Year 24 Group

TheYear 24 Group(Japanese:24年組,Hepburn:Nijūyo-nen Gumi)is a grouping of femalemanga artistswho heavily influencedshōjomanga(Japanese girls' comics) beginning in the 1970s. Whileshōjomanga of the 1950s and 1960s largely consisted of simple stories marketed towards elementary school-aged girls, works by members of the group significantly developedshōjomanga by expanding it to incorporate new genres, themes, and subject material. Narratives and art styles inshōjomanga became more complex, and works came to examine topics such as psychology, gender, politics, and sexuality. Manga produced by the Year 24 Group brought theshōjocategory into what scholars have described as its "golden age".
As a largely notional group, the criteria used to determine the membership of the Year 24 Group varies. Individuals who have been associated with the Year 24 Group includeYasuko Aoike,Moto Hagio,Riyoko Ikeda,Toshie Kihara,Minori Kimura,Yumiko Ōshima,Nanae Sasaya,Keiko Takemiya,Mineko Yamada[ja], andRyōko Yamagishi.
"The Year 24 Group" is not aproper namefor a specificcollectiveof artists, but rather a name used by critics, journalists, and academics to retroactively refer to the generation of femalemanga artistswho emerged in the early 1970s and contributed to the growth and development ofshōjomanga.Though the precise first use and originator of the term is unknown,it was widely in use by the end of the 1970s, notably in manga criticTomohiko Murakami's[ja]1979 bookTwilight Times: Dőjidai no Manga no Tameni.
"Year 24" refers toShōwa 24– the 24th year of theShōwa erain theJapanese calendar, or 1949 in theGregorian calendar. The number thus ostensibly references the year its members were born in, although only a small number of individuals associated with the Year 24 Group were actually born in 1949.
During the 1950s and 1960s,shōjomanga largely consisted of simple stories marketed towards elementary school-aged girls.Stories were typically sentimental or humorous in tone, and were often centered on familial drama orromantic comedy;manga scholarRachel Thornnotes that these stories frequently focused on "passive, pre-adolescent heroines in melodramatic situations, often involving separation from a mother."Authors ofshōjomanga were typically men who began their careers in the genre before migrating toshōnenmanga, or manga for boys.
During the 1960s, the manga industry responded to an aging readership and increased competition from television by increasing the production ofmanga magazinesand diversifying the content of their publications.Shōnenmanga during this period innovated and found new audiences through the concept ofgekiga, which sought to use manga to tell serious and grounded stories aimed at adult audiences;shōjomanga largely stagnated, and was generally perceived as frivolous and of low quality by critics.Though the increase in manga production during the 1960s allowed female manga artists such asHideko Mizuno,Toshiko Ueda, andYoshiko Nishitanito launch their careers, the sclerotic conventions and editorial standards ofshōjomanga publishing of this era prevented them from achieving the degree of innovation seen inshōnenmanga.
By the early 1970s, the majority of the male artists who had launched their careers inshōjomanga in the 1960s had migrated toshōnenmanga, giving way to a new generation of femaleshōjomanga artists. These new artists drew inspiration from a diversity of sources, includingEuropean literatureand cinema, Americanrock and rollculture, and theBildungsromangenre.Magazines such asShūkan Shōjo Comicthat granted more editorial freedom to creators provided outlets for these artists to publish their work.
The so-called "ŌizumiSalon", a rented house inŌizumigakuenchō,Nerima,Tokyothat manga artistsMoto HagioandKeiko Takemiyashared as roommates from 1971 to 1973, came to be an important gathering point for members and affiliates of the Year 24 Group. Hagio and Takemiya made the house available toshōjoartists for use as living and working space, allowing them to both bond socially, share ideas and influences, and collaborate on manga.Notable artists who visited the Ōizumi Salon includeShio Satō,Yasuko Sakata,Yukiko Kai,Akiko Hatsu,Nanae Sasaya,Mineko Yamada[ja],Aiko Ito[ja],Michi Tarasawa[ja], andMisako Nachi[ja].The Ōizumi Salon has been compared toTokiwa-sō, an apartment building that housed multiple influential manga artists in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1972, two major works ofshōjomanga were published by members of the group:The Rose of VersaillesbyRiyoko Ikeda, andThe Poe Clanby Hagio. Widely acclaimed upon their release, the works attracted the attention of critics who had to that point largely ignored theshōjogenre.These works paved the way for a wave of "literary manga" (roughly analogous to Westerngraphic novels), which due to their aesthetic and literary qualities, broughtshōjomanga into what has been described by scholars as its "golden age".
The 1970s would see the publication of multiple works by the Year 24 Group that significantly contributed to the development ofshōjomanga. Notable works in addition to the aforementionedRose of VersaillesandPoe ClanincludeShiroi Heya no Futari(1971) byRyoko Yamagishi,The Heart of Thomas(1974) by Moto Hagio,They Were Eleven(1975) by Hagio,From Eroica With Love(1976) byYasuko Aoike,Kaze to Ki no Uta(1976) by Keiko Takemiya, andToward the Terra(1977) by Takemiya.These works expandedshōjomanga to incorporate new subgenres, includingscience fiction,historical fiction,adventure fiction,horror,fantasy, and same-sex romance (bothmale-maleandfemale-female).These stories typically focused on complex narratives that emphasized the psychology and interiority of their protagonists,and addressed controversial topics and subject material.
