is a genre of Japanese

popular fiction In the book-trade, genre fiction, also known as formula fiction, or commercial fiction,Girolimon, Mars"Types of Genres: A Literary Guide" Southern New Hampshire University, 11 December 2023. Retrieved 3 September 2024. encompasses fictional ...

aimed at an audience of girls that emerged in the early 20th century. The genre has been published across literary formats, including novels, short stories, essays, and memoirs. It is typically divided into four subcategories that correspond to chronological periods: * Japanese translations of foreign literary classics aimed at girls, e.g. ''

A Little Princess ''A Little Princess'' is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is an expanded version of the short story "Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's", which was serialized in '' St. Nicholas ...

'' by

Frances Hodgson Burnett Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (1886), ''A Little Princess'' (1905), a ...

; * Prose fiction published in '' shōjo'' magazines of the early 20th century, e.g. ''Hana Monogatari'' by

Nobuko Yoshiya was a Japanese novelist active in Taishō and Shōwa period Japan. She was one of modern Japan's most commercially successful and prolific writers, specializing in serialized romance novels and adolescent girls' fiction, as well as being a pione ...

; * of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g. the works of

Seiko Tanabe was a Japanese author. She graduated from the Department of Japanese Literature of Shōin Joshi Senmon Gakkō (now Osaka Shoin Women's University). Author of numerous novels, she won the Akutagawa Prize, Yomiuri Prize, and Asahi Prize, and rec ...

; *

Light novel A is a type of Genre fiction, popular literature novel from Japan usually classified as young adult fiction, generally targeting Adolescence, teens to Young adult, twenties or older. The definition is very vague, and wide-ranging. The abbr ...

s published in ''shōjo'' fiction magazines such as ''

Cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. ...

'', e.g. the works of Saeko Himuro.

References

Bibliography

* {{lit-genre-stub Women's fiction Women in Japan Women's entertainment