Shōjo sensibility and the transnational imaginaryThe term shōjo has often been associated with both the object and consumption of girls’
comics (shōjo manga), but recent scholarship on shōjo culture (shōjo bunka) not only underscores
its modern formation but also its legacy. The shōjo sensibility had been developed and cultivated
since the 1910s and 1920s as part of the then emerging shōjo culture. Some of its characteris-
tics, such as a predilection for exoticism, ephemerality, and sentimentalism, have been inherited
and transformed throughout its history in a number of different genres and formats. The shōjo
sensibility is present in girls’ fiction, like Flower Tales (Hana monogatari, 1916–1924); shōjo manga,
such as Princess Knight (Ribon no kishi, 1953–1956) and The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara,
1972–1973); popular fiction, as in the Japanese novella Kitchen (Kichin, 1988); and multiple tele-
vision adaptations, such as those of the Japanese shōjo manga Boys Over Flowers (Hana yori dango,
1992–2003) by Taiwanese, Japanese, and South Korean broadcasting companies. This chapter aims
to examine two parallel moments in the history of shōjo culture—the emergence of the shōjo
sensibility as an East Asian regional sensibility under Japanese colonial expansion in the 1920s
and 1930s, and the contemporary shōjo culture since the 1980s, focusing on the transnational
imaginary and sentimentalism manifest in shōjo fiction. In the former, the shōjo seeks to expand
its interiority through the meta-geographical aspiration to unite with girls outside of one’s home
country. In the latter the shōjo is viewed as existing in the past, as the object of nostalgia and the
site of sentimentalism that are unobtainable in the present.
In East Asia, girls are active agents in consuming and distributing media that propel the
passage of cultural products across national borders, both on and offline. Yet, the examination
of both the representation of, and consumption by, girls has been limited. As a recent study on
women’s media consumption in East Asia demonstrates, female audiences increasingly acknow-
ledge and assert their agency. Moreover, there is ample documentation on how young urban
professionals’ and middle-aged women’s consumption of local Japanese or Korean television
dramas have triggered transnational media flows (Iwabuchi 2002; Chua and Iwabuchi 2008;
Lukács 2010). Compared to these demographic groups, girls have received relatively less schol-
arly attention. Even with the emergent scholarship on girls, it is heavily focused on the sub-
culture of sexually deviant schoolgirls as the object of the male gaze (Kinsella 2014). The lack
of scholarship on shōjo in English, except for work on fetishized or “bad” girls, points to the
continuing bias against girls’ culture as trivial, typified by excessive ribbons and frills. As Honda
Masuko notes, compared to boys’ fiction, girls’ fiction and comics have remained (until recently)
neglected and have even been considered to be “meaningless entertainment for girls” (2010, 25).
The English translation of Honda’s piece, originally written in the 1980s, appeared only recently
in a collection of works examining girls’ reading practices published in 2010. With the increas-
ing scholarship on shōjo both in English and Japanese, it is time to reexamine the formation
and transformation of shōjo culture and sensibility in East Asia, shifting the focus from manga
to intermedial aesthetics of shōjo, foregrounding the shōjo’s transnational aspiration to connect
with girls across national and cultural boundaries.
The modern shōjo
Shōjo as both a concept and culture first emerged with the changing education system in Japan
from the late Meiji era (1868–1912) into the early Taisho era (1912–1926). With the implemen-
tation of The Higher Girls’ School Act in 1899 (Kenko 2008, 294), shōjo as a term came into
common use at the beginning of the 1900s. Like the term “modern girl” (modan garu or the
abbreviation moga), which was not strictly bounded by age and class (Sato 2003, 46–48, 62), the
referent of shōjo is both ambiguous and flexible. Shōjo as a demographic category was associ-
ated with schoolgirls, and even more broadly with teenagers and young women who inhabit a