Shōjo sensibility and the transnational imaginaryattention. Her writing received considerable criticism due to the prevalent use of ungrammatical
phrasing, terse sentences, neologisms, and emoticons; yet such a writing style resonates with the
characteristics of modern shōjo fiction. Dollase finds that the frequent use of punctuation marks
in place of words in Flower Tales (such as ellipses points and exclamation marks) resembles the
“primordial language”—a Julia Kristeva term—which points to the preverbal stage prior to the
intrusion of patriarchal symbolic order. Dollase notes, “the girls in Hanamonogatari express their
desires for jouissance, primordial pleasure; and the reader, ‘deprived of obvious meaning, is faced
with a secret language of hidden meanings over which the subject has imperious control, like the
echolalia of the infant’” (2003, 732). Although the analogy between the primordial language and
shōjo writing should be drawn with caution,^1 it sheds light on the insularity of shōjo writing and
its readership. The imperfect language could be considered a “special code” (Treat 1993, 361) or
imagery, not to be decoded or completed by, but instead evoked and felt in, the reader.
Sentimentality appreciated in the modern shōjo culture is derived from not only emotional
tone and pathos, but also the liminal nature and frailty of the shōjo period. As discussed earlier,
Yoshiya’s stories underscore the emotional unison between the storyteller and fellow shōjo, both
within the story as well as outside the text. After the ghost story is told in “Lily of the Valley” the
girls are deeply enchanted by their shared emotional journey (Dollase 2003, 729). But sentimen-
tality further lurks in Yoshiya’s work through the nostalgic and melancholic tone; shōjo period
or girlhood is often considered transitional as well as a transitory experience with an imminent
end to it until one must take up the burdens of being an adult. The last episode “Spider Lily”
(Manjushage) of Flower Tales indeed ends with the death of two dancers, Miyako and Sachi, as if
“they simply end their lives as Shōjo” (Dollase 2003, 747).
In discussing a prevalent theme of death manifest in Banana’s work, Goodbye Tsugumi
(1989) in particular, Treat addresses the idea of the “nostalgic subject.” According to Treat, the
story is told as if “Banana, reversing the usual order, is describing ‘now’ as if it were ‘then’”
(1993, 378). What is longed for in Banana’s work is not the past per se, but “the present” that
would be remembered as the past, “a simulated nostalgia anticipated from a future perspective”
(Treat 1993, 380). Martin traces a similar dual temporality in her analysis of contemporary
Chinese-language stories, films, and television productions that appeared post-1970. In what
Martin (2010, 13) terms “memorial schoolgirl romance,” women’s same-sex relationship is
portrayed with a nostalgic tone that evokes the Republican [China] homoerotic sensibility, yet
is doomed to fail. Homoerotic relationship and desire is represented as confined to the past
(Martin 2010, 15), unable to be fulfilled and consummated in the present or future. None-
theless, the very act and mode of memory enables the viewer to relive and/or perpetually
live the past in the present tense. Such a nostalgic mode—looking either at the past from the
present, or the present from the future—creates and embeds several layers of temporality into
one, further accentuating the elegiac tone towards an idealized girlhood, whether locked in
the past or in the present.
Why Boys Over Flowers (in lieu of conclusion)
This chapter could have been dedicated solely to delineating the popularity and significance
of the regional mega-hit, Boys Over Flowers. Instead of offering a brief discussion of the trans-
national fandom of Boys Over Flowers, I will point to the persistence of powerful shōjo ico-
nography and sensibility in the series. Boys Over Flowers became one of the most successful
franchises in the region. First introduced as a Japanese shōjo manga, along with Nodame Cantabile
(Nodame Kantābire, 2001–2009), it saw intermedial adaptations in anime, television series, and
cinema. The story revolves around Tsukushi, a schoolgirl from a family of moderate income,