A Brief Introduction to Japanese Manga

Japan traditionally boasts one of the best literary rates in the world, yet thick comic magazines are prevalent and ubiquitous. Adults and children enjoy them at home and school, on the trains, subways, and buses, in coffee shops and cheap restaurants, barber shops and beauty salons, waiting rooms of hospitals and clinics, and so on. Manga, or Japanese comics, is sold in bookstores, convenience stores, news stands, and even vending machines on the streets (Ito 1994).

    Toward the end of the 1990s, "Manga cafes" that are stocked with tens of thousands of comic magazines emerged in big cities and towns alike. In 1999 there were about 300 manga cafes in Tokyo alone, and both public and private libraries that exhibit the history and art of manga as well as the works of particular artists are found all over the country now.

    Manga is a very big and lucrative business in Japan. The total number of comic magazines published in 1998, for example, was 278 titles, and the estimated number of copies published was 1,472,780,000. The sales of comics is about 25% of the total number of publications in Japan, and comic magazines sell approximately 1.7 billion copies per year or 4,650,000 copies per day (Ito 2000).

    Manga is created with low technology, done by hand with pencils, erasers, pens, brushes, rulers, and so on even though certain modern devises such as a copier, computer graphics, and photo imaging may help the artists complete their works faster.

    The Japanese have a long tradition of comic arts. The publication of Tobae pictures, a style of witty caricature, started in Kyoto during the Hoei Period (1704-1711). The name stems from Bishop Toba (1053-1140) who is well-known for his "The Animal Scrolls," the humorous pictures of birds and animals, drawn in the 12th century. The publication of Tobae books marked the start of the commercialization of manga at the beginning of the 18th century. Tobae books spread from Osaka to Kyoto, Nagoya, and then to Edo (today's Tokyo) during the Tokugawa Period. Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849), a well-known Ukiyoe artist whose works include pictures of flowers and birds and "The 36 Sceneries of Mt. Fuji" woodblock prints, published his 15 volume Hokusai Manga at the beginning of the 19th century (Ito 2000; Shimizu 1991).

    Modern Japanese story manga started to flourish in the 1920s and the 1930s, and popular American comic strips such as "Blondie," "Popeye," and "Superman," were translated into Japanese after World War II. In 1959 Kodansha started to publish Shonen Magajin, the first weekly comic magazine designed for boys and young adults. Many followed. Millions of manga magazines were sold along with the popularity of their animation versions on TV and related merchandise in the 1950s and the 1960s (Ibid.). Today several genres of manga can be roughly classified according to the cross section of age and sex. Rediisu Komikku

    Rediisu Komikku, or "Ladies' Comics," is often called Redi Komi for short. One hundred and eighty four (184) stories in two dozen volumes of Redi Komi published in 2000 were read, evaluated, and analyzed. This paper attempts to do a content analysis of the Japanese Ladies' Comics in order to find what is communicated in their recorded communication.

    The Japanese Ladies' Comics was established as a genre of manga for adult women in the early 1980s, and it is the most latecomer to the scenes of manga even though their popular predecessors called Shoujo Manga or "Girls' Comics" such as Shoujo Furendo (Girls, Friend), Maagaretto (Margaret), and Nakayoshi (Good Friends) have been around since the 1960s.

    The readers of the Ladies' Comics range from the ages 15 to 44 (which, interestingly enough, coincides with the women's child-bearing age). Japanese women buy Redi Komi at a nearby bookstore or a convenience store, and they tend to buy from a few to several different magazines at one time (Erino 1993).

    The 1980s was the time when manga in general truly gained popularity and legitimacy as entertainment. A manga boom emerged, and the sales sky-rocketed. Many new comic magazines were issued and manga automatically meant huge profits. The 1980s was also the time of Japanese economic expansion when the so-called "bubble economy" made more than 85% of the population classify themselves as middle class. The publication of VAL and FEEL started in 1986, and erotic and sexual scenes were drawn for adult women. This freedom of sexual expression characterized the Ladies' Comics of the early years. The manga artists for Girls' Comics used to retire in their late 20s and 30s before the 1980s, but the manga boom and newly created magazines made them continue drawing for adult females. The themes of Ladies' Comics included love, mate selection, marriage, and family that women encounter in their everyday life whether they are single career women or housewives. As far as nudity, violence, and sex are concerned all Redi Komi belong to the equivalent of the American G, PG, R, X, and XXX ratings (Interviews 2000).

