著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

立教女学院短期大学

雑誌

紀要 (ISSN:0285080X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, pp.1-18, 2008

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

JAPAN SOCIETY FOR GENDER STUDIES

雑誌

日本ジェンダー研究 (ISSN:18841619)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2001, no.4, pp.3-16, 2001-09-20 (Released:2010-03-17)

参考文献数

27

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Looking at feminist fictional writings since the time of Charlotte Gilman's Herland from the perspective of how they dealt with the issue of reproduction, one can find a group of works using unisexual reproduction as the central theme or as an important motif. This paper examines one of them, Marginal (1985), a girls'manga (comic) by Moto Hagio. Girls' manga are an important source of insight into Japanese women's views on their gender, and this paper outlines the history of girls' manga in comparison with the boys' counterpart, which provides a clue as to what made Hagio use the theme of unisexual reproduction inMarginal, in which she attempted to examine the concept of maternity.In the first phase of manga's development from the late 1960's up to the 1980's, both girls' and boy's manga were based on illusions about the opposite sex. Boys in girls' comics were either dashing gentlemen or handsome rebels aching for maternal love, whereas boys' comics were interested in girls only as the object of the macho hero's desire. However, from the late 1980's, while Boys' manga stayed with its fantasies of women as mere recipients of the male sex drive, girls' manga started to see men in a more sober light. The gap between the ideal of equal partnership and reality began to feature strongly, and themes such as homosexuality, transsexualism and transvestism have been given a serious examination.This shift was a result of a significant change in Japanese women's view on reproduction. As women acquired education and financial independence, they rejected the notion that a woman's happiness lies in love, marriage and childbearing ; the link between marriage and motherhood was broken. Stories centring on the theme on unisexual reproduction appeared in girls' manga amidst this tidal change.Marginal is a sci-fi manga set in 2999A.D., when Earth is a polluted and diseased planet long deserted by most humans after a pandemic viral infection 700 hundred years earlier made all women infertile. A company that runs an economic empire across the solar system maintains experimental colonies on Earth where no babies can be born and all inhabitants are men. The company supplies the colonies with test-tube children through a pseudo-religious system, but inhabitants live under a dark shadow of apocalyptic pessimism. Hagio examines maternity in an imaginary world where, in the absence of women, motherhood is artificial and there are no heterosexual relationships.A scientist who has been running illegal reproductive experiments in a hideout on Earth is killed by the company, and a product of his experiments, a telepathic hermaphrodite with the ability to tune into other people's dreams and wishes, survives the attack and encounters colony men. The psychic child causes a catastrophic flood when he responds to the wishes of colony dwellers who dream their doomed world to end, but in a dramatic climax, he empathizes with the Earth's dream of ancient blue seas that nurtured life, a dream of life.The ambiguous ending ofMarginal seems to support conventional praise of maternity, but here the hope of regeneration comes not from the child's ability to conceive but through restoration of the Earth's productive potential. Hagio sees maternity as something more fundamental than the materialistic notion of baby-making; to her, restoration of the fertility of the Earth, the source of life itself, is the paramount concern.

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

JAPAN SOCIETY FOR GENDER STUDIES

雑誌

日本ジェンダー研究 (ISSN:18841619)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1998, no.1, pp.17-27, 1998-07-31 (Released:2010-03-17)

参考文献数

11

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A feminism comic book “Shinkirari” is a fine piece of work which gives a vividdescription of how a common housewife becomes a determined, independent woman. In this thesis, the problems of conjugal relations under the yoke of gender are investigated with “Shinkirari” as a text from the point of what a husband calls his wifeand how this type of labelling changes.Chiharu Yamakawa is a housewife in her earlythirties. Her husband is a typical male chauvinist of the apres-guerre generation. Hisown reason tells that men and women are equal, but he finds it hard to clearly imaginethat his wife also has her own dreams and goal in life. He takes it for granted thata house wife be unconditionally subordinate to her husband who works outside andmakes the money. As a natural result, he speaks to Chiharu in a peremptory tone andcalls her “Omae”. As the personal pronoun for the second person in Japanesere alistically represents human relations, what a Japanese couple call each other in sucha way that a husband calls his wife “Omae” and a wife calls her husband “Anata”is in general obviously unbalanced and explicitly demonstrates that the couple are byno means on an equal footing. Chiharu calls her husband “Anata” too, but starts tohave doubts about her position in marriage and begins to complain about her husband'sconduct. She also starts to feel negative towards her husband calling her “Omae”, as“Omae”-a word that holds a person in contemptcan lead to discourse that naturallycontains the feelings of disdain, jeer, unconcern, and ridicule of the counterpart. Chiharu makes up her mind to open a shop. Naturally, her husband is stronglyopposed to her going into business, but finds that Chiharu now has determine dresolution and gradually admits that he has to give way. From that time on, theexpression he uses to call her changes from “Omae” to “Kimi” which implies that therelationship between the two has now turned to be more equal. Chiharu's shop getsgoing and she turns a tidy profit, far beyond her husband's imagination. One evening, he speaks his mind to her, “Honestly speaking, I feel afraid to see you standing onyour own two feet. I can't help but think that you will not need me any more someday.” His remarks indicate the fact that the Japanese man and wife are connected witheach other only for reasons of economy, that at least men think their conjugal statusis maintained in such a way, and that they do not realize how much their wives arethirsty for a more spiritual relationship. The stronger economically turns out to be themaster in marriage. The relations are clearly demonstrated in the language used. Thestatus quo will be maintained as long as the language is used and reproduced in thenext generation. We can say, therefore, that the way a man refers to his wife is nolonger merely a word.

