. She is small and looks rather immature for her age, but it is she who delivers the final blow to the first monster the group fights and, at least at the end of the first volume, she is the only one of the group who is able to perform any magic. Although
Magic Knight Rayearth functions to facilitate the dominant cultural value
of group cohesion through the banding together of the three young girls, there
is more to the manga than this message. Another way of looking at the manga is
to say that the power of the female is being acknowledged, and the power that
Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are able to achieve as Magic Knights is symbolic of the
power inherent within every person (and more specifically, the power inherent
within every girl.) It is a power that the male power structure, represented by
Zagato, finds threatening because, although he belittles the power of the Magic
Knights, he realizes they have the power to restore the peaceful Princess
Emeraude to her place as the pillar of the world. Banana Fish
The second example, Banana Fish, is an illustration of how manga can be used as a form of role-playing by its intended audience. It serves as a form of vicarious release by allowing its intended audience (again, presumably female as it is a shōjo comic) to participate in an idealized masculine world. This role-playing functions to enable to reader to experience an adventure and a freedom in which she (or he) may not be able to participate in everyday life. While it could be argued that all manga (and fiction in general) serve such a purpose, Banana Fish is unique in that it eschews the “flowery” aspects commonly associated with shōjo manga and instead presents a more realistic scenario and style. Banana Fish was published from May of 1985 until 1994 in a supplemental issue of the magazine Shōjo Comics (Schodt 1996: 206). Its title was originally published in English, as the term “Banana Fish” is taken from a J.D. Salinger novel. The story begins in Vietnam in 1973 when a U.S. soldier named Griffin apparently goes crazy and begins to shoot at his comrades in the platoon. One of his friends disables him and asks what is wrong. All Griffin can do is to mysteriously mumble something about “Banana Fish.” The story skips ahead to New York in 1985, where there has been a rash of unexplained suicides of corrupt, but powerful men. New York is the domain of Ash Lynx, the leader of an interracial street gang and who is also Griffin’s brother and caretaker. While keeping tabs on some of his gang members, Ash comes across a man dying in an alley, who hands him a locket and whispers something about “Banana Fish.” This catches Ash’s attention, as it is the only thing his brother, in his vegetable-like state, seems able to say. Ash discovers his men were instructed to kill this man by Papa Dino, the local crime boss to whom Ash’s gang has connections and Ash goes to Papa Dino to find out why his boys were used to kill the man. Papa Dino soon discovers that a small amount of a certain, unspecified substance is missing, and figures the man they killed must have been the culprit, and wonders if he may have passed it to Ash in the confusion. Ash finds a substance in the locket and takes it to a doctor friend of his to have it analyzed. In the meantime, two Japanese journalists arrive in New York to do a story on street kids with the help of the police department. Papa Dino, suspecting Ash of now having the missing amount of the substance, orders Marvin, one of his henchmen who has a crush on Ash, to make Ash confess. With the help of Arthur, a member of Ash’s gang who harbors a grudge against Ash for injuring his trigger finger, Marvin manages to entrap Ash, Ash’s friend Skip, and one of the Japanese reporters. The reporter manages to get away and tell the police, but the volume ends on a cliffhanger of what will happen to Ash and Skip, who still remain in the custody of Marvin and Arthur. The most interesting thing about this first volume is that female characters are almost nonexistent. Other than the brief appearances of the wife of a man who committed suicide, a young girl, and a waitress (for two frames, three frames, and one frame, respectively), the rest of the cast is entirely male. This is similar in form to the shōnen ai manga involving romantic attachments between androgynous men. However, Banana Fish differs from these conventions. There is in this story, like in some shōjo manga, a strong male homosexual element. Through dialogue between the characters, we discover that Ash has had romantic interludes with Papa Dino, and has acted in pornographic videos. Marvin also has a crush on Ash, but Ash always makes fun of him, adding to his personal and sexual frustration. Thus, when Papa Dino assigns Marvin the task of making Ash confess about the substance, Marvin particularly relishes the job of finally getting the opportunity to teach Ash a lesson. This illustrates a violent side of male homosexual love not uncommonly depicted in shōjo manga. Additionally, the men in Banana Fish are not drawn in an androgynous fashion; characters such as Ash Lynx may not appear to be threatening, yet very obviously express a form of masculinity – he brawls, is an expert marksman, and is the leader of a street gang. However, he is not sexually threatening to the supposed young female reader of this manga.