    The most predominant form of Japanese comics is the magazine format. Redi Komi varies in size, but the majority of them that are published monthly, bi-weekly, and every other month are 7 X 10 inches, and their thickness varies between 1 1/4 inches to two inches which is usually the size for seasonal, extra, or special issues. Ladies' Comics as a whole seem to be rather big in size compared to weekly comic magazines for men which generally are between 3/4 to 1 1/4 inches thick. Sutekina Shufutachi (Wonderful Housewives) by Futabasha, which is a special issue of regular JOUR, for example, has the total of 714 pages and 11 complete stories ranging from 14 pages to 100 pages and they were previously published in monthly JOUR.

    Japanese Ladies' Comics are printed off-set on cheap, coarse, and bulky paper that is very economical, and yet they have congeniality with the printing ink so that it does not smudge fingers.

    Redi Komi are disposable commodities and not collectors, items. The regular Japanese house, which was once ridiculed as "a rabbit hutch" by the Europeans, does not have ample, extra space to collect voluminous Redi Komi. The price of the comics vary from 380 yen to 600 yen which is approximately US$3.50 to $5.75.

    Just like comics for adult men, Ladies' Comics can be further divided into the following categories: (1) drama, (2) romance/fantasy, and (3) pornography, or sexually explicit, adult material (Ito 1994). As far as the volumes of sales are concerned, the drama and romance/fantasy category has about 80% of the market share, and they are published by larger and more established publishing houses while the pornography category's market share is about 20%, and they are very small companies that need to sell rather gross, very erotic, and sensual expressions in order to survive in the market and cater to special needs of certain Japanese. These pornographic comics are equivalent to American XXX movies in terms of content and stories (Interviews 2000).

    Japanese Ladies' Comics tended to be associated with female pornography when they first emerged as a genre, and for some time more and more erotic, gross, and sensuous scenes were drawn, and the tendency escalated until the early 1990s. The major publishers such as Shueisha (YOU), Futabasha (JOUR), Kodansha (BE LOVE) and so on publish Ladies' Comics where sexual scenes are almost non-existent. They focus more on the reality of everyday life experienced by modern housewives, office workers, and college students -- love, romance, female friendship, careers, life-styles, mother-child relations, PTA, social problems, sexism, divorce, domestic violence, injustice, relationship with the in-laws, abortion, etc. By the end of the 1990s many stories from Ladies' Comics were made into popular movies and TV series, and this shows that the stories and issues covered in the Ladies' Comics have legitimacy and a wider appeal not only to the women readers but the general audience. The Pictures

    Just like in men's weekly comic magazines, the majority of characters in Ladies' Comics have Miss America features -curly hair, large and round eyes with thick eye lashes (which often take about 1/3 space of the entire face!), well-shaped sexy eye brows, long nose, thin and cute lips, and so on, while most Japanese women without plastic surgery have straight hair, narrow, slanted eyes with short eye lashes, rather short nose, and round lips.

    The Japanese characters belong to a Mongoloid race, but the characters in Redi Komi have Caucasian facial and body features that appeal to the Japanese aesthetics and that make them envious and yearn to have them. This epitomizes what Robert Christopher (1983) calls "the Japanese gaiiin complex," a psychological, racial inferiority complex towards foreigners, especially Caucasians and their physical features. Many of the female characters look nothing but Barbie dolls with deformation, and if these characters do exist in reality as they appear in the comics they would rather look like monstersl

    Many stories also feature dream houses with elegant furniture, fashionable clothing, and sophisticated settings for romance and love. Those stories that deal with ordinary, everyday life situations still have pictures that have very upper- or upper middle-class like backgrounds. The Occupations and Roles

    Redi Komi features heroines in many occupations and roles as well as various life situations even though certain types such as housewives and career women tend to predominate. The occupations are mostly in the pink collar occupations traditionally performed by women. The heroines' occupations are: actresses, attorneys, bar hostesses, cooks, clerks, detectives, doctors, elevator attendants, executives, housekeepers, housewives, locksmiths, models, nurses, office workers, police women, prostitutes, sales women, S & M Queens, secretaries, sex slaves, shop owners, stewardesses, students, taxi drivers, teachers, travel agents, waitresses, and writers. The occupations of men, who are the love objects of the heroines, vary from ordinary to extraordinary: camera men, cooks, divers, Draculas (1), executives, gigolos, homeless men, musicians, novelists, producers, professors, scientists, stars, students, teachers, tennis coaches, and undertakers.

