Japanese illustrates the complex interaction between male social/political dominance and control of language use. It manifests not only the three ways patriarchal language infiltrates our minds and the ways we talk (or are permitted to talk) or are talked about by men, but also provides instances of women's defiance of PUD [Patriarchal Universe of Discourse] rules. When men name the world of their perceptions, they also name the place of women in that world; these names lexicalize men's concepts and form semantic sets within a culture's vocabulary. When men control the social and grammatical rules of a language and have mandated their dialect as the standard, they define what women are allowed to say and the way in which they must say it. The "place" of a woman in a man's world isn't only reflected in certain sets of words in the language's vocabulary but is also marked in her speech by specific suffixes. Japanese women aren't utterly silent, however, and have words for describing their own experiences, including derogatory terms for men.
In a 1988 Weekend Edition, National Public Radio (NPR) did a segment called "Japanese Women's Language." A man's voice introduced the segment as "a story about sexism, although most people in the country we're about to visit wouldn't call it that." Patronizingly acknowledging that, "of course, the United States has its share of sexism," he went on with his ethnocentric description of "sexism" in Japan:
now imagine a culture that forbids women most of the time to speak the same language as men, a society where women actually have to use different words than men do to say the same thing, or else they'll be shunned.
Men's subjugation of women in Japan goes back at least 1,000 years, to a time when women were forbidden to speak to men. In the 1930s, the Japanese government issued edicts warning women not to use words reserved to men, and the resulting differentiations remain in force, if not the edicts themselves (NPR). The significant adjectives that distinguish onna kotaba, 'women's words', from the male dialect are 'soft' and 'harsh', the equivalents of English 'weak' and 'forceful'. One example of the pressure on women to speak softly and submissively, if they speak at all, is the custom of hiring elevator "girls" in Japanese department stores.
According to the NPR report, women hired as elevator "girls" must be "pretty, young, and very, very feminine." One of the behaviors that conveys onna-rashisa (the stereotype of femininity) is the ability to speak women's "language" correctly, and this aspect of the elevator operator's job performance is closely monitored. They are expected to talk in "perfect women's language," and "never slip and use a masculine word." Their fluency in the linguistic display of submissiveness is insured by one-half hour of mandatory daily practice, during which any "unfeminine" pronunciations are corrected. In order for a woman, any woman, to be perceived as "nice," she must speak "correct women's language" (NPR). Women who don't speak the submissive dialect men assign to them don't get jobs.
R. Lakoff (1975) and Mary Ritchie Key (1975) both noted that the sentences of English-speaking women are likely to be longer and wordier than those of men, and the same apparently holds true for Japanese. A man might be able to say, "Open the window!" but a Japanese woman, in order to get the same thing done, would have to say, "Please open the window a little bit, if you don't mind!" The result is that a woman's sentence has only one or two words in common with a comparable male utterance (NPR) and is much longer. Not surprisingly, Japanese women's dialect is perceived as more subservient and tentative than men's, because the women must use submissive, self-effacing phrases equivalent to the tag-questions that Robin Lakoff (1975) associated with women's speech in English. These phrases translate into English as "do you think," "I can't be sure," and "will it be," and their use in commonplace statements means that Japanese women say an average of 20% more words than men to describe the same thing. In Japanese, it is impossible for a woman to speak informally and assertively at the same time (NPR).
-Julia Penelope, Speaking Freely: Unlearning the Lies of the Fathers’ Tongues
The answer lies in girls' manga: Heroines who stick out from their "character" - Peach Girl is the answer.
I found an interesting book.
The book is titled "Joshi manga ni ara answer aru 'rashisa' wo hiroin tachi (Heroines who stick out their 'character')".
It is a book written by Yukiko Tomiyama, a writer and manga researcher.
The first edition was published in May of this year.
As the title suggests, the book picks up manga heroines targeting women and introduces them in categories such as "interesting women," "tough women," and "poor women.
The works that appear range from the 1970s to the most recent. The content covers a wide range.
The point is that it is "women's manga," not "girls' manga.
According to the book, the creator of the concept of "women's manga" was Makoto Oda, a member of the Shojo Manga Research Department,
She called them "girls" who once despaired of love and sex, and named the manga "girls' manga," which are read by "girls who have known despair in order to reaffirm their reality.
I heard that she named it "girls' manga". Wow! That's interesting.
Some time ago, when I was writing a manga review for work, I wondered what the gender-based terminology for shoujo manga and shonen manga was. I came to the conclusion that there is no problem if the distinction is made as a category.
Incidentally, Mr. Yoko Ototake also wrote about the same theme in his notebook.
Is "shoujo manga" a discriminatory expression?
I have not read it yet, but it is an interesting topic and I hope to read it soon.
Now, in "Shoujo manga ni answereru shoujo manga", even my favorite "Peach Girl" is mentioned by name. Of course, she is the representative of the "nasty girl".
As for the character of Sae in the early part of the story, it is no exaggeration to say that she is the most disgusting woman in the history of girls' manga. I still think so.
I haven't read the whole book yet, but I think I would like to read it carefully before going to bed, because it looks like it would be a good learning experience from the table of contents.
She's a 10 but I wished she'd just compose a song about me.
❝Well… it might not have been composed about you, but how about this?❞
❝Kite yo kite yo tonari ni kinjirareta yume mitai no
Sou atsuku nannakya tsumannai yo
Motto fukaku ni furetai
Akogare dake ja irarenai watashi ga tsuyoku motomeru
Abunai jounetsu (tomerarenai)
Kesanai yo kesanai yo shoujo rashisa wa mou iranai!❞
"What does it mean to “be yourself”?
As a child, I never gave it a second thought
If there was something I didn’t like, I got mad
If there was something I liked, I said so
But we all change, in time
As do the things we want to protect”
I’d watched Barakamon awhile back, and when I heard this opening theme again after so long, I cried. That scene with Naru sliding the door open just... broke my cool and fragile facade