The absence of female characters may initially seem
to present a challenge as to how one should read Banana Fish. Because
this is shōjo manga, one might expect there to be, as in Magic Knight
Rayearth, central female characters to whom the readers would be able to
relate. Surprisingly, this concentration of male characters is exactly the same
as is found in many men’s drama manga (Ito 1994: 85). Perhaps Banana Fish
should be read as usage of the liminal space of manga in order to assume a
completely different role. This separation from everyday life necessitates a
change in location in order to ensure a proper suspension of disbelief, yet
elements must still be kept familiar to the readers; hence, the manga is set in
America and uses the younger of the two Japanese characters as “an
intermediary for Japanese readers” (Schodt 1996: 206). Through interacting
with the manga, female readers are able to move through the storyline as a male
figure; it is a vicarious interaction with an idealized masculine world,
facilitating the expression of dreams and desires that one would not normally be
able to express. Ranma ½
Ranma ½ is a different type of manga from Magic Knight Rayearth and Banana Fish, as it is in a shōnen rather than a shōjo manga style. Thus, its target audience is ostensibly young males, although the manga is popular with readers of both sexes. Originally published as Ranma Nibun no Ichi, it ran in Shogakukan’s Shōnen Sunday Comics from 1988 to 1996. This third manga example illustrates a more playful attitude toward sex roles and sexual identity than the previous two manga. It allows the reader to “try on” different sexual identities through the fluidity of the sexual roles of the characters. While the manga must, in the end, reinforce standard norms of behavior, it allows a not-insignificant amount of transgression to occur. In the story, Ranma and his father Genma, expert martial artists who have been undergoing rigorous training in China, come back to Japan to the Tendō school of martial arts. Genma is an old friend of Mr. Tendō, and they have arranged that Ranma is to marry one of Tendō’s three daughters. However, when Ranma and Genma arrive, they appear quite odd – Genma appears to be a large panda, and Ranma appears to be a young girl. After much confusion, the truth comes out that while training in China, they fell into cursed springs. It came to be that when Ranma and Genma are splashed with cold water they turn into their girl and panda forms, and when splashed with hot water they revert back to their original forms. In spite of this little surprise, they decide that Ranma is to marry Akane, the youngest of Mr. Tendō’s daughters who is, unlike her sisters, a martial artist as well. Since Ranma and his father will be staying at the Tendō residence for a while, Ranma is sent to school, where he encounters Kuno, a kendō champion and one of Akane’s many suitors. (In fact, so many boys at the school are after Akane that she has to literally fight them off every morning, as Kuno declared to the school that whoever wants to take Akane out on a date must defeat her in combat.) Later, Ranma also encounters and has to combat Ryoga, someone he knew from his old high school who still holds a grudge against him. Of the three manga, Ranma ½ in most playful with the idea of a fixed sexuality and gender roles. Of course, the main focus of this sexual focus is on Ranma himself, as he has the ability to change (or rather, as is more often the case, to be changed against his will) from male to female and back again. Yet it is only sex that is changing when this occurs; Ranma still keeps all of his same masculine attitudes and mannerisms. Ranma wants to be in his female form for as short a time as possible, viewing female representation as something to be avoided at all costs. A perfect counterexample to Ranma is his fiancé Akane, who is a very masculine female, often against her best intentions. Like Ranma, her changes are mostly external; she grew her hair long in order to appear more feminine, yet she continues to fight at school each day. Because of her tendency for athleticism and getting into fights, Ranma often taunts her by calling her a “tomboy.” It may seem as if being playful about one’s sexual identity is being encouraged through this manga. However, there are quite a number of conservative elements at work. For example, the primacy of Ranma’s original form is constantly being emphasized, and he seems to view his current situation almost as a fate worse than death when he says that he was prepared to give his life for his martial arts training, but “My manhood is another story!” (Takahashi 1993: 49). Once the situation has been properly explained, those around him seem to be perfectly accepting of Ranma’s changes between male and female sexes, but Ranma himself continues to view his changing as something of an aberration. Ranma’s foil in the manga is his fiancé Akane, a female who tries to affect the mannerisms of the feminine, such as growing longer hair and behaving in a more demure fashion, but in spite of herself continues to act in a masculine way. When Ranma makes fun of her for being such a “tomboy,” her tendency is to hit him, clobber him with a table, or any other manner of physical retribution. Such actions demonstrate the basic masculine/feminine contradictions in Akane’s character – her femininity is often betrayed by her masculine ways of behaving.
