| Research Abstract |
Japanese women's magazine have been studied for many years in fields such as life history, anthropology and women's studies. These previous studies examine the magazines from either of the following two views : How the magazines represent women's life and ideology and how the magazines affect women and their lives. However, neither view manages to grasp the meaning of women's magazines for women and for society. This research proposes a new view for studying Japanese women's magazines. I examine them as a capitalist women's culture. Through examining sponsors, magazine companies, editors, readers, as well as magazine articles themselves, I clarify how these agents relate to each other and how they create women's culture in this research report.
This research report consists of two parts. Part I, from chapters one to five, consists of Japanese and English articles which I have published or presented at conferences. Part II, from chapter s six to ten, is the result of surveys of university students. In chapter one, I clarify the existence of three historical stages of Japanese women's magazines, divided according to what the magazines put stress on : the stage of thought, the stage of entertainment, and the stage of capitalism. Chapter two analyzes the way in which editors, readers and critiques used gender categories in mentioning readers' literature in major women's magazines before 1970. Chapter three shows how new women's magazines in the 1970s, the capitalist stage, created a salient young women's culture and girl's power. Chapters four and five are written in English. In chapter four, in examining the relationship among sponsors, editors and readers in creation of a new fashion boom, I show the positive role of readers. In Chapter five, taking up an international magazine, I explore the global-local relationship in women's magazines.
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