Sh¿jo Across Media: Exploring Girl Practices in Contemporary Japan

Since the 2000s, the Japanese word sh¿jo has gained global currency, accompanying the transcultural spread of other popular Japanese media such as manga and anime. The term refers to both a character type specifically, as well as commercial genres marketed to female audiences more generally. Through its diverse chapters this edited collection introduces the two main currents of sh¿jo research: on the one hand, historical investigations of Japan¿s modern girl culture and its representations, informed by Japanese-studies and gender-studies concerns; on the other hand, explorations of the transcultural performativity of sh¿jo as a crafted concept and affect-prone code, shaped by media studies, genre theory, and fan-culture research. While acknowledging that sh¿jo has mediated multiple discourses throughout the twentieth century¿discourses on Japan and its modernity, consumption and consumerism, non-hegemonic gender, and also technology¿this volume shifts the focus to sh¿jo mediations, stretching from media by and for actual girls, to sh¿jo as media. As a result, the Japan-derived concept, while still situated, begins to offer possibilities for broader conceptualizations of girlness within the contemporary global digital mediascape.