    The roles women play are also very typical of gender stereotypes, more or less traditional and domestic gender roles allotted for them: aunts, caretakers, daughters, daughters-inlaw, girlfriends, granddaughters, grandmothers, housewives, lovers, mistresses, mothers, mothers-in-law, neighbors, nieces, nymphomaniacs, nurturers, sisters, sisters-in-law, wives, and widows.

    Generally speaking housewifery worldwide does not entail much prestige, esteem, money, and status in society. If a wedding ceremony, an extravagant reception, and a honeymoon to a foreign country (e.g., Hawaii, Australia, and Europe) are the highlight of an ordinary Japanese woman's dream, everyday life spent as a housewife can be a sort of "prison" for many of them. Day in, day out, it is the same, dull routine -- cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of children, and occasional sex with an inattentive and reluctant husband. Nothing superbly exciting or wonderful happens. The more expectations the wives had as newlyweds, the more miserable they feel later because expectations are premeditated disappointment in many cases. Many heroines feel that they have been treated by their husbands unfairly only as a housekeeper rather than as a wife. Many heroines also live with their in-laws and end up taking care of them, which truly reflects the reality of a rapidly graying Japan. They start to wonder "What is happiness?"

    Many Redi Komi are basically for women who are already married or are close to getting married. The common themes are: love and romance, taking care of the elderly, sexless and unhappy marriage, adultery, dieting, taking care and socialization of children, dealing with bosses and male coworkers in the office, independence, codependence, and pursuing one's career. Some of the stories deal with rather serious social issues such as aging, senility, compassion, prostitution, crimes against women and so on.

    Marriage is considered an important process of becoming truly an adult, a rite of passage. In one of the stories, a heroine says to her girlfriend, "I have also been thinking that I do not want to marry. I have a very difficult time taking care of myself. Once married I would not have any freedom, and then I must protect my family and make everyone happy. However, I started to think that turning my back on marriage will not lead to my growth as a human being. I think it is very important for me to be positive and take the first step (to marry)."

    The heroines are all ordinary people who have some kind of problems in their marriage or family, and they want to deal with them in a very positive manner. In one dieting story, the message is that women do not need to be skinny just because they want to please their men. It is okay to be themselves, and it is actually not too bad to be chunky. Men love you for what you are and not for how you look. There's more of you to lovel (I find this a great message.) In another story, the heroine is torn apart between being a boss to her boyfriend and being independent. She decided to break up with him to regain and maintain her independence, but she eventually goes back to him because she loves him, and she tries to balance her professional and personal lives. Being true to oneself and one's emotions and feelings is a very important ingredient for happiness. Romantic Fantasy

    The messages of the Ladies, Comics catering to the young adults indicate that a Japanese woman's ultimate dream is to find her Prince Charming, marry him, and have an easy, rich life in a huge mansion with several servants (Erino 1993). This kind of romantic fantasy is found in comic magazines published by major publishers such as Kodansha, Futabasha, and Shogakukan. These magazines are for the young, junior high school to young adults, and this fact is obvious because Ruby, a Japanese phonetic alphabet, is written next to all the Chinese characters so that anyone can read the stories (Some children are able to read all Japanese characters at the age of four or five). Many Redi Komi that cater to adult women also have fantasy stories that are very unlikely in the actual life.

    Most of the stories in this category almost always end with a happy ending. They focus on romance and love as well as sex as an expression of love. The ultimate Prince Charming is usually young, tall, exceptionally handsome, intelligent, kind, sensual, sexy, and sensitive. He has a great body, too. (In real life he already has a boyfriendl) They remind us of the classic Cinderella story, but for some women, marriage is not the ultimate goal of life. Relationship is. The patterns found in most stories are very similar. They start with falling in love, which is usually the easiest step, then some kind of struggles and problems emerge, and the characters come up with solutions and happy endings. Many are nothing but soap operas on paper.

