From: Sako Ikegami <sako>
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 10:33:19 +0900

Dear Hollis


According to the Wikipedia article, there are various ways of classifying manga.

By age/tastes group: preschoolers boys (shonen) girls (shoyo) young men (Seinen) young? women (Ladies) gay (Boys love) adult (18-kin)

By subject matter: slapstick (gyagu) sports medical (isha/iryo) cooking/gourmet (ryori/gurume) suspense horror SF Fantasy history biography satire (Fushi) educational (gakushu) pornography (18-kin) pretty young girls (bishojo)

One thing about these categories is that with the exception of the manga for preschoolers, there's always the risk of coming across material that someone will find offensive (sexually explicit, prejudicial, violent, etc) and they can't really be used to screen out material you don't want your child reading.

Feminism over here is...different. It hasn't really settled in comfortably yet and the "male dominance myth" is still fairly prevalent in many households. Generally speaking, manga written by women (obviously) seem to be more pro-women. By chance, the two manga series which I learned to read Japanese from. both have very strong female protagonists. They're both classics now: "Berusaiyu no Bara (The Roses of Versailles)" by Ikeda Riyoko, based on Dumas' "The Queen's Necklace" and "Haikara-san ga Toru (There goes Ms. Modern)" by Yamato Waki.

Sako
Received on Thu 22 Apr 2004 08:33:19 PM CDT