Josei manga

• 1. Ladies' Comics And The Word Josei

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  The first term used to describe manga aimed at adult women was ladies' comics. This phrase is a wasei-eigo construction where the word ladies functions as a synonym for women. It indicated an adult-focused audience from its inception in the 1980s. By the 1990s, this term developed a negative connotation. Critics and readers began associating it with low-quality and pornographic content. The stigma attached to ladies' comics caused the association to wane by the 2000s. An abbreviation of ladies' comics emerged as LC. In Japan, this abbreviation became the most commonly-used term for this category of manga today. A second term called young ladies exists as well. It denotes an intermediate category positioned between manga for adult women and shōjo manga. Academics introduced the term josei in the late 1990s to distinguish all manga aimed at adult women from shōjo manga. While not commonly used among general Japanese audiences, it remains the term most commonly used by Western audiences to describe this category.

• 2. Gekiga Roots And The Year 24 Group

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  Manga aimed at a female audience has an extensive history expressed through the development of shōjo manga. For much of that history, shōjo manga targeted exclusively children and young girls. This status quo shifted in the late 1950s with the emergence of gekiga. Gekiga sought to use manga to tell serious and grounded stories aimed at adult audiences. By the late 1960s, gekiga was a mainstream artistic movement. In 1968, the women's magazine Josei Seven published the first gekiga manga aimed at a female audience. Miyako Maki created the work titled The Story of a Woman Who Became a Mother. Maki was a shōjo manga artist who debuted in the late 1950s. She pivoted to gekiga as her original audience aged into adulthood. Two magazines dedicated to women's gekiga were founded shortly thereafter. Mushi Production launched one in 1969 while Futabasha started another in 1972. Neither were commercially successful and both folded after several issues. Despite commercial failure, the 1970s saw significant development of shōjo manga by artists in the Year 24 Group. These artists created stories more psychologically complex than previous works. They dealt directly with topics of politics and sexuality. Editor Kazuo Koike became the founding editor of the magazine Petit Flower in 1980. It targeted an older teen readership and published adult-focused works by Year 24 Group members Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya.

• 3. Magazine Proliferation And Stigma

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  Publishers sought to exploit this new market of mature shōjo readers by creating dedicated magazines. These came to be described using the genre name ladies' comics. Notable magazines included Be Love by Kodansha and You by Shueisha in 1980. Shogakukan followed with a title in 1981. All three magazines shared common traits of originating as special issues spun off from shōjo manga magazines. Their editorial focus emphasized romance stories that highlighted sex. Open depictions of sexual acts became a defining trait of ladies' comics. This contrasted sharply with editorial restrictions still placed on sexual depictions in shōjo manga. The manga artist Milk Morizono emerged as one of the most popular ladies' comics authors of the 1980s. She was renowned for her porn-chic stories. Ladies' comics magazines proliferated rapidly in the latter half of the decade. There were eight magazines in 1984. That number rose to 19 in 1985. By 1991, there were 48 magazines. By the 1990s, large commercially published ladies' comics magazines declined due to the Lost Decade economic crisis. This led to the proliferation of smaller magazines focused on erotic and pornographic content. Consequently, ladies' comics developed a reputation as being female pornography.

• 4. Economic Crisis And Social Legitimacy

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  Contemporaneously, new manga magazines aimed at adult women in their early twenties emerged. Young You appeared in 1987 followed by Young Rose in 1990 and Feel Young in 1991. Manga published in these magazines came to be referred to as young ladies manga. The word young appeared in the title of all three magazines. Young ladies manga grew in popularity as shōjo artists migrated to this category. They wished to create manga for an older audience while avoiding the stigma associated with ladies' comics. Teens' love also emerged as a subgenre marketed towards women. It utilized the sex-focused narrative structure of ladies' comics but featured teenaged instead of adult protagonists. Ladies' comic magazines responded to this competition by focusing on social issues. The strategy was successful. By the late 1990s, the genre gained greater legitimacy as a literary form. It attracted a more general audience. Multiple ladies' comics titles were adapted into films and television series during this period. The term josei manga also emerged during this time. Academics used it primarily to distinguish manga aimed at adult women from shōjo manga.

