What is the ‘shoujo’ and how does it often function in anime

The scholar S. Napier (2005) described the ubiquitous nature of shoujo (少女=‘young girls’ in Japanese), and the use of these characters in Japanese anime, particularly the films of Hayao Miyazaki.

The protagonist of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is a ten year old girl, and the theme centres around a coming of age story for this rather spoiled Japanese schoolgirl. Tonari no Totoro features a Japanese family in crisis, consisting of a father, two young shoujo, and an absent mother in hospital. The heroine San in Princess Mononoke is older than the typical shoujo, but nevertheless shows typical shoujo characteristics.

The shoujo characters are characterised by wide eyes and features that are not always very Asian. One theory is that this is a deliberate attempt to make the protagonists less Asian, so that the films are more acceptable to Western audiences. 

It could also be part of an inferiority complex or love-hate relationship that the Japanese have to the West in general.

The Japanese language is littered with foreign loan-words from English, and Japanese people like to show their cool by peppering speech and writing with English, often with ludicrous results. This is in contrast to China, which has few loan words, and even adopts new Chinese words for Western cultural imports, rather than borrow a Western word.

When I was working in Japan, students showed a reluctance to review Japanese-made films during their English lessons, preferring Hollywood productions. In one essay, a Japanese student told me how Japanese people are thin and weak, but Americans are muscular. This echoes the sentiments of the head of McDonald’s in Japan who was reported to have said that Japanese people are small and yellow because they eat rice. If they ate McDonald’s hamburgers they would become white skinned and blue eyed.

So this theory has some credibility. However, there are other factors mitigating against it. Firstly, children’s art in Japan shows similar features to a Miyazaki animation. I have pasted some self-portraits by 8-year old girls that were presented to me when I visited a Japanese primary school in 2000. It appears as if this is the style that children are taught to draw in. Napier (2005) suggests that this art style has its roots in Japanese Ukiyoe prints. It is quintessentially Japanese.

A Google search of Chinese anime also shows a similar style with the wide eyes. Not only that, but the older Disney characters such as Snow White, and especially the dwarf Dopey, were similarly wide eyed. Snow White is certainly a shoujo. Humans consider wide eyes to be cute, which is why kittens, puppies and small children have universal appeal. It is more likely that Miyazaki and Disney are simply taking advantage of this biological trigger.

Reference:

Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-14). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.

Post script:  After posting the children's drawings on facebook, one viewer commented that children in New Zealand are also taught to draw in manga style.  We were not taught to draw that way when I went to school.  Perhaps manga is an artistic import that is influencing the Western art world, similar  to the way Japanese kimono supposedly influenced more loose fitting women's fashion.