The First Half of the 1980s: The Revolutionary Outbreak of Lolicon

Heralded as the first lolicon manga magazine, Comic Lemon People (Komikku remon piipuru, published by Amatoriasha) marked a major turning point. The date indicated on the first issue is February 1982, which is much later than it actually hit store shelves at the end of 1981, but in any case this was the beginning of what is commonly called the “lolicon manga boom” (rorikon manga būmu). From gekiga style to manga/anime style, third-rate gekiga to lolicon manga. The paradigm shift progressed at a speed faster than anyone had anticipated. In the background one can see the larger flow of time, or the heave of cultural history.

Particularly characteristic is the restoration of fragility, or its revaluation (Matsuoka 1995). Fragility refers to something easily breakable, delicate, small, immature, weak, incomplete, fragmentary, lovely, misshapen, sick, short-lived and so on. In many cultures, it is something cherished and held in contrast to the masculine ideal, or machismo. Even if the culture of fragility was comparatively minor, it was certainly not particular, or particularly fragile itself. Even under the militaristic and repressive culture of prewar and wartime Japan, fragility lived on in amusement for “women and children.” Following the defeat of the Empire of Japan in the Second World War, macho values began to crumble. With the weakening of the prewar and wartime regime, as if it was already historically inevitable, fragility began to proliferate. Before anyone knew it, “fancy goods” represented by Sanrio's Hello Kitty had saturated the culture of “women and children;” the word “cute” (kawaii) swallowed up “beautiful,” “appealing,” “great” and “excellent;” and all of this started to overflow from the domain of “women and children” (Shimamura 1991).

The upper age limit for readers and viewers of manga and anime, ostensibly forms of culture for children, was pushed higher and higher. With a cynical, bitter laugh, the baby-boomer generation's protest fighters, who suffered crushing defeat in 1970, became gung-ho company men – corporate warriors – worked like draft animals and made Japan richer and richer. The editors and artists who led third-rate gekiga were also baby-boomer warriors. Machismo suppressed fragility. However, that pressure gradually eased. Following the baby-boomer generation came “the interstitial generation” (hazama no sedai) or “apathetic generation” (shirake no sedai), which did not make it to the protests of the late 1960s that ended in 1970.