Girl Reading Girl provides the first overview of the cultural significance of girls and reading in modern and contemporary Japan with emphasis on the processes involved when girls read about other girls.

The collection examines the reading practices of real life girls from differing social backgrounds throughout the twentieth century while a number of chapters also consider how fictional girls read attention is given to the diverse cultural representations of the girl, or shojo, who are the objects of the reading desires of Japan's real life and fictional girls....

The middle-class nuclear family model has long dominated discourses on family in Japan. Yet there have always been multiple configurations of family and kinship, which, in the context of significant socio-economic and demographic shifts since the 1990s, have become increasingly visible in public discourse. This book explores the meanings and practices of "family" in Japan, and brings together research by scholars of literature, gender studies, media and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. While the primary focus is the "Japanese" family, it also examines the experience and...

The middle-class nuclear family model has long dominated discourses on family in Japan. Yet there have always been multiple configurations of family and kinship, which, in the context of significant socio-economic and demographic shifts since the 1990s, have become increasingly visible in public discourse. This book explores the meanings and practices of "family" in Japan, and brings together research by scholars of literature, gender studies, media and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology. While the primary focus is the "Japanese" family, it also examines the experience and...