Манга для взрослых женщин: история и особенности жанра

Manga aimed at adult women

, also known as ladies' comics (レディースコミック) and its abbreviation redikomi (レディコミ), is an editorial category of Japanese comics that emerged in the 1980s. In a strict sense, josei refers to manga marketed to an audience of adult women, contrasting shōjo manga, which is marketed to an audience of girls and young adult women. In practice, the distinction between shōjo and josei is often tenuous; while the two were initially divergent categories, many manga works exhibit narrative and stylistic traits associated with both shōjo and josei manga. This distinction is further complicated by a third manga editorial category, young ladies (ヤングレディース), which emerged in the late 1980s as an intermediate category between shōjo and josei. Josei manga is traditionally printed in dedicated manga magazines which often specialize in a specific subgenre, typically drama, romance, or pornography. While josei dramas are in most cases realist stories about the lives of ordinary women, romance josei manga are typically soap opera influenced melodramas, while pornographic josei manga shares many common traits with pornographic manga for a heterosexual male audience. The emergence of manga for an adult female audience as a category in the 1980s was preceded by the rise of gekiga in the 1950s and 1960s, which sought to use manga to tell serious and grounded stories aimed at adult audiences, and by the development of more narratively complex shōjo manga by artists associated with the Year 24 Group in the 1970s. The category became stigmatized in the late 1980s as it came to be associated with pornographic manga, but gained greater artistic legitimacy in the 1990s as it shifted to social issue focused stories. Josei manga has been regularly adapted into anime since the 2000s.

Josei romances typically eschew the realism of josei dramas, instead more closely resembling the heightened melodrama of a soap opera or a Harlequin romance novel. Stories often adhere to common romance novel story formulas, such as a woman who encounters a Prince Charming like man with whom she embarks on a variety of adventures and ultimately marries. Sexual encounters between the protagonist and their partner are commonplace, while romantic fantasy themes often manifest in the setting (frequently either foreign or historical) or through heroic protagonists (princes and princesses, ghosts, people who possess supernatural abilities, etc.). Variant sexual identities, such as gay and transgender characters, also appear in these narratives. Josei romances target both a younger and older readership, with many stories aimed at teenaged girls, as evidenced by the extensive use of furigana as a reading aid.

Pornographic josei manga shares many common traits with pornographic manga for a heterosexual male audience, though stories are typically written from a female rather than male point of view. Traits common to heterosexual pornography, such as female domination and objectification, similarly recur in pornographic josei manga; a common story formula in josei pornography is one in which a shy and intelligent woman is transformed into a nymphomaniac or a sex slave. Lesbian relationships also appear in pornographic josei manga, suggesting a lesbian readership of josei manga. Manga scholar Deborah Shamoon considers that the appeal of pornographic josei for a female audience lies in the ability of drawn pornography to depict subjects that are not easily depicted in filmed pornography, such as the female orgasm.

When josei manga initially emerged in the 1980s, it differentiated itself from shōjo manga by exploring adult topics such as work, sex, and life after marriage, and was directed at a readership of women who were "no longer a shōjo". Manga scholar Yukari Fujimoto notes this focus on realism as a primary distinguishing mark of josei stories, compared to the more fantastical narratives common in shōjo manga. This manifests in the careers commonly held by protagonists in each respective category: actresses, models, and musicians in shōjo manga, compared to ordinary working women in josei manga. Fujimoto further considers depictions of marriage as a primary dividing line between the categories, with shōjo depicting life before marriage, and josei depicting life afterwards. Since the emergence of young ladies manga, distinctions between the categories have been increasingly blurred. In narratives, protagonists of all ages can readily be found in both shōjo and josei manga, with shōjo stories featuring adult protagonists and josei stories focusing on teens and younger characters. Stories that depict sex have been published in shōjo manga magazines such as Sho Comi, while sex is virtually non existent in some josei magazines such as Monthly Flowers. At the editorial level, there is no consistent standard for segmenting manga aimed at a female audience, with terminology and categories varying across decades, publishing houses, and magazines. Since the 2000s, some large publishers such as Shueisha and Kodansha have grouped all manga magazines aimed at a female audience under a single category. Formatting of tankōbon bound volumes, where larger and more expensive books are traditionally reserved for titles aimed at an adult audience, similarly follow no formal rules, with adult manga sold in small and inexpensive formats and youth manga sold in large formats. It is common for authors to create shōjo and josei manga simultaneously, with , George Asakura, and Mayu Shinjo among the numerous artists who produce works across categories. This dynamic contrasts shōnen and seinen manga, where artists generally produce works in one category exclusively, and artists that do switch categories rarely switch back.

There have been several examples of josei works that share common traits with shōnen and seinen manga, or that blur distinctions between the categories. Saiyuki by Kazuya Minekura was serialized in the shōnen magazine Monthly GFantasy, though its sequel Saiyuki Reload was published in the josei magazine Monthly Comic Zero Sum. Fujio Akatsuka's 1962 manga series Osomatsu kun was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday, though when the series was rebooted in 2015 as the anime series Mr. Osomatsu, its manga spin off was published in the josei magazines You and Cookie. Anthony Gramuglia of Comic Book Resources identifies the anime series Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, part of the Lupin the Third media franchise, as a notable josei adaptation of a seinen manga.