Female Manga-Ka: A Sign of Progress?

Here is an article about the improvement of women’s lives in Japan. The three factors cited: The government now provides long-term care for the elderly, domestic violence has been outlawed, and … more female manga artists. The artist they picked to interview, Machiko Satonaka, doesn’t exactly represent a new trend, as she’s been drawing manga since the 1960s. Still, I like what she has to say.

Satonaka claims a large following among Japanese women because of the attention she pays to female psychology. In the past, she says, male manga artists depicted women heroines as ”only cute and smiley all of the time, very passive”. Her heroines, in contrast, ”think for themselves about how to live” and are ”independent, thinking for themselves.”

It’s a little troubling, though, that she’s been drawing manga for 40 years and the genre is still dominated by annoyingly passive females. The girls in the shoujo manga I read put up with a lot more than I would, especially from the boys. Yes, yes, I know that it’s fiction, but fiction can be a powerful shaper of attitudes. I worry that kids who get a steady diet of manga will pick up the attitude that the road to happiness lies through complete self-abnegation and submission to even the most trivial wishes of others (paging Tohru Honda!). We need more heroines with backbone.