Contemporary Japanese Women’s Theatre and Visual Arts

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction: Girls’ Aesthetics

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 1-17

3. Girls’ Time, Girls’ Space

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 18-64

4. Girlie Sexuality: When Flat Girls Become Three-Dimensional

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 65-111

5. Citizen Girls

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 112-151

6. “Little Girls” Go West?

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 152-176

7. Afterword: Girls’ Aesthetics as Feminist Practices

   • Nobuko Anan

   Pages 177-180

8. Back Matter

   Pages 181-229

   PDF

This book traces the history of 'girls' aesthetics,' where adult Japanese women create art works about 'girls' that resist motherhood, from the modern to the contemporary period and their manifestation in Japanese women's theatrical and dance performance and visual arts including manga, film, and installation arts.

• Contemporary performance
• international performance
• Japanese theatre
• Japanese visual arts
• Japanese pop culture
• aesthetics
• film
• theatre
• visual arts

“Nobuko Anan’s Contemporary Japanese Women’s Theatre and Visual Arts joins a fleet of scholarly books published in the last several decades on Japanese girls’ culture. Solidly researched, this study integrates Japanese, European, and American scholarship, combining in-depth analysis of specific theatre works and theoretical concepts as well as historical overviews. It enhances our understanding of Japanese performance since the 1970s and is a welcome addition to the field.” (Ayako Kano, Theatre Journal, Vol. 59 (4), December, 2017)​

• Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

  Nobuko Anan

Nobuko Anan is Lecturer in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She has published articles on Japanese women's performance and visual arts in anthologies and journals such as TDR and Theatre Research International. She received her PhD from Theatre and Performance at University of California Los Angeles, USA.

Policies and ethics