    One of the 24 volumes that I read for this paper was a comic version of Harlequin romance novels. Ozora Publishing House in Tokyo issues Harlequin as a special issue to its Ladies, Comic magazine Ava. As is well-known, Harlequin romance novels are published in 116 countries and are loved by close to 200,000,000 women readers each year. This comic version in Japanese was first issued in July 1998. The heroines look racially and ethnically appropriate in the stories, but the backgrounds of foreign countries are not really true to the reality. (They look very odd to me as someone who has traveled to 46 countries.) In this August issue of Harlequin there are three stories all based on popular Harlequin romance novels. The themes of the novels are all there in the comics: very romantic setting, hypergamy, prince charming, the doctrine that true love conquers all obstacles, and the ultimate happiness is found in romance and eventually marriage. And of course, the marriage always has to be a hypergamy, marrying upi

    One of the psychological rewards of reading Redi Komi in this genre is to relive and experience the past, the "girlhood" or young adulthood differently. You cannot go back to your high schools days, for example, but the comics can bring you back your own memories (for better or worse), and they also let you experience different things vicariously in their stories. The settings include school excursions, classroom situations, the first kiss, loss of virginity, etc.

    The Ladies' Comics also provide socialization for the adults and anticipatory socialization for the young. In the world of romance and fantasy as well as the agony and pain of daily life, the stories provide information and knowledge of what may come in the future and prepare the readers for the upcoming situations.

    The romance and fantasy depicted in Redi Komi of this category may take place in a romantic foreign country far away from Japan, a different historical time period, or even a different dimension of existence. The heroines and characters include princes and princesses, ghosts, and transsexuals, and the themes include reincarnation, homosexuality, the ability to foresee the future, and transvestism. Some of the other themes are summarized as follows:

    The process of falling in love, finding a man, is a very important ingredient for Japanese women. The girls fall in love with a travel director in their shugaku ryoko, with the students from other universities at a goudou kompa (a prearranged dinner party designed to meet someone of the opposite sex), and the heroines find love with handsome men who work at a host club, a cook of a restaurant, and a teacher of her art class. The setting for meeting a Prince Charming can be in a very exotic foreign country and in a different historical time, or it could be in a very usual, ordinary place such as a university campus and a corporation one works for. A housewife who is not satisfied with her loveless marriage may find a wonderful, handsome man from her dreams and fall in love. She is now filled with love and the joy of life as a woman. The girls and women often suffer from low self-esteem before they find their men. They feel rather inadequate and wonder about their worth as women. Meeting a new man lifts their spirits and increases their self-esteem and self-respect. In one story, an old widow falls in love with an elderly gentleman in spite of the opposition of some of the members of her family.

    Love without obstacles is love that is not worth striving for. Many characters find themselves in a love triangle with their significant others -- sisters, best friends, and even mothers and have to agonize over the situation for some time. Some young women find themselves in an affair with married men, and others have to choose between their love life or career because for some career women keeping the balance of the work life and love life is quite difficult.

    Losing virginity at a relatively young age is a rite of passage for many teenagers in Japan today. When I was growing up, we always talked about sex, but the majority of us delayed the "process" until later. I was rather shocked to see some Redi Komi stories depicting junior high school students engaging in sex. No wonder enjo kosai, or prostitution by junior and senior high school girls with horny, yet immature and insecure middle-aged Japanese men who feel threatened by mature, adult women, reached a pathological stage at the end of the 1990s and became a perturbing social problem that was also known to the other parts of the world. (I would be worried if I were a mother and my teenage daughter read these comicsi)

    A girl loses her virginity because she loves her man, and it is considered a sincere gift for him. In one story, an 18year old college student who considers herself not too beautiful or attractive tries to lose her virginity because she was advised to lose it so that she can easily approach men and find a boyfriend. Losing her virginity will be an opportunity for her to turn into a beautiful butterfly, and she will have a boyfriend.

    Girls and young women in this category are very concerned with their self-image -- how do I look in the eyes of the others and especially the opposite sex? They spend quite a lot of time polishing themselves -- beauty, losing weight, buying fashionable clothes, etc. In one story, a heroine has plastic surgery, and she turns into an absolute beauty. She cannot go back home where people know her only as an ugly woman. The plastic surgery gave her confidence and self-esteem, and she becomes very popular on a college campus. She says "Whether you become happy or not depends only on you."

    Unlike the other category the characters in this category willingly engage in sexual intercourse because they love their lovers. Sex is an expression of love and affection, and love is the only legitimate reason to have sex not lust, aggression, violence, or control by men. The act of sex is often idealized and exalted by the women, and they dream of some day when they will be embraced in the arms of their men and make love to them. And for married women, they have sex with their lovers because they do love them. Do husbands matter? Of course, notl

    The young women are usually reprimanded by their best friends, sisters, and others that they should quit their relationship with a married man. In one story, a heroine says "I just happened to fall in love with a man who happened to have a wife." She is reminded by her sister that "The love that has no future will torture you." She decides to break up with the married man.

