COC Week: Year-24 Group of Flowers

[leahandillyana]

Following the steps of Mizuno Hideko, a generation of young women born around Showa era year 24 started writing manga breaking even more boundaries and going to further extremes than Mizuno. To see just how novel they were it’s enough to look at their debut short stories.
Keiko Takemiya debuted in 1970 with In The Sunroom, the first work portraying a male-male kiss in manga. Her proper debut however came six years later with Kaze to Ki no Uta, a work I’ll discuss further in the post.
Hagio Moto, a friend of Takemiya and long-time room mate, debuted in 1971 with 11-gatsu no Gymnasim, a short story with a subplot about two boys in love. The story was later expanded into Thomas no Shinzou, a work I’ll discuss later.
Riyoko Ikeda debuted in 1971 with Futari Pocchi, where a tomboy falls for an ill girly girl only to discover the two are secretly sisters.
Ryoko Yamagishi debuted in 1971 with Shiroi Heya no Futari, where good girl and a rebellious girl fall in love amongst school play of Romeo and Juliet, their story no less tragic than the play.

In short, Japanese boomers were very queer and very problematique. Honestly, I think that most of the memorable stories created by the generation contain queer themes. Riyoko Ikeda dealt with gender noncomformism, bisexuality and lesbianism as well as incurable illness in her famous Versailles no Bara and Oniisama e, and wrote one of the first manga surprisingly well portraying a transgender man as a protagonist, Claudine! Ryoko Yamagishi’s most notable work is historical fantasy Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi, portraying the mythologized life of Prince Shotoku, a Japanese national hero, portrayed by Yamagishi as gay crossdresser with magical powers.
 
Hagio Moto has a rich and diverse bibliography. Her style is characterized by intellectualism, multiple layers of meaning, and well-researched subjects. She also introduced speculative fiction to shoujo manga: Poe no Ichizoku is a saga of a vampire family, Yuuichinin Iru is a science fiction manga exploring alien concepts of gender (a theme that will reappear in her works over and over again, most notable in Alpha, Alpha Prime and Marginal Planet). She also wrote Boy’s Love, her Thomas no Shinzou being the first longer manga in the genre and much later Zankokuna Kami ga Shihai Suru being one of the best (if harsh to read) manga dealing with sexual trauma.

Keiko Takemiya specialized in very long, elegant stories dealing with all sorts of trauma: losing your parents (most works), social discrimination (KazeKi, Terra e), sexual trauma (most in-depth and painfully explored in KazeKi). Kaze to Ki no Uta has some of the most memorable protagonists in all manga: Serge is a half-Roma musical prodigy (with his Roma background portrayed in a humane, respectful manner I haven’t seen anywhere else in popculture) who tries to befriend and eventually falls in love with Gilbert, a manipulative boy who sleeps around a lot and is prone to bursts of violence revealed to be a result of an extremely traumatic past.

These are only my four favourite authors from the generation. I wholeheartly recommend basically anything they wrote. Western fans tend to look down on shoujo, which is a shame, as the genre includes the works of highest artistic and literary value among manga.
Edit: Edited pictures to have higher quality illustrations.
 

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

Yeah, thats some good stuff.

Mildly related, I have to share this tweet: https://twitter.com/KonoRobu/status/1231260128571273216 which explains SO much about a particular set of designs from the period.

[vagabondprince]

These posts are really interesting, I don't know much about older shoujo works, aside from big name stuff like Rose of Versailles. It's especially fascinating how progressive these works are, not least of all because of how much less forward thinking some later works are. I'm looking forward to more posts like these!