Jinhee Choiliminal space between childhood and adulthood, between “the close supervision of her parents
and that of a husband after marriage” (Frederick 2005, 67). The arising publication boom of
shōjo magazines, such as Girls’ World (Shōjo sekai, 1906), Girls’ Friend (Shōjo no tomo, 1908), Girls’
Pictorial (Shōjo gahō, 1912), and Girls’ Club (Shōjo kurabu, 1923), further consolidated shōjo as a
community and solidified its culture (Kenko 2008, 294).
Despite the apparent privilege of schoolgirls, however, the readership of shōjo magazines was
not limited to high school or missionary schoolgirls in Japan, but also included working-class
women, who sought “cultivation” from girls’ magazines and dreamed of upward social mobi lity
(Kenko 2008, 296). Schoolgirls, in their literal sense, were indeed a small niche market in terms of
a numeric figure. Yet the price of girls’ magazines was affordable, a fraction of the cost of between
0.3 percent and 1 percent of the average salary of low-wage working-class women (Maeda
2003[1973], 211). Given the fact that girls in dormitories—both in schools and factories—often
circulated and shared magazines among peers and co-workers, the actual readership could be esti-
mated higher than the mere subscription rate. Shōjo, as a sensibility, then, should be distinguished
from a demographic aspect of shōjo as that which can be cultivated and developed across class.
The fluidity as well as malleability of shōjo as a sensibility, can be further detailed in its trans-
national imaginary; in looking outward, shōjo found its inner identity. Shōjo culture was inspired
and influenced by Western culture and literature, introduced through missionary schools, yet
the West is constructed as an internalized object of shōjo interiority. In Flower Tales, published
in Girls’ Pictorial, then shōjo writer Yoshiya Nobuko indulges in “Western” cultural tropes such
as piano and organ playing, the adornment of ribbons, and spaces such as attics and churches.
Honda Masuko notes that these types of Western ornaments, as ribbons and frills, indicate the
“freedom” of the girls who claim Western culture as their own. Further, the transnational imagi-
nary manifest in shōjo fiction further underscores the desire to transcend material differences
and blur the boundary between the reality and the world of the imagination—the desire to
belong to “another world to be dreamed” (Honda 2010, 35). For instance, the first story in
Flower Tales, “Lily of the Valley” (Suzuran, 1916), begins with Fusako telling a story about her
mother, who is a music teacher at a girls’ school (Dollase 2003, 729–730). In this enigmatic story
about a ghost, Fusako’s mother witnesses the appearance and then disappearance of an Italian
girl by the piano in a music room. The next morning Fusako’s mother discovers a lily of the
valley on the piano, along with a key to the piano and a note thanking her. The piano used to
belong to an Italian missionary who passed away, and the note is from the missionary’s daughter
who has recently returned to Italy.
Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase (2010, 83) explains that the use of Western iconography in Yoshiya’s
Flower Tales differentiates her work from the mode of sentimentalism explored by previous
gene rations. In her work, the shōjo reader is transported away from reality, inhabiting a unique
shōjo world. The association of shōjo with Western modernity may betray the public anxiety
over the Japanese female as a “privileged outsider” (Czarnecki 2005, 53) but shōjo writers’
predilection for exoticism as well as incorporation of the “Western” imagery in their stories
underline the marginality and insularity of shōjo within Japanese society. This exoticism points
to what Dollase (2003, 731) calls the “meta-geographical” desire manifest in girls’ fiction. That
is, Japanese girls’ wish to “emotionally” unite with girls in other parts of the world, especially
powerful Western countries, which could help—albeit temporarily and imaginatively—free the
social restrictions and heterosexual gender norms imposed on girls.
This meta-geographical imaginary or desire is not limited to the works of Japanese shōjo
writers. Korean writers, who published Korean women’s magazines after having been exposed
to Japanese women’s magazines, resonate with some of the characteristics of Japanese shōjo
fiction. Inspired by both Japanese and Western feminism, in 1917 Women’s World (Yeojagye;