Which reminds me, an aside:
Yoshie,
I've been reading/thinking about Shoujo (perhaps I should say Shoojo but I was taught to use 'u' -- a poor transliteration because my keyboard will not do kanji or hiragana or even the European shortcut). If, as I think is likely from your name, you are of Japanese background, I'd love if you would talk to me about this because I don't have many alternatives.
Here's a question (if anyone thinks this is outrageously irrelevant to the list I'll take it off list but in general I prefer not to do that, there's always someone interested -- oh and Shoujo means something like schoolgirl and kawaii means something like cute, but is rather more of an aesthetic than an adjective). Someone recently said to me, and this seems to be the jist of recent 'public discourse', that shoujo and prostitution are now as synonymous in Japanese public culture as shoujo and kawaii or shoujo and manga -- but it seems to me that there has always been, ok no but at least since the 1920s, some or other scandal about shoujo and what it implies for Japanese culture -- the question is: a) is shoujo as prostitute a 'beat up', titillation as journalism, or, if not, why do you think it has surfaced in this way? and b) in a recent book on the Takarazuka, Jennifer Robertson claims shoujo is (almost) a separate gender from man and woman, what do you think?
Perhaps you have no interest in or information about this and, if so, I apologise for presuming you might. But, as I said, there aren't many congenial avenues for conversation about this so it seemed worth a chance. I'd be grateful for an opinion on this if you have one.
Thanks, Catherine