Shōjo Club

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Shōjo Club
Shōjo, women's magazine
FrequencyMonthly
PublisherKodansha
FounderSeiji Noma
First issueJanuary 1923; 101 years ago (1923-01)
Final issueDecember 1962; 61 years ago (1962-12)
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Shōjo Club (

shōjo (girls) magazine. Founded by the publishing company Kodansha in 1923 as a sister publication to its magazine Shōnen Club, the magazine published articles, short stories, illustrations, poems, and manga
.

Shōjo Club was one of the earliest shōjo magazines, and by 1937 was the best-selling magazine in Japan aimed at this market segment. Its conservative editorial stance, aligned with that of its publisher Kodansha, was reflected in the magazine's focus on educational content, especially

moral education
.

The magazine and its primary competitor Shōjo no tomo were the sole shōjo magazines to continue publication throughout the entirety of the Pacific War. The magazine eventually succumbed to changing market conditions in 1962, and was replaced in 1963 with the weekly magazine Shōjo Friend.

Content

Shōjo Club was a general

moral education,[3] as represented by its slogan of "textbook in the left hand, Shōjo Club in the right hand".[5]

Context

The Women's Higher School Act [ja] was issued in 1899, which standardized female education and established optional formal education options for girls beyond compulsory elementary education. Girls education was aligned with the "Good Wife, Wise Mother" social doctrine, mandating schools to teach girls moral training, sewing, and housekeeping. These reforms had the effect of establishing "shōjo" as a new social category of women, designating girls in the period between childhood and marriage.[6]

Contemporaneously,

Shōjo no Tomo, which would become the main competitor to Shōjo Club.[3]

History

Pre-war (1923–1937)

Stylized illustration of a woman dressing a girl in a kimono
Frontispiece for the short story Haha no Ai (母の愛, lit. "A Mother's Love"), illustrated by Yamakawa Shūhō and published in the January 1927 issue
Full-page scan of a magazine article featuring a picture of a woman at a desk
Article in the October 1935 issue on Machiko Hasegawa's debut as a manga artist at the age of 15

Seiji Noma, the founder of the publishing house

Class S short stories by Nobuko Yoshiya,[9] illustrations by artists such as Kashō Takabatake,[10] and manga by artists such as Suihō Tagawa.[11] The magazine had a circulation of 67,000 in 1923 that grew to 492,000 by 1937, making Shōjo Club the best-selling magazine in Japan aimed at teenage girls.[3][12]

Wartime (1937–1945)

The

National Mobilization Law was passed in 1938 amid the Second Sino-Japanese War, which obligated the Japanese press to support the war effort and subjected publishers to increased scrutiny and censorship, though both Shōjo Club (and Kodansha broadly) closely collaborated with the government to support the war effort.[13] Women's magazines faced particular criticism for their "sentimentality", leading to a decline in Class S literature and the reorientation of editorial content to emphasize patriotism.[14] The war also brought about a paper shortage that peaked in 1945, forcing many magazines to fold, though Shōjo Club and Shōjo no Tomo were the sole shōjo magazines to continue publication throughout the entirety of the war.[14]

Post-war (1945–1962)

Following the Surrender of Japan in 1945, Kodansha's publications pivoted from their pro-war stance to content on life in the post-war period, such as articles on how individuals could cope with ongoing food shortages.[15] The Civil Information and Education department of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers was tasked with westernizing Japanese media,[16] while the Civil Censorship Department enforced strict censorship of media.[17] In response, Kodansha shifted the editorial content of Shōjo Club to be "enjoyable, fun, and bright".[13]

Changes included the alteration of the spelling of the magazine's title from 少女倶楽部 to 少女クラブ to incorporate

Shōtarō Ishinomori, Hideko Mizuno, Fujio Akatsuka, and Tetsuya Chiba would contribute to Shōjo Club; Toshiko Ueda also serialized the manga series Fuichin-san beginning in 1957, the title character of which became the magazine's mascot.[21]

Cessation

The dominant position that shōjo magazines occupied in teenage entertainment began to diminish in the post-war period, as the medium faced competition in the form of new categories of mass entertainment such as cinema, kashi-hon (rental) manga, and junia shōsetsu (ジュニア小説, "junior novels", the precursor to contemporary light novels).[22][23] With the folding of Shōjo no Tomo in 1955, Shōjo Club became the sole remaining pre-war shōjo magazine amid an increasing number of new post-war magazines, such as Ribon and Himawari;[13] Kodansha would itself launch a second shōjo magazine, Nakayoshi, in 1954.[24]

The rise of television in the 1960s led to major upheaval in Japanese magazine publishing, and in 1962 Kodansha discontinued Shōjo Club, publishing the final issue of the magazine in December of that year. Shōjo Club was replaced with the weekly magazine Shōjo Friend, which published its first issue in January 1963.[25]

References

  1. ^ Prough 2018, pp. 280–281.
  2. ^ Shamoon 2012, pp. 49–50.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Shamoon 2012, p. 48.
  4. ^ Dower 2000, p. 94, 175.
  5. ^ Dollase 2019, p. 77.
  6. ^ a b Dollase 2019, p. 19.
  7. ^ Bae 2012, p. 130.
  8. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 50.
  9. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 78.
  10. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 64.
  11. ^ Hébert 2010, p. 10.
  12. ^ Imada 2007.
  13. ^ a b c Dollase 2019, p. 81.
  14. ^ a b Shamoon 2012, p. 56.
  15. ^ Dower 2000, p. 175.
  16. ^ Dollase 2019, p. 83.
  17. ^ Dollase 2019, p. 85.
  18. ^ Nishimura-Poupée 2013, Magazines et théâtre ambulant pour enfants.
  19. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 84.
  20. ^ "コーナー１◆ 少女マンガ誌の変遷". Meiji University (in Japanese). Retrieved August 2, 2022.
  21. ^ Nishimura-Poupée 2013, Le temps des -san, -chan et -kun.
  22. ^ Shamoon 2012, pp. 84–85.
  23. ^ Dollase 2019, p. 98.
  24. ^ Shamoon 2012, p. 85.
  25. ^ Nishimura-Poupée 2013, Shojo manga: le monde du manga se féminise.

Bibliography

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