Shōjo Manga Research: The Legacy of Women Critics and Their Gender-Based Approach

Shōjo manga varies in style and genre. But despite this diversity, there is a certain conception of shōjo manga aesthetics, dominated by images of flowers, ribbons, fluttering hem skirts, and innocent-looking girls with large, staring eyes. Traditionally, the beginning of shōjo manga has been equated with Tezuka Osamu’s Princess Knight (Ribon no kishi), but more recent studies have instead focused on prior texts,namely the creations of Takahashi Macoto, who was influenced by the so-called lyrical illustrations (jojōga) of artists such as Nakahara Jun’ichi, Takabatake Kashō and Takehisa Yumeji. Manga influenced by jojōga have arguably prioritized visual qualities. The importance of visual qualities has increasingly been recognized in shōjo manga studies. However, most critical examinations of shōjo manga place emphasis on the role of narrative structure and representation of gender. This applies particularly to those who read shōjo manga as a medium to challenge conventional gender roles. Female manga researchers especially have tended to focus on biological and socially constructed gender. This column discusses two such works, Fujimoto Yukari’s Where is my place in the world? (1998, revised edition 2008) and Oshiyama Michiko’s Discussion of Gender Representation in Shōjo Manga: Forms of “Cross-dressed Girls” and Identity (2007, revised edition 2013)

An Enchanted Garden of Liminality: Locating a Shōjo-scape in Flowers in the Attic

V. C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic (1979) has been capturing the hearts of adolescent girls for nearly 40 years. The enduring popularity of the novel is reinforced by the success of its recent adaptation on the small screen (2014). Despite its popularity, the work has received little, if any, scholarly scrutiny. While this may be due to its controversial storyline, which includes incest, murder and the confinement of children by their own mother, another reason may be the highly ‘girlish’ ambience of the story, which is often treated in a derogatory and unfavourable manner in Anglophone culture. In such a culture, the period of ‘adolescent girlhood’, which the story’s heroine Cathy embodies both somatically and metaphorically, tends to be perceived as merely an unstable and perilous stage that women pass through as they mature. By focusing on its recent TV film adaptation, this paper proposes another reading. The perspectives developed within Japanese shōjo studies assign a degree of independence to such a state of ‘girlhood’, which they term as a ‘shōjo-scape’. Flowers in the Attic might be representative of a ‘shōjo-scape’, where the concept of adolescent girlhood and aesthetic qualities associated with it are ascribed greater significance and focus, and by implication a considerable degree of principality. By re-evaluating the potential of cross-cultural applicability of Japanese shōjo criticism, this analysis of Flowers in the Attic might serve to provide an alternative to the monolithic, often Eurocentric idea of intellectual ‘exchange’ that flows only in one direction

Observations of Oscillating Cavitation on a Flat Plate Hydrofoil

An experimental investigation was made to clarify the characteristics of oscillating cavitation on a flat plate hydrofoil in a water tunnel. Dynamic the behavior of oscillating cavitation is discussed from the unsteady pressure measurements at the upstream of the blade and the visual observations of cavitation phenomena using high-speed video recording. It was found that the mean cavity length characterizes the fundamental characteristics of cavity oscillation. The cavity oscillations are categorized into two types, i.e. the transitional cavity oscillation and the partial cavity oscillation

Refashioning the romantics : contemporary Japanese culture - aspects of dress

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.Clothing is often perceived as a device to create, define and demarcate the gender binary. Accordingly, there are sets of preconceptions regarding ways in which men and women are assumed to engage with fashion. The research presented here reviews three of these ideas, some of which have been challenged by scholars but which are, still persistently, present in popular culture. Such preconceptions assume that men prioritize functionality over aesthetics and are the bearers, not the objects of the gaze, while women’s fashion is represented through multiple binaries of sexualisation and restriction, and female sartorial ornamentation is seen as symbolic of subservience. I investigate these presumptions via three contemporary Japanese cultural texts –(a) Japanese young men’s fashion magazines, (b) Japanese female performers’ appropriations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in their music videos, and (c) Lolita fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Kamikaze Girls (2004), respectively. My study of these three selected texts explores the following possibilities that: (a) through negotiating the male reader’s desire to attract admirers and narcissistic impulse, young men’s fashion magazines endorse an idea that “crafting” the pleasant “look” is a part of quintessence of self-assurance and the idea of a good, successful life; that (b) kinds of Japanese cute (kawaii) and girlish aesthetics demonstrated by the Japanese singers allow them to accentuate their “cute” femininity without a hint of sexualisation, and; that (c) one of the heroines in Kamikaze Girls engages in both conventionally “masculine” and “feminine” activities while almost always dressed in the highly elaborate, girlish Lolita fashion. My examinations of these texts arguably renders the cultural and socialpsychological conceptions of “gender performativity” and “androgyny” effective and credible. The Japanese context is appropriate for this aim because this is where, particularly since 1868, European sartorial styles have been actively promoted, both politically and aesthetically. Consequently, Japan has become an ethnographically unique space where the subtle marriage of European dress style and Japanese aesthetics has taken place. Along with the theme of fashion and gender, this research attempts to unearth the meanings behind processes of Japanese adaptation, appropriation and restylisation of European sartorial and aesthetic concepts. Japanese appropriation and refashioning of European sartorial concepts, this research argues, offers a unique interpretive illustration of the aesthetics of fashion and transnationality

Searching for Radio Pulsars in 3EG Sources at Urumqi Observatory

Since mid-2005, a pulsar searching system has been operating at 18 cm on the 25-m radio telescope of Urumqi Observatory. Test observations on known pulsars show that the system can perform the intended task. The prospect of using this system to observe 3EG sources and other target searching tasks is discussed.Comment: a training project about MSc thesi

Predictors of new onsets of irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia:the lifelines study

BACKGROUND: It has been claimed that functional somatic syndromes share a common etiology. This prospective population-based study assessed whether the same variables predict new onsets of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM). METHODS: The study included 152 180 adults in the Dutch Lifelines study who reported the presence/absence of relevant syndromes at baseline and follow-up. They were screened at baseline for physical and psychological disorders, socio-demographic, psycho-social and behavioral variables. At follow-up (mean 2.4 years) new onsets of each syndrome were identified by self-report. We performed separate analyses for the three syndromes including participants free of the relevant syndrome or its key symptom at baseline. LASSO logistic regressions were applied to identify which of the 102 baseline variables predicted new onsets of each syndrome. RESULTS: There were 1595 (1.2%), 296 (0.2%) and 692 (0.5%) new onsets of IBS, CFS, and FM, respectively. LASSO logistic regression selected 26, 7 and 19 predictors for IBS, CFS and FM, respectively. Four predictors were shared by all three syndromes, four predicted IBS and FM and two predicted IBS and CFS but 28 predictors were specific to a single syndrome. CFS was more distinct from IBS and FM, which predicted each other. CONCLUSIONS: Syndrome-specific predictors were more common than shared ones and these predictors might form a better starting point to unravel the heterogeneous etiologies of these syndromes than the current approach based on symptom patterns. The close relationship between IBS and FM is striking and requires further research