7/8/2023 0 Comments Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto![]() ![]() A shojo adherent tried to define her own life, eschewed worry over the reaction of authorities, and resisted archaic social conventions. The quintessential shojo was feminine and youthful, but she was neither docile, nor meek, nor pure, nor innocent rather, she was a young woman, not quite at adult femininity, whose life was characterized by freedom and a dearth of strong male authority. Publications targeting young women also proliferated, and thus both the school environment and the literary world became spaces for constructing girlhood. In 1899, the Meiji government’s Girls’ Higher School Order initiated a wave of new girls’ schools concomitantly, literacy rates rose. The term shojo means “girl,” but in the context of contemporary culture, it is specifically about a cultural space that is girls-only, a space in which, scholar Emily Jane Wakeling writes, “girls negate and make complex the dominant gender stereotypes that exist in contemporary Japanese society through creations of gender that transgress hegemony.” We will look at what this term means, which will provide greater context for Yoshimoto’s works and greater insights into Kitchen. ![]() Banana Yoshimoto is often classified as a purveyor of “ shojo culture,” a term that may not be familiar to most readers. ![]()
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