Works that openly explored politics and sexuality came to be a defining trait of Year 24 Group manga.While pre-war girls magazines had forbidden discussion or depictions of these topics, cultural shifts in the 1970s allowed manga artists to depict these concepts more freely.Members of the Year 24 Group were shaped by thecounterculture of the 1960s, particularly theNew Leftstudent protest movements; Ikeda was a member of theJapanese Communist Party, and the group generally was "empowered by the sense of youthful rebellion and iconoclasm at the time."Thisrealiststyle, notably in the manga of Takemiya, Ōshima, and Hagio, contributed to the popularity ofshōjomanga among general audiences.
Works by the group often examined issues of gender through their focus on male protagonists, a departure from earliershōjomanga that focused on female heroines exclusively.These protagonists were oftenbishōnen– literally "beautiful boys", distinguished by theirandrogynousappearances  – or were characters that blur gender distinctions, such as the crossdressingOscar François de JarjayesofThe Rose of Versailles. Works focused on male protagonists were oftenhomosocialorhomoeroticin nature, and helped lay the foundation for theboys' lovegenre (male-male romance, also known as "BL" oryaoi).
Stylistically, the Year 24 Group created new conventions inpanellayout by departing from the rows of rectangles that were the standard at the time, creating borders that were abstracted or removed entirely.These so-called "non-narrative" layouts focus on communicating the emotions of the characters, and often superimpose and overlap backgrounds, characters, and dialogue to create an effect that breaks the standard narrative structure.For example, Ikeda is noted for using panel compositions that remove spatial landmarks, while Hagio often removes panels entirely to merge characters and backgrounds into a single composition.
By the end of the 1970s,shōjomanga "had ceased to be a monolithic and homogeneous genre,"and the innovation introduced toshōjomanga by the Year 24 Group was firmly entrenched in the medium.The trend towards specialization and narrowly-targeted readerships through subgenres continued into the 1980s and 1990s, asshōjoworks targeted towards young adult and adult women continued to proliferate.
As a largely notional group, the criteria used by scholars to determine the membership of the Year 24 Group varies. Some define its membership as only the most popular and "radical"shōjoartists of the era – typically considered to be Hagio, Ōshima, and Takemiya, occasionally referred to using the acronym "HOT"– while others include every artist who frequented the Ōizumi Salon.
Initial critical reaction to works published by the Year 24 Group was almost invariably positive, as many critics who had previously ignoredshōjomanga seriously considered the genre for the first time through the group's work.Critics noted how works by the group considered women as human beings, rather than as the idealized young girls of earlyshōjomanga.Comiket, the world's largest comic convention, was founded by thedōjinshicircleMeikyu[ja]to study the works of various manga artists, including Hagio and other members of Year 24 Group.Critic Osamu Takeuchi argues that the shift inshōjomanga that the Year 24 Group represented is an example of howshōjomanga in the 1970s was changing "from simple entertainment to a vehicle of self-expression for the author";Eiji Ōtsukacompares this shift to the discovery of interiority in earlyMeijifiction, whileInuhiko Yomotasees the Year 24 Group as analogous toNew Wave cinema.
The group's works were only marginally representative of allshōjomanga of the 1970s;artists such asSuzue Miuchicontinued to create "conventional"shōjomanga, even at the peak of the Year 24 Group's popularity.Works by the Year 24 Group have nevertheless come to be regarded by critics as "classics" of the genre, both for their aesthetic and thematic quality, and for the "visual grammar" they established which influenced subsequent generations of manga artists. New generations of female manga artists also began to create manga about male-male romance following the emergence of the Year 24 Group, which became formalized in theboys' lovegenre.
Many of the artist assistants and amateur artists who attended the Ōizumi Salon, such asYasuko Sakata,Akiko HatsuandShio Satō, went on to become professional manga artists. These artists are sometimes referred to as the "Post Year 24 Group"(ポスト24年組,Posuto Nijūyo-nen Gumi).
One of the Year 24 Group's first dissenting critics wasHiroshi Aramata, who has criticized the group's "deification" and believes the group "should not be singled out or treated as special."Manga scholar Deborah Shamoon concurs that while the works of the Year 24 Group are "often characterized as revolutionary," she argues that the ascendance of the group "was less a counterculture takeover and more a recognition by (male) editors that stories penned by female artists were and still are more popular with girl readers than works by male artists and hence more profitable."
The largely notional nature the Year 24 Group has led to scholarly disagreement over who constitutes its membership, and the usefulness of "the Year 24 Group" as an organizing category in and of itself. Academic Tomoko Yamada has criticized the use of the term "Year 24 Group" to describeshōjomanga artists of the 1970s, arguing that the designation lumps women together based on their age, that it may perpetuate a bias against earliershōjomanga artists, that it is overly inclusive of all femalebaby boomermanga artists, and that some manga artists considered part of Year 24 Group may reject the label.In his analysis ofshōjomanga categories, sociologistShinji MiyadaiconsidersRiyoko Ikedaas separate from the Year 24 Group, instead considering her as representative of the "popular novel style" ofshōjomanga alongside manga artistsMachiko SatonakaandYukari Ichijo.