    Women who have been married for several years start to get bored and nothing exciting happens in their married life. It has become a routine, and it may even be a sexless marriage, which started to get attention in the mass media as a "new social phenomenon" in the latter part of the 1990s. A woman finds her love through a class she is taking, usually her lover is her teacher, and through a telephone club, she becomes a telephone "date" which is a prostitute. In one story, a wife is not very happy about her sexless marriage. She feels neglected, ignored, and not loved by her husband. One day she comes home earlier than planned and finds her husband with his subordinate, both of them naked in the living room. She learns that her husband has been cheating on her and that he is gay. Lustful Perversion

    I had heard about rumors and comments about certain kinds of ladies' comics when I told Japanese people that I was doing research on Redi Komi. They say, "Oh, those ladies, comicsi They are pornography for horny women." Now I have finished reading several comic magazines in this category I know what they meant: Anything goes in the stories as far as sex is concerned! The scenes and stories are comparable to American XXX videos, which is a pastime and entertainment to a segment of the population but definitely not for all. Some may consider what goes on in these comics as nothing but abhorrent. In this age of AIDS and STDs, there was only one scene where a man wears a condom to practice safe sex even though the sex scenes are ubiquitous.

    These magazines say their theme is love, but it is the erotic kind, and in most cases it is nothing but lust and physical pleasure of the ultimate kind. Many four-letter words, very derogatory names and terms for female body parts, and onomatopoeia of the sounds of sexual acts appear in these stories.

    Much violence takes place in some of the stories: clothes get ripped off, women are forced to provide oral sex, they get raped or gang raped. It seems that the level of violence is less compared with weekly comic magazines for men where hard core violence often takes place along with sex - kidnapping, lynching, murder, rape, gang rape, etc. Revenge is often a part of sex act, too (Ito 1994: Ito 1995).

    The Japanese women in these stories are often shy, introverted, and innocent to begin with, but they gradually turn into sex slaves, and they become very aggressive. The majority of Redi Komi of this category solicit real stories from the readers.

    The way how innocent and ordinary Japanese women get initiated into S & M differs among each story, but often it is their men who initially introduce them into the world of S & M. In one story a boyfriend takes his girlfriend to an adult toy shop where a female clerk ends up teaching them how to engage in and enjoy S & M sexual acts. The clerk is an active participant in their sex that takes place in a fitting room.

    Men are always in control, and they are the masters and trainers. Women almost always end up becoming addicted sex slaves and trainees. They need to be beaten, kicked, bitten, whipped, and tied in order to satisfy the men's sexual desire, but at the same time the women learn to taste the joy of S & M, especially the latter. In one story, a man says, "OK, now. You are nothing but an M womanl You are a sex slave who should listen to her master all the time." She gets tied up with a rope, whipped, and then has a suppository inserted into her anus, where she finds the ultimate pleasure of sex.

    All of the comic magazines in this category have advertisements for adult toys such as vibrators, dildos, electronic beads for anal sex, devises for pinching nipples, massage oils, potions, etc. between the comic stories.

    The women have had sex before, but their men introduce them to the additional joy of anal sex. The messages contained are that women should explore their bodies and find pleasure, and it is okay to seek sexual pleasure and be liberated (and please buy our products).

    Many stories in this category deal with rape as a sexual act that can be satisfactory for women when rape actually is violence, and it is definitely unethical, a violation of basic human rights. However, in these comics stories it is depicted that Japanese women almost always enjoy being raped not only by men but also by other devises that include beer bottles, vibrators, dildos, candles, laxatives, etc. Of course there is always a struggle of psychological sort depicted - the woman feels ashamed and betrayed by another human being at first, but this is what her mind tells her. Her body, on the contrary, cannot forget the pure pleasure of hot and lustful sex that remains in her body and reminds her of the sexual encounter. In one story, an ex-elite businessman who now is a homeless man living in a park says to his ex-colleague, "An office clerk like you, who works for a first class corporation, is nothing but a swine once her clothes are taken off." He puts a dog collar around her neck and brings her to a park on a leash. There she begs for sex naked in front of men who were curious about her. They start to engage in gang rape, and the woman loses herself in pure joy of having sex with many men in public.