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

立教女学院短期大学

雑誌

紀要 (ISSN:0285080X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.37, pp.1-27, 2005

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

立教女学院短期大学

雑誌

紀要 (ISSN:0285080X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.38, pp.1-12, 2006

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

JAPAN SOCIETY FOR GENDER STUDIES

雑誌

日本ジェンダー研究 (ISSN:18841619)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2001, no.4, pp.3-16, 2001

---

Looking at feminist fictional writings since the time of Charlotte Gilman's Herland from the perspective of how they dealt with the issue of reproduction, one can find a group of works using unisexual reproduction as the central theme or as an important motif. This paper examines one of them, <I>Marginal</I> (1985), a girls'manga (comic) by Moto Hagio. Girls' manga are an important source of insight into Japanese women's views on their gender, and this paper outlines the history of girls' manga in comparison with the boys' counterpart, which provides a clue as to what made Hagio use the theme of unisexual reproduction in<I>Marginal</I>, in which she attempted to examine the concept of maternity.<BR>In the first phase of manga's development from the late 1960's up to the 1980's, both girls' and boy's manga were based on illusions about the opposite sex. Boys in girls' comics were either dashing gentlemen or handsome rebels aching for maternal love, whereas boys' comics were interested in girls only as the object of the macho hero's desire. However, from the late 1980's, while Boys' manga stayed with its fantasies of women as mere recipients of the male sex drive, girls' manga started to see men in a more sober light. The gap between the ideal of equal partnership and reality began to feature strongly, and themes such as homosexuality, transsexualism and transvestism have been given a serious examination.<BR>This shift was a result of a significant change in Japanese women's view on reproduction. As women acquired education and financial independence, they rejected the notion that a woman's happiness lies in love, marriage and childbearing ; the link between marriage and motherhood was broken. Stories centring on the theme on unisexual reproduction appeared in girls' manga amidst this tidal change.<BR><I>Marginal</I> is a sci-fi manga set in 2999A.D., when Earth is a polluted and diseased planet long deserted by most humans after a pandemic viral infection 700 hundred years earlier made all women infertile. A company that runs an economic empire across the solar system maintains experimental colonies on Earth where no babies can be born and all inhabitants are men. The company supplies the colonies with test-tube children through a pseudo-religious system, but inhabitants live under a dark shadow of apocalyptic pessimism. Hagio examines maternity in an imaginary world where, in the absence of women, motherhood is artificial and there are no heterosexual relationships.<BR>A scientist who has been running illegal reproductive experiments in a hideout on Earth is killed by the company, and a product of his experiments, a telepathic hermaphrodite with the ability to tune into other people's dreams and wishes, survives the attack and encounters colony men. The psychic child causes a catastrophic flood when he responds to the wishes of colony dwellers who dream their doomed world to end, but in a dramatic climax, he empathizes with the Earth's dream of ancient blue seas that nurtured life, a dream of life.<BR>The ambiguous ending of<I>Marginal</I> seems to support conventional praise of maternity, but here the hope of regeneration comes not from the child's ability to conceive but through restoration of the Earth's productive potential. Hagio sees maternity as something more fundamental than the materialistic notion of baby-making; to her, restoration of the fertility of the Earth, the source of life itself, is the paramount concern.

著者

海老原 暁子

出版者

学校法人立教女学院 立教女学院短期大学

雑誌

立教女学院短期大学紀要 (ISSN:0285080X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.40, pp.1-18, 2008 (Released:2017-09-15)

著者

海老原 暁子 海老原 暁子

出版者

立教女学院短期大学

雑誌

紀要 (ISSN:0285080X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, pp.121-141, 2007