It has been noted that Rumiko Takahashi’s draws
her influences from all around her, but that she particularly enjoys the
Takarazuka theater (Horibuchi 1997: 23). This could possibly provide some
insight as to the sexual identities being portrayed through Ranma ½. In
the Takarazuka theater, all of the actors are female, and thus the actors,
through their performances, try to portray the “ideal” characteristics of
the sex they are portraying. Because of this interaction and overlap between
sexual identities, the performances present agendas that have “both parodied
convention and reinforced the status quo” (Robertson 1998: 27). Similarly,
Ranma ½ pokes fun at traditional ways of viewing masculinity and femininity
while in the end falling back on standard definitions of how males and females
should behave. Manga as Liminal SpaceManga, like many popular cultural forms, can act as a type of liminal space in which issues are problematized. For this paper, I am primarily interested in how these varied portrayals of gender relations by female manga writers engage Japanese society as a whole. These relations can be summarized as fostering intimacy (Magic Knight Rayearth), role-playing as another sex (Banana Fish), and playful ambivalence (Ranma ½). Manga can be examined using the framework of liminality explicated by Turner (1969). In the manga, there are two different liminal spaces at play. First of all, there is the liminal space of the medium itself, which serves as a departure from the cares of the mundane world. We follow the actions of the protagonists in their own worlds, and through such an interaction a liminal space is created. We as readers are united in a sense of communitas through following the story, and this can even serve as a foundation for communitas outside of the interaction of the reader and the text. (An example of this can be seen in the behavior of fans in fan culture and at fan gatherings.) Secondly, there is the liminal space that exists within the stories in the manga themselves. In Rayearth, the three girls are dragged into the liminal space of Cephiro, a world of demons and magic. The three girls are like the neophytes in Turner’s analysis of liminality (Turner 95-6). Thus, no matter their socioeconomic differences or how “pretty” they are in the everyday world, it becomes necessary for them to band together in order to put things right in Cephiro and return to their world. As the analysis is only of the first volume, the eventual result and departure from its liminal space is unclear. In Banana Fish, the liminal space is America, and the world inhabited by Ash’s interracial gang. Because this manga is intended for a Japanese audience, this change of setting distances the reader from the familiar, facilitating the development of a liminal space. Finally, in Ranma ½, the liminal space is the world Ranma and his father carry around with them, a world in which a splash of water can cause a change in sex. By questioning the rigidity of sexual identification, this manga calls into question even basic assumptions of how the world functions, as is illustrated by some of the amazing, physics-defying martial arts maneuvers the characters are able to perform. These three manga do not occur within the everyday world and thus they are able to posit a world in which basic beliefs concerning the everyday world, such as gendered roles within society, are able to be questioned. Because it is a form of mass media, manga both reflects and shapes the way gender roles are perceived in Japanese society. However, manga is also able to serve as a site of resistance to those very roles it is propagating because its meaning is not necessarily constrained by either the text itself or how it is interpreted.
Because of the fluidity of liminal space, it must
be asked how the readers of such manga are using and interpreting it. First, it
must be noted that the primary reading material of girls may in fact be boys’
manga. Anthropologist Matt Thorn discovered that the most popular manga magazine
among both girls and boys is Weekly Boys’ Jump (Shūkan Shōnen
Jampu), while the next most popular manga magazine among girls was one of shōjo
manga, with only half as many votes (Thorn 2000). This corroborates the data in
Figures 1 and 2 that the most popular manga are those boys’ manga magazines
that, while they do not comprise one tenth of the titles produced, account for
over 40% manga readership. For example, with the case of Ranma ½,
although it ran in a boys’ comic magazine and had a core group of fifteen-year
old readers, the age distribution “spread toward younger females” (Horibuchi
1997: 19), indicating a much wider age range of readers than one might expect to
find for “boys’ manga.” Thus the readership of the manga exhibits a
fluidity that one might not expect to find, especially with the way manga
magazines are so highly categorized. Perhaps this is because the readers of shōjo
manga find such manga too limited in scope and prefer expand their reading
selection to be more inclusive. Regardless, such crossover popularity could
imply that the intended surface meaning of the manga is being read in a
different way by those who are not in a manga magazine’s target audience. For
example, Jennifer Robertson’s analysis of the Takarazuka theater demonstrates
how a mode of popular culture, accepted and promoted by the mainstream culture,
can be seen as having different meanings to those who are actively producing and
promoting the theater and those who are fans of the theater (Robertson 1998).
