Rebel with causes and laughter for relief: ‘essay manga’ of Tenten Hosokawa and Rieko Saibara, and Japanese female readership

Abstract

This paper explores how representations of women in the Japanese female ‘Essay Manga’ of Rieko Saibara and Tenten Hosokawa serve as a significant site through which issues on current Japanese marital life and family can be traced, and how Japanese female readers understand them. In Everyday Mum, based on her rebellious life with her alcoholic and dying husband, however, Saibara deftly crystallizes how Japanese housewives/mothers who are shackled with domesticity negotiate with gender norms. In My Partner Became Depressed, Hosokawa illustrates her life with her husband who quit his job due to depression. Numerous Japanese housewives/mothers with depressed partners used her manga to openly discuss this issue. Both detailed daily lives of women with their families are vividly portrayed in simple drawing styles in a uniquely funny way. When reading their Essay Manga, Japanese female readers keep themselves detached from their reality and take pleasure in unruliness of women.

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