• 5. Drama Romance And Pornography Subgenres

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  There are three primary subgenres in josei manga: drama, romance, and pornography. In 2002, drama and romance titles collectively represented roughly 80 percent of sales in the josei collected volume market. Pornography composed the remaining 20 percent. Drama and romance titles are typically released by large Japanese publishing companies. Pornography is typically published by smaller publishing houses. Many josei dramas are realist stories about the lives of ordinary women. These stories focus on working women in professions like housewife or office lady. Narratives address common personal issues such as dating, childcare, eldercare, beauty standards, workplace issues, marital strife, or adultery. Some also address social issues like aging, dementia, prostitution, or violence against women. Josei manga does feature male protagonists known as bishōnen. They appear in stories with homoerotic subtext. Stories are sometimes based on reader experiences. Readers submit stories based on their own life experiences and receive payment if chosen for adaptation. Magazines often publish special issues dedicated to specific topics like divorce, illnesses, and cosmetic surgery. Sociologist Kinko Itō considers that josei dramas serve as catharsis for readers. Manga scholar Fusami Ogi views them as presenting role models and potential ways of life.

• 6. Romance And Sexual Fantasy Themes

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  Josei romances typically eschew realism in favor of heightened melodrama resembling soap operas or Harlequin romance novels. Stories adhere to common romance novel formulas involving a woman encountering a Prince Charming-like man. She embarks on adventures and ultimately marries him. Sexual encounters between the protagonist and partner are commonplace. Romantic fantasy themes manifest through settings like foreign countries or historical periods. Heroic protagonists include princes, princesses, ghosts, or people with supernatural abilities. Variant sexual identities such as gay and transgender characters appear in these narratives. Josei romances target both younger and older readerships. Many stories aim at teenaged girls evidenced by extensive use of furigana reading aids. Pornographic josei manga shares traits with pornographic manga for heterosexual male audiences. Stories are written from a female point of view instead of a male one. Traits like female domination and objectification recur frequently. A common story formula involves transforming a shy intelligent woman into a nymphomaniac or sex slave. Lesbian relationships also appear in pornographic josei manga suggesting a lesbian readership exists. Manga scholar Deborah Shamoon considers the appeal lies in depicting subjects not easily shown in filmed pornography. These include the female orgasm.

• 7. Industry Dynamics And Authorial Crossover

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  Josei as a category is generally less popular than shōjo, seinen, and shōnen manga. In 2010, You was the top-selling josei manga magazine. It had a reported circulation of 162,917 copies. The top-selling shōjo magazine that year was Ciao with 745,455 copies. Weekly Young Jump and Weekly Shōnen Jump had circulations of 768,980 and 2.8 million respectively. Anime has been a significant influencing factor attracting mainstream audiences since the 2000s. The josei series Paradise Kiss originated in 1999 while Bunny Drop appeared in 2005. Chihayafuru began in 2007 followed by Princess Jellyfish in 2008. Eden of the East arrived in 2009. All either originated as popular anime or enjoyed breakout success after adaptation. When josei manga initially emerged in the 1980s it differentiated itself from shōjo manga. It explored adult topics like work, sex, and life after marriage. Manga scholar Yukari Fujimoto notes this focus on realism as a primary distinguishing mark. She contrasts careers held by protagonists: actresses models and musicians in shōjo versus ordinary working women in josei. Since the emergence of young ladies manga distinctions have blurred. Protagonists of all ages appear in both categories. Shōjo stories feature adult protagonists while josei stories focus on teens. At the editorial level no consistent standard exists for segmenting female audience manga. Terminology varies across decades publishing houses and magazines. Large publishers like Shueisha and Kodansha grouped all female audience magazines under one category since the 2000s. It is common for authors to create shōjo and josei manga simultaneously. Mayu Shinjo George Asakura and others produce works across categories.