The progenitors of the theater intended it to function as a way of teaching
young women how to best take care of men. It was thought that by portraying men
onstage, the women would be better able to understand and empathize with their
husbands when they finally left the theater and were married. On the other hand,
it could be argued that by assuming masculinity onstage, the actors are in a way
subverting the dominant ideology of male superiority. Thus, the fluidity of the
liminal space means that meaning is not necessarily fixed, and is therefore able
to be reinterpreted in a different fashion. ConclusionThe liminal space of manga provides an excellent forum for the discussion of gender construction in Japanese society. Manga is an officially sanctioned form of popular culture which must, because of its official recognition, support the dominant ideology. On the other hand, due to its liminal nature, it has the potential to critique the standard perceptions of the world. By reading manga, one is actually participating in a dialogue based on how one perceives and interprets the manga. An analysis of three different manga is not enough to allow us to draw any concrete conclusions about the manga industry nor how such manga are always interpreted, yet we may be able to formulate some generalities. At their most basic levels, these manga are a medieval role-playing game-esque adventure in a fantasy world, a drug thriller taking place on the streets of New York, and a “martial arts sex comedy.” Pictured in our examples are three different ways of dealing with the marginalization of the female so often depicted in Japanese forms of mass communication. The first way, in Magic Knight Rayearth, is through bonding and solidarity. The second way, in Banana Fish, is through a form of role-playing as a male, . The third way, in Ranma ½, is through assuming a questioningly playful stance on masculinity and femininity, although, since it is part of the mainstream popular culture, it seems as if it reaffirms traditional mores. However, these generalizations do not necessarily indicate how the manga must be read. These three manga are products of the modern Japanese popular cultural environment, and therefore they must necessarily reinforce (or be perceived to reinforce) the dominant cultural values held dear by society at large. In that sense, manga are “pro-establishment” as Kinsella claims (Kinsella 2000). However, like many popular culture texts, there is not necessarily one correct way in which to read them; they can be read both as cultural products that support current mores and attitudes concerning women as well as products that, in a more subtle manner, critique this stance. Thus, manga seems to simultaneously be “pro-establishment” as Kinsella claims, while promoting ideas that are potentially subversive. This investigation suggests further research that can be performed to see how manga functions in Japanese society. In order to better understand this functionality, it would be helpful to do an analysis of Weekly Boys’ Jump in terms of gender roles that are being portrayed, since it the most popular manga magazine in Japan and one of the best-selling weekly magazines in the world, with a weekly circulation of between five and six million (Schodt 1996: 88). It would also help to conduct in-depth interviews with female manga authors to determine how the authors see their own works and the messages they are trying to convey to the public. Finally, more information from fans is needed in order to determine how people view and interact with the manga they read on a daily basis. It
is interesting to note that although it is important to investigate what
messages are communicated in a mass media form such as manga, the influence of
printed media on Japanese popular culture may be waning. While manga has long
been reviled as causing the downfall of “real” literature in Japan,
“according to Kazuto Yamaguchi, and editor at Kodansha, Japan’s largest
publisher, ‘even the people who used to read manga are switching to electronic
diversions’” (French 2000). One can trace the evolution of manga from its
printed form, to a moving form (anime), to an interactive form (video
role-playing games). While manga continues to be a dominating force in the
publishing market, Japanese publishing as a whole is shrinking. In order to get
a glimpse at how mediated gender roles may be portrayed and shaped in the near
future, it would be helpful to conduct in-depth research on characters in video
games and video game culture. It may be through the influence of the electronic
media that cultural values will be shaped and reflected in the future. Works
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