Abstract
This chapter looks at how this seminal figure in prewar Japanese girls’ culture responded to discourses about proper femininity in the early Shōwa period (1926–45). It shows how Matsumoto sourced positively from Hollywood and the flapper-type moga (‘modern girl’) to craft models of athletic and assertive girlhood that differs starkly from the wispy, homoerotic figures that traditionally dominate narratives of early shōjo culture.
In this chapter, Japanese names are in the Japanese order, with the family name preceding the first name.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The present essay is a heavily revised version of ‘The Mysterious Clover: Matsumoto Katsuji, Douglas Fairbanks, and the Reformed Modern Girl’, The Comics Journal online (May 2014), with portions also taken from ‘Matsumoto Katsuji and the American Roots of Kawaii’, The Comics Journal online (April 2014). I would like to thank Utsuhara Michie, Uchida Shizue, Natsume Fusanosuke, Patrick Galbraith, James Welker, Matt Thorn, and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Culture for their help and feedback at various stages of this project.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
My understanding of the history of Robin Hood myth and literature stems largely from Knight (2003).
- 5.
Works Cited
Anonymous. 1985. Jojōga kara no tenshin: Matsumoto Katsuji, sono hito to shigoto. In Matsumoto Katsuji no sekai: shōjo no akarui yume o tsuikyū, 17–23. Tokyo: Sanrio.
Armitage, Shelley. 1994. Kewpies and Beyond: The World of Rose O’Neill. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Dollase, Hiromi Tsuchiya. 2008. Girls on the Home Front: An Examination of Shōjo no tomo Magazine 1937–1945. Asian Studies Review 32: 323–329.
Exner, Eike. 2016. The Prewar Japanese Translation of American Newspaper Comic Strips and the Origins of Contemporary Japanese Story Manga. Lecture Delivered at Gakushūin University, August.
Formanek-Brunell, Miriam. 1993. Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830–1930. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Halberstam, Judith. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Harvey, R.C. 1997. Cartoons of the Roaring Twenties. 2 vols. Seattle: Fantagraphics.
Ikuta, Makoto. 2012. Modan gaaru daizukan: Taishō Shōwa no oshare joshi. Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha.
Imada, Erika. 2008. ‘Shōjo’ no shakaishi. Tokyo: Keisō shobō.
Iwashita, Hōsei. 2013. Shōjo manga no hyōgen kikō: hirakareta manga hyōgenshi to Tezuka Osamu. Tokyo: NTT shuppan.
Jones, Gerard. 2004. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books.
Kami, Shōichirō, ed. 1974. Kikigaki: Nihon jidō shuppan bijutsushi. Tokyo: Taihei shuppansha.
Knight, Stephen. 2003. Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.
Matsumoto, Katsuji. 1934. Nazo no kurobaa. Insert pamphlet in: Shōjo no tomo, April.
———. 1987. Kuru kuru kurumi-chan. 2 vols. Tokyo: Kokusha kankōkai.
Narumi, Takeshi. 2009. ‘Moe’ no kigen: jidai shōsetsu ga yomitoku manga anime no honshitsu. Tokyo: PHP kenkyūjo.
Natsume, Fusanosuke. 2013. Fukkoku ni yosete: sakuhin kaisetsu. Tsumugu 10: 267–270.
Ono Saseo ten jikkō iinkai, and Kawasaki shi Okamoto Tarō bijutsukan. 2012. Moga on pareedo: Ono Saseo to sono jidai. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.
Robbins, Trina. 2013. Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists, 1896–2013. Seattle: Fantagraphics.
Robertson, Jennifer. 1998. Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Romberger, James. 2014. Reverse-Engineering Fairbanks. The Hooded Utilitarian, January. http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/01/reverse-engineering-fairbanks/
Sato, Barbara. 2003. The New Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan. Durham: Duke University Press.
Shamoon, Deborah. 2012a. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
———. 2012b. The Modern Girl and the Vamp: Hollywood Film in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Early Novels. Positions 20 (4): 1067–1093.
Silverberg, Miriam. 1991. Modern Girl as Militant. In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Lee Bernstein. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2007. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Studlar, Gaylyn. 1993. This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age. New York: Columbia University Press.
Uchida, Shizue, and Yayoi bijutsukan. 2006. Matsumoto Katsuji: Shōwa no kawaii! o tsukutta irasutorētā. Tokyo: Kawade shobō shinsha.
Ueda, Toshiko. 1987. Kurumi-chan no miryoku. In Kuru kuru kurumi-chan, ed. Katsuji Matsumoto, vol. 1. Tokyo: Kokusha kankōkai.
Vance, Jeffrey. 2008. Douglas Fairbanks. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wilson, Sandra. 1995. Mobilizing Women in Inter-War Japan: The National Defence Women’s Association and the Manchurian Crisis. Gender & History 7 (2): 295–314.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Holmberg, R. (2019). Matsumoto Katsuji: Modern Tomboys and Early Shōjo Manga. In: Ogi, F., Suter, R., Nagaike, K., Lent, J.A. (eds) Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97229-9_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97229-9_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97228-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97229-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)