Fujimoto Yukari    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Global Japanese Studies    Position   Professor
Date	2010/10/02
Presentation Theme	"Women in NARUTO,Women read NARUTO"
Conference	"Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics"
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Details	"Although being a sh?nen (boys’) manga serialized in Sh?kan Sh?nen JUMP, NARUTO has many female readers. But its depiction of girls and women is, even for this genre, rather conservative, which becomes apparent when compared to similarly popular JUMP series. In my paper, I will first introduce the particularities of NARUTO’s representation of female characters and its later changes, while contrasting this manga with ONE PIECE, before turning to yaoi readings of NARUTO by women. The appropriation of male characters from popular manga for boys by (mostly) heterosexual women and their transformation into homosexual couples, which is now known on a global scale as yaoi, has been an increasingly important part of female manga culture since the 1980s. NARUTO is no exception. The fact that it is subject to yaoi readings raises not only the issue of these readings’ specific characteristics, but also the question of whether these subcultural activities have actually affected the the above-mentioned changes in NARUTO’s representation of female characters."