Table of Contents

Introduction Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley Part 1: Genealogy of the Reading Girl 1. The Genealogy of Hirahira: Liminality and the Girl Honda Masuko 2. The Genealogy of the "Girl" Critic Reading Girl Tomoko Aoyama 3. The Climate of the Girl in Yoshimoto Banana Kawasaki Kenko Part 2: Reading against Social Constraint 4. Volatility and Diversity: Shiraki Shizu and the Reading Girl Barbara Hartley 5. Ribbons Undone: The Shôjo Story Debates in Prewar Japan Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase 6. Japanese Girls’ Comfort Reading of Anne of Green Gables, Akiko Uchiyama Part 3: The Erotic Reading Girl 7. Matsuura Rieko’s The Reverse Version: The Theme of "Girl-Addressing-Girl" and Male Homosexual Fantasies Kazumi Nagaike 8. Murakami Haruki’s Shôjo: Kasahara Mei Maria Flutsch 9. A Girl with Her Writing Machine Rio Otomo Part 4: Reading the Performing and Visual Girl 10. Transcending Gender in Pictorial Representations of Miyazawa Kenji’s "Marivuron and the Girl" (Marivuron to Shôjo) Helen Kilpatrick 11. From The Cherry Orchard to Sakura no sono: Translation and the Transfiguration of Gender and Sexuality in Shôjo Manga, James Welker 12. Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shôjo Reading Practices Sharalyn Orbaugh 13. Reading Lolita in Japan Vera Mackie

About the Author

University of Queensland, Australia University of Tasmania, Australia

Reviews

"This collection strikes a delicate balance between the feminist desire to re-evaluate the girl’s subversive reading/writing practices and a careful attentiveness to their historical and textual ambiguities. The innovative significance of this volume also lies in the way it opens up the scope of Japanese girl studies by placing the girl texts within the context not only of Japanese studies but also of feminist literary criticism and cultural studies. Reading such diverse manifestations of girl-ness – even Dostoevsky’s anti-hero finds himself reincarnated as a girl-writer in contemporary Tokyo – reinforces and enhances the idea that the attribute “girl” is not restricted to its biological sense but can be assumed by any individual responsive to the paradoxical desire within her/himself to defy and at the same time to be desired by society. The reader of this volume, regardless of gender, age or nationality, is invited to add another layer of reading and participate in this intricate and irresistible practice of girl reading girl." - Mayako Murai, Kanagawa University; Asian Studies Review; March 2013 - volume 37, issue 1."This is a valuable resource... Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates." - L. I. Winston, CHOICE (July 2010)