What is the ‘shojo’ and how does it often function in anime.
Shōjo, shojo or shoujo (少女, shōjo?) is a Japanese word originally derived from a Chinese expression written with the same characters.(Wikipedia, 2012) It created as an independent, strong, innocent young girl in the anime, contrasting the evils during the story.
Reflecting the shojo in the “Princess Mononoke”,Susan J, Napier suggests that “Miyazaki uses the fantastic and the feminine to defamiliarize and even subvert conventional notions of history, progress, and gender coding in Japanese culture”. Japan is a male dominate country, but the San created by Miyazaki is an untamed warrior shojo who brought up by wolves in the wild. All the other female appeal to be identify as hardworking contrast to the male in the anime. This is “subverting convention” the gender dominating power in the nation of history. For example, Lady Eboshi is the leader of Iron Town in the story, the town is representing the large scale industry in civilized society, where San is representing the Natural. The two major parties in this anime are leading by female. The function of shojo in the anime is to emerge the other complicated beings. When we compare the Shojo- San and Lady Eboshi, people start to be aware of the different between them. As a shojo, San live in the world of black and white. There is no grey area in her knowledge. It is because that she is still young and has not contaminate by reality yet and also shaped with ideal humanity. Unlike Lady Eboshi who is complex person to evaluation, she had her own reason to hurting people. San believes there is no reason to hurt others. Unified the function of shojo and center idea of Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki’ fantasy is a historical epic which based on problematized nature of historical identity on relation to the modern world through its complex mixture of fantasy and fact.(Napier, 2001)
Reference
Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-14). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.
Wikipedia (n.d.) Shōjo. retrieved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Djo
Yea, From Miyazaki's anime, shojo characters are more likely to be identified as a strong girl who save the world or protect from enemies. On the other hand, some other authors identifies them as powerless and weakness.
ReplyDeleteThere is a sense of feminism!
DeleteHello Emilll, Awesom post !
ReplyDeleteYeah, I also spotted feminism while I was reading your post.
Two characters, lady Eboshi and Princess of Mononoke. They are both strong, independent characters who has a goal to defend what they love. Lady Eboshi fights to protect her people and to build bigger iron town. On the other hand Mononoke fights to protect the forest and the Gods who live there.