From Shojo Manga to Ancient Myth: Intervention and Reappropriation in Satonaka Machiko’s Kojiki (2013)

Abstract

From Shojo Manga to Ancient Myth” explores how the ancient text of the Kojiki (712) is reappropriated as a shojo manga (girls’ comics), focusing on Satonaka Machiko’s 2013 adaptation of the Kojiki. Using an approach embedded in visual and gender studies, this thesis seeks to interpret how Satonaka’s adaptation engages with the Kojiki’s cultural history as Japan’s oldest extant written text. It also determines how this intervention adheres to or deviates from feminist praxis, nationalist praxis, or an overlap of the two through Farris’s conceptual framework of femonationalism. As a manga project, first and foremost, the project remains entrenched in close reading of Satonaka’s Kojiki as it evaluates how the work reappropriates and disrupts the Kojiki’s history and gendered tropes. Such is accomplished through amplifying Satonaka’s voice within her craft in an effort to view how she situates her own intervention with the source text. This analysis uncovers dualistic representations of the Kojiki’s female characters in addition to an intervention neither divorced nor immune from femonationalist inclinations. At the same time, Satonaka disrupts anglocentric views of what is considered “historical” and challenges preconceived notions of who “gets” to do history, conveying this message to young female audiences who may not otherwise be inspired by ancient history in a national or educational context. These overlapping interventions are nuanced and intertwined, but are crucial to unpacking how ancient texts and their cultural histories are rearticulated through contemporary Japanese popular culture.