Jinhee Choipiece Kichin (Kitchen) at the age of 23, which earned her the new writer award from the literary
journal Kaien, where her work first appeared. The exoticism of early modern shōjo writing, typi-
fied by Yoshiya, is certainly toned down in Banana’s work, yet there is an undeniable link between
the two in terms of their sensational popularity among adolescent girls and young adults.
Much heated debate regarding the literary status of Banana’s novel—whether it can be classi-
fied as and considered “literature” in its proper sense—both sidesteps and acknowledges her role
in contemporary shōjo culture. Often dubbed as the “manga generation,” Banana declares her
cultural debt to Japanese manga writer Iwadate Mariko, who contributed to shōjo manga maga-
zines such as Margaret and Young You (Treat 1993, 357). Banana is a beneficiary and active partici-
pant of the shōjo manga boom, as well as the then emerging cute (kawaii) culture of the 1970s.
Surrounded with fancy ( fanshii) goods such as Hello Kitty and cute stationery and exposed to
popular culture and media such as radio, music, television, and cinema, Banana’s generation is
known for its consumer culture. Treat further links the lack of productive power of the shōjo
generation to their sexual liminality; shōjo may be desired by adults but not yet be “deployable
in the heterosexual economy of adult life in Japan” (1993, 363).
Despite a temporal gap of over six decades between Yoshiya and Banana, there is a significant
level of similarity in their mode of address and writing style. Treat locates in Banana’s novel “a shift
toward a fiction unapologetically and intimately targeted toward ‘anata’—you—that is, the teen-
age woman and her cohorts, an audience and point of view never too removed from the center
arena of contemporary Japanese public culture” (1993, 361). Although Yoshiya’s Flower Tales is
framed as girls’ narrating and reciting various mysterious and magical stories among themselves,
in the preface Yoshiya dedicates her stories to “you”—her fellow shōjo (Dollase 2003, 729):
Days of Shōjo never return
Flowers that bloom in their dreams
I present to you whom I adoreThe intimacy assumed and fostered between the “shōjo” writer (as both Yoshiya and Banana
continued to write even after they passed the period of shōjo), and her fellow readers, is further
secured by its tone. As Treat also observes, Banana’s work “is reminiscent of a teenager’s diary”
(1993, 356), which further forges an interesting genealogy between early and contemporary
shōjo fiction. Regardless of whether shōjo fiction follows the literal form of diary or merely
evokes its tone and style, such prose helps to position the reader to have access to the interiority
of the protagonist.
Influenced by girls’ comics from both Japan and Korea, then teenage writer, Guiyeoni
spawned a debate in South Korea similar to that of Banana, whose work also was questioned as
failing to be “literary.” Japanese novels began to attract Korean audiences in the early 1990s, with
Banana’s Goodbye Tsugumi and Kitchen published in 1990 and 1991, respectively. In an interview,
Guiyeoni claimed that she liked to read Japanese novels such as Norwegian Wood (Noruwei no mori,
1987) and the Korean epic serialized over twenty-five years, Land (Toji, 1969–1994) and had
intended to expand her reading list to include Western writers such as Guy de Maupassant once
she was admitted to college ( Joongang Daily 2003). Originally posted on the Internet website
Humor-nara (2001), and her fan website, Gui-sa-mo (2002), He Was Cool (also known as That
Guy Was Cool [Geunomeun meoshisseotda]) and Romance of Their Own (Neukdaeui yuhok) were also
published in book form and made into films in 2004. He Was Cool was also translated into both
Japanese and Chinese.
Calling her work “stories” rather than classifying them as novels, Guiyeoni indulges in Korean
girls’ comic book fantasy where an ordinary schoolgirl becomes the center of handsome boys’