Hello,
In 2011 there was a discussion in the comments section of this club between @Anomalous @Sasa and @shiohigari about who's a member of the Forty-Niners, notably with the case of Suzue Miuchi.
If possible, I would like to reborn that discussion because honestly the Year 24 Group is quite blurred; depending of the sources, their members change quite a lot.
Since I tried to contribute on the French Wikipedia on the shōjo subject, I dug a little the sources about the shōjo, and thus the Forty-Niners.
From what I gathered, during the 70s and 80s decades, there was 3 dominants streams in the shōjo demographic. A scholar named Miyadai Shinji describe them as:
1. The "shi-shõsetsu (I-novel), intermediate novel style", also called "otometic" or "otome-chikku" for a literal transliteration. That kind of works are typically slice-of-life or slow-burn romance, without much drama.
2. The "popular novel style". That kind of works are bombastic, epic and dramatic works.
3. The "canonical Western literature style". That kind of works are more "experimental" and "radical" works, offering new philosophical perspectives, influenced by Western art. This is basically the works of the Forty-Niners and their successors (the "Post Year 24" mangaka).
It is notable that each stream follow a certain demographic: the otometic ones are typically for younger readers while the Forty-Niners are for older if not adult readers, with the "popular" works being for a more intermediate age.
The popularity followed, with the otometic being the most popular works while the Forty-Niners works were kind of obscures and often unpopular (save few exceptions like Poe no Ichizoku…) —it's ironical because today we consider the Forty-Niners works as cult classics while the otometic works are neglected, in fact none of the seminal otometic mangaka are currently scanlated…
Now the issue is that the second and third streams are often mixed together, especially in the West.
Because in the second stream we found Riyoko Ikeda, Yukari Ichijo, Machiko Satonaka or Suzue Miuchi.
Some of them, especially Ikeda and Ichijo (but I did saw Satonaka and Miuchi too) are often considered as Forty-Niners notably because they did some yuri and gender bender works, and of course most of them were also born around 1949.
But how Miyadai Shinji and similar scholars discriminated the mangaka between those 3 streams? Because of their fan base and the magazines they used. Like Ribbon was the otometic den while magazines like Lala or Sho-comi were the dens of the Forty-Niners.
It also seems that there was some bad blood between the 3 fan-bases, like that blog post explaining how Satonaka, Ikeda and Ichijo receive a tons of insults from the fans of Hagio/Takemiya/Ōshima. An article in Mechademia is also saying there was also a vendetta against Miuchi.
Funny side-note: some Forty-Niners fans were accusing Ikeda&co of ripping off the Year 24 works, and it's not necessarily untrue. へへ
So personally, I came up with that categorization:
The core-members or the Forty-Niners are basically the ones mentioned by Matt Thorn in her text The Magnificient Forty-Niners:
— Moto Hagio
— Keiko Takemiya
— Yumiko Ōshima
— Ryōko Yamagishi
— Toshie Kihara
— Minori Kimura
— Nanae Sasaya
— Mineko Yamada
Then you have the "Post Year 24 Group", I'm not totally sure of all of their members, but the ones I know:
— Shio Satō
— Yasuko Aoike
— Yasuko Sakata
— Akiko Hatsu
— Wakako Mizuki
(There is probably other ones that I don't know)
And then we have the "popular novel style" mangaka, that I like to name them "Extended Year 24 Group":
— Riyoko Ikeda
— Machiko Satonaka
— Yukari Ichijo
— Suzue Miuchi
~And probably an other tons like Yumijo Igazashi and the mangaka who worked with her.
The main sources I used:
— The Magnificient Forty-Niners by Matt Thorn
— The Genealogy of Japanese Shōjo Manga (Girls' Comics) Studies by Kayo Takeuchi (the source speaking about Miyadai Shinji)
— International Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga : The Influence of Girl Culture by Masami Toku
— Brickme tumblr, with that third article I didn't mentioned above.
Do you have remarks or critics about what I wrote? Other (additional or contradicting) informations? Notably for completing the list of the Post Year 24 mangaka (I never heard of Aiko Itō or Michi Tarasawa that are both listed as members).
I think it would be cool to have a base for determining who's a member or not, and notably separating the first generation and the second one (the "Post Year 24" mangaka). Notably for re-doing the list in the club introduction — at least there is missing links. |