    Masturbation, or self-eroticism, is often featured in the stories. The magazines have many pages of advertisements for sex toys and also video tapes of masturbation. Many women engage in finger sex, sex with,vibrators and/or dildos in order to extinguish the fire of their sexual desire that cannot be fulfilled in their everyday life. Their husbands may be too busy with their careers and job, and they do not have time for their wives. Or they may prefer to go to an establishment called Soap Land and engage in soap dance and sex with a young "soap lady" for a fee. Their married life turned into a dull, ordinary event, and the wives are no longer satisfied with their sex life. In one story, a neighbor gets a package sent to a housewife next door by mistake, opens it, and finds a vibrator. She brings the package to her neighbor's house, and consoles her with the content of the package. They engage in double masturbation and lesbian sex.

V    oyeurism is a very popular and common theme for some of the stories. In one story, a very selfish daughter of a very wealthy family turns into an exhibitionist, and she regularly masturbates on a park bench where many men watch her with delight. They also participate in others' sexual activities. Interestingly enough, some stories depict women who get excited when they see others having sex. Orgies and sex with multiple partners are part of voyeurism, too.

    Just like American XXX movies, lesbian sex takes place quite often in this category of Redi Komi. The readers may also consist of lesbian women. Two women engage in a French kiss, oral sex, sex with dildos and vibrators, and so on. In one story it was a daughter-in-law and a mother-in-law pair.

    One of the most noticeable thing in any sex scene in this category are the plenty of liquids depicted in the stories. There are lots of onomatopoeia that refer to the sounds of bodily fluids at the scene - semen ejaculating, love juice pouring, and urine released. Urination seems to excite some Japanese men, and the Japanese women are often forced to perform urination in front of them.

    Incest and other kinds of sex are often the focus of the stories. In one story, a young widow who loses her much older husband a year after their marriage finds it very difficult to extinguish her insatiable sexual desire. She starts to have sex with her step-son who happily cooperates to bring her joy and bodily pleasure again. There is a certain amount of guilt entailed in this especially at the beginning of the new relationship, and a widow asks her late husband in front of his picture, "I lost you, and my body is aching missing you so much. Would it be okay if I leave this body to you son?" And the son says, "We are bonded by the fact that we lost our beloved man, you a husband and me a father." This stepmother who is a widow and her stepson combination was found in several stories.

    In another story, a 24 year old office worker tells a story that she has been raped by her step-father because her mother is sick and needs lots of money for her hospital stay. Her step father compensated by having sex with his stepdaughter and also by prostituting her to his friends. Other stories include incest of brother and sister and a mother and son (which is a predominant form of incest in Japan as opposed to American father-daughter pair).

    Virgins are the prizes for men, and losing virginity is a rite of passage. In one story a university student gets entrapped in a remote mansion far away from the city. Her professor must teach and train her to become a sex slave. His young assistant rapes her as the professor watches. The woman is then asked, "How is the first taste of men?" The student is kept in the mansion, and every night she needs to go through the routine of sex training with the assistant. Her professor shows up at the mansion every weekend with new "tools.,,

Analysis & Conclusion

The Japanese manga traditionally is a form of art, literature, and above all the major popular entertainment of the nation that boasts exceptional literacy rates. Manga is considered lowbrow art in Japan, but it has much more legitimacy, prominence, prestige, and status than in any other country. Today millions of copies of manga are sold weekly, and manga definitely is a huge, successful, and lucrative industry in Japan. Many millionaires who are listed as the top 100 richest people are manga artists, and many youngsters aspire to become one.

    Japanese Ladies Comics as with other forms of manga is a form of cheap, affordable, and popular entertainment readily available for every woman. The sheer volume of publication and the profit they generate shows its prevalence and popularity.

    Redi Komi is the most latecomer to the scene of modern manga and it emerged only in the 19801s. The freedom of sexual expression was one of the major attractions of the comics that was not found in the Girls' Comics. Howeverf some of the Japanese Ladies' Comics are sexually explicit and rather gross depicting women as animals and sex toys, degrading their integrity as a human being and their human rights are lost in insulting situations with men - rape, gang rape, S & M, etc. Morality aside, the comics just like popular erotic novels contain much of human's secret sexual desires both consciously and sub- or unconsciously.

