Girlscape: The Marketing of Mediatic Ambience in Japan

This chapter investigates the transformation of the cultural industries in Japan in the 1970s through the concept of the “girlscape.” During this time, market segmentation and industry practice created the identificatory figure of the young girl and placed her at the center of a consumer culture conceived of as both utopian and egalitarian. The visual and verbal strategies that accompanied the rise of the girlscape are related to the highly political “landscape theory” developed in Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s—a prominent discussion of how power structures life in a rapidly transforming country. The culture industries developed their own theory of media at the time, one that was fundamentally dependent on the (en)gendering of consumers, and the incorporation of these consumers into the girlscape.