Rethinking Gender and Genre in Contemporary Women’s Manga

A distinctive feature of manga for women from the 1970s onward is their combination of an experimental visual style with a challenge to gender and social norms. By contrast, manga aimed at a male audience often combine a realistic style with more heteronormative content. This chapter reflects on such dynamic through a close reading of two recent manga, both authored by women, but published in venues aimed at male and female audiences, respectively: Shōji Yōko’s G.I.D. (Gender Identity Disorder 2006) and Rokuhana Chiyo’s I.S. otoko de mo onna de mo nai sei (I.S.: the gender that is neither male nor female, 2003–2009). Examining the intersection of gender and genre conventions in the comics, it shows how Japanese women artists engage readers with issues of gender that are otherwise only seldom discussed in Japan, and by extension how they use manga as a medium for social and cultural debate.