Japanese Girls’ Comics and ‘Style-Ga’: This Could Also Be A Research Topic

Department of Content and Creative Design, Faculty of Design
Associate Professor YONEMURA Noriko

My specialty is history of French painting in the latter half of the 19th century, and my interest spreads from women’s dresses in the 19th century paintings to the contemporary fashion in Japan. Japanese girls’ comics also fascinated me and ‘Style-Ga’ is my current research topic.

‘Style-Ga’ originated in Japan as fashion illustration after World War II when Japanese readymade-clothing industry was still in its infancy. Dressmakers used ‘Style-Ga’ to show the final appearance of order made clothes. But in Japanese girls’ comics, ‘Style-Ga’ signified near full-page in height illustration of manga character wearing fashionable clothes. At the end of the 1950s, TAKAHASHI Macoto began innovative and daring layouts featuring ‘Style-Ga’ on facing pages (Figure 1). These ‘Style-Ga’ were inserted abruptly without any relation to the story, and often written off as “meaningless.” However, they are now thought to have played an important role in the development of the original visual style of girls’ comics.

Fig. 1: TAKAHASHI Macoto, “Arashi-wo-koete,” Shojo, March 1958.

In Japanese comics, a series of frames are arranged on a page to show progress through a story, like a sequence of movie shots. This format is said to be laid down by TEZUKA Osamu after World War II (Figure 2). Until the beginning of the 1960s, girls’ comics had been largely drawn by men, and their frame arrangements were similar to those of boys’ comics. In the mid-1960s, the leading women’s magazines were switching from monthly to weekly publishing, and increasing demand for titles was covered by young woman creators. Visually in the 1970s girls’ comics came to be decisively different from boys’ comics, when HAGIO Moto, TAKEMIYA Keiko (Figure 3), and OSHIMA Yumiko were active. In their works, frames were often left open, panels and characters overlapped in a “layered frame structure” (Figures 4a, 4b).

Fig. 2: TEZUKA Osamu, New Treasure Island, based on the story by Sakai Shichima, Ikuei-Shuppan, 1947.

Fig. 3: TAKEMIYA Keiko, "The Poem of Wind and Trees," Shojo Comic and Petit Flower, 1976-84.

Fig. 4a: NATSUME Fusasosuke, Why is Manga Interesting?, NHK Publishing, 1997 (TACHIKAKE Hideko, “Be with Me When It Is Raining,” Ribon, 1977).

Fig. 4b: NATSUME Fusasosuke, Why is Manga Interesting?, NHK Publishing, 1997.

TAKAHASHI Macoto began drawing ‘Style-Ga’ at the end of 1950s and they were said to be the origin of the layered frame structures seen in the 1970s. However, the 1960s mostly remain an unsown field for research. This is the field I investigate in terms of the change in visual style of ‘Style-Ga’ and girls’ comics. I will developpe this research project to fashion and clothing in girls’ magazines.

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Department of Content and Creative Design, Faculty of Design
Associate Professor YONEMURA Noriko