Speaker: Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase, Department of Chinese and Japanese, Vassar College

Abstract: »This presentation will discuss Maki Miyako's "The Double Suicide in Senbon Matsubara,” published in 1973 in the young adult male magazine Big Comic. Maki is a shōjo manga artist best known for creating stories that reflected girls’ dreams. However, she dedicated most of her career to the creation of manga for mature audiences. “The Double Suicide in Senbon Matsubara” is a pivotal work in her career; she underwent a significant artistic and thematic shift with this manga.
The manga artists who contributed their works to Big Comic were predominantly men. They dealt with mature themes and employed a non-cartoony drawing style called gekiga (dramatic picture), which allowed the depiction of explicit female nudity. Maki’s work followed this style.
Set against the backdrop of the year 1931, which marked the occurrence of the Manchurian Incident and the escalation of full-scale military aggression, the story revolves around two women: one sexually modest and one liberated. These women become the victims of two different kinds of physical violence: the sexually open woman is raped by male villagers and the physically untouched woman is strangled by her lover. The bodies of women are presented as sites of gender conflict and power struggles. My presentation will reveal how Maki juxtaposes Japan's military aggression with the violation of women's bodies by men. In this work, conventional representations of women during wartime are challenged and negotiated.
The interpretation of symbols and visual implications will elucidate Maki’s gender politics embedded in the pages of the male adult magazine.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | Comic: Fiction about rape | Comic: Manga / Maki Miyako | Sex and the law: Rape / Rape in Japan