    In a way Redi Komi provides the readers with dreams, romances, and fantasies that cannot be easily materialized in real life, and by experiencing them vicariously the reader may be able to get rid of the monotony of everyday life as well as stress in her personal and work situations. Many married women with children find their identities only as roles - someone's wife, mother, daughter, and so on, and they tend to lose their sense of self and fulfillment as a human being in their daily lives. This "death" of one's self as an individual, independent entity takes a heavy toll for some women in terms of selfsacrifice for the family. Their being and identity is almost always found only in the network of their relations with others. Hamaguchi (1996; 19998) states that the Japanese tend to interact with others not as a totally independent individual but in the context of human nexus called "the contextual" by including others' actions, thinking, feelings, and speech in the process of objectification of and reference to the self. The Japanese self is more or less a situated self that are influenced by the existence and relationship to others, and this is also evident in Redi Komi stories.

    The romantic stories enable them to experience the love and romance with a Prince Charming as a free, independent, unattached woman. They can easily identify and empathize with the heroines in the stories and enjoy the fantasy world as long as the story lasts. Ladies, Comics also let the older readers relive their youth and experience new and different things vicariously again as a single woman.

    The magazines also have pragmatic written (no comics) sections on cooking, advice on love relations and romance, tips for finding an apartment or pursuing a manga artist career, cleaning, and so on. Several comic stories provide information on special or technical knowledge as well: bank interest, consumer behavior, Money Management Fund, stocks and bonds, computer. internet, Integrated Service Digital Network, and medicine (e.g., DNA, kidney transplant, pregnancy, etc.) They provide the readers with socialization or anticipatory socialization by featuring the heroines and other characters as role models and inseminating practical knowledge and information about domestic and social life in general -- norms, roles, expectations, customs and manners, taboos, as well as rites of passage such as staring a career, wedding, becoming parents, etc. The heroines may make mistakes, but they all learn from them. They also become lessons for the readers to learn the morals and relationships (male-female, boss-subordinate, parents-child, in-laws, etc.). In this sense Redi Komi is educational.
 
 

    Many Redi Komi situations that women find themselves in are in primary group settings with a smaller number of characters who are in intimate relationships while some stories found in men's weekly comic magazines entail many characters and elaborate story lines. This is very similar to the games that boys and girls play. Boys engage in group games with rules, structures, and hierarchy while girls tend to form a group of a few and share intimacy.

    Japan traditionally has a genre or art called shunga or spring pictures which are comparable to X - rated picture magazines found in the United States today. These sexually explicit shunga pictures remind the readers (or rather the lookers) of a book such as The Kama Sutra of India. Some readers of Redi Komi may not see certain sexual acts and scenes as exploitation and oppression of the female sex.

    Many stories in Redi Komi rather show men's romantic or sexual fantasy about women and sex -- what men would consider to be nice and wonderful if they happen. Many women are depicted as nurturant, supportive, kind, empathic, and compassionate. They love to follow their men. Yet, in other cases women are aggressive, independent, smart, and they know what they are doing. They are androgynous characters.

    Male editors have the final voice in controlling the story lines written by female artists even though some established artists can do anything they want. For example, some of the

    stories support the legitimacy of having mistresses and multiple partners. In several stories, mistresses are positively drawn, and they even give lessons to become a perfect mistress - Make sure sex is always exciting and stimulating since you cannot see him all the time. Do not withhold your man when he leaves your house to his wife and children. Let him go when he wants to. Do not say "I love you" to him. Make him say that he loves you. Do not wear perfume to the date. Do not inquire too much about his private life unnecessarily.

    Some of the things said and done in the stories are rather sexist from the women's point of view. In some cases the women are called bitches (female dog) and swine, and women are referred to as mesu, a rather derogatory term used only for female animals. It is important to note that the notion of sexual harassment is a relatively new concept in Japan, and it was only in the 1990s when it started to get media attention and exposure. In the Redi Komi of pornographic category, men are also often depicted as a liberator who lead their women to sexual freedom and enlightenment.

    Japan indeed is still a man's paradise where men dominate the society except in the domestic sphere, and in many areas of Japanese every day life, women are often bystanders and cheer leaders rather than the major players. In Redi Komi stories, however, women are the heroines. They are the major players who think, act, and live lives. They no longer play supportive roles in Redi Komi, and many heroines somehow make mistakes, learn from them, come up with solutions, and grow as human beings.