Research Aims

By re-examining the socio-historical nature of women’s comics, and inspecting the formation of manga’s unique spread of expressive identity through Asia and the West from a comparative cultural standpoint, we hope to reveal its potential to transcend cultural boundaries.

To this end, we hope to base this research on the following aims:
○To clarify the history and future of the medium of manga as the preserve of women
○To clarify manga’s past and future potential as a global medium
○To consider an alternative source of cultural impact on Japan from such directions as Europe and America through the medium of women’s comics and manga

* In this research, by “manga” we mean the kind of manga which derived originally from Japan and has since been transformed variously into a global form of manga
* By comics, we mean the generic term for the pre-existing form of media combining text and images into a communicative narrative. In contrast, manga is a generic term for a distinct form and recent phenomenon
* In this research, by “woman” we mean an objectified concept, as opposed to that of “man” which continues to be a subjectified concept.