<論文>大正期婦人雑誌における女性・消費イメージの変遷 : 『婦人世界』を中心に

Abstract

Women's consumption is highly related to articles and advertisements in magazines. Thus, magazines on Japanese women have been telling the readers what "being in fashion" means since the end of Meiji Era, when modern commercial magazines started to be published. One of them was "Fujin Sekai" (Women's World) which started in 1906. There were different kinds of images about women in the articles of "Fujin Sekai" from 1906 (Meiji Era) to 1932 (Showa Era), which presented different ideal types of women for the curious readers. However, these images changed gradually. In this article, I described the ways in which "Fujin Sekai" and its fashion discourses were connected with a particular consumption of femininity that was associated with the modernity of the ideal Japanese woman. In the end of Meiji Era, female consumers that appeared in magazines were thought as rational women, because they bought trendy commodities for their families. But, step by step, fashion became only a passing fad. It was needless for respectable housewives to stay in fashion, because they were supposed to save money for their families. Before WW II, we can see new discourses that allowed women to spend money for themselves. Tosaka Jun pointed out that women's magazines taught the readers a way of thinking that one's personality was judged by one's appearance. Here we can see one of the functions of the modern Japanese magazine "Fujin Sekai".