The Research Project’s Academic Background

－ Women’s Comics Research Dual Levels of Marginalization －

Although the visual nature of comics allows their message to be conveyed more understandably than by other means, and thus many cultures employ them as an important means of communication, the academic potential of comics has been only belatedly acknowledged. The first scholarly journal of comics, the International Journal of Comic Art, appeared in 1999 thanks to Professor John A. Lent of Temple University, followed by the establishment in 2001 of the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics. The unique style and grammar of the medium of manga in Japan first gained international recognition in the 1990s. Now in the twenty first century, the history of such research is finally gaining some momentum.

However, employing “Women” as the keyword, when we examine the realm of the culture of comics and manga, a strong tendency becomes clear. In almost any cultural context, comics have meant the culture of male youth and it is a popular myth that women do not read comics. Thus there have been two levels of marginalization concerning comics, namely that the validity of academic research into comics has been slow to be recognized, and the idea of women as readers of comics has traditionally not been properly acknowledged or considered.