MIT講演データ（英文）

Hello, everyone.
I am Junko Ito, CEO of A-Girl Co. Ltd., established in 1988. I am also engaged in publication and multimedia businesses as a producer. The artist we manage is Buichi Terasawa, an authentic creator of computer-aided story Manga. One of his famous works is "Space Adventure Cobra".
I am sorry I could not introduce the detail of his business in this session.
This time, I would like to introduce the pop culture of young woman in Japan because this would show a general young culture in Japan and easily attract your attention.

● Cute goods lover
Japanese women like lovely goods.
For instance, the character such as HelloKitty and Pokemon are widely used in daily miscellaneous goods. fashion, food, cake, even in bank cash-card, and amulets in the shrines.
This photograph show the products featuring the characters of the works of "326(Mitsuru)", an illustrator in Japan.
There are a lot of shops specializing in such "cute" goods for Japanese women.

● Be "girl"
The Japanese women were taught to be "graceful" in the past.
However, in modern Japan, they may live in a more uninhibited and free way than boys.
Japanese women in their teens usually get the pocket money of 5000 yen on average from their parents. They also have the salary of part-time job at convenience stores or fast food shops. The baby-sitter is not so familiar job for teenager in Japan.
They use the pocket money for their fashion, cosmetics, and CD etc.
Some teen-agers have a passion for big-name brand goods like Chanel and Prada etc.
Others prefer to get sunburned artificially and make-up around their eyes and lips with white color as one of their fashion.
Such trends are usually spread among teenagers by magazines from Shibuya and Tokyo area.
Especially in Shibuya, the teenage fashion changes rapidly.
Some of them are quite wild and wired so that attract many teens there.

If you want to know the latest fashion and trend of the teens, I would like to recommend you to walk in Shibuya.

Now, as for the teen magazine there is not much difference between the one in the United States and in Japan. If asked something unique to Japan, I would like to mention " Girls Manga " in Japan.
Most of them are published monthly and are very thick. Amazingly, some books reach almost 1,000 pages. More than 20 magazines are issued regularly for several hundred thousand editions.
Including the magazines for men of all genres, about 600 kinds of comics are published in a month. The magazines in demand like "Syounen Magazine (Weekly Boys Magazine) " and "Syounen Jump (Weekly Boys Jump)" are sold by 5,000,000 copies per one issue.

The contents of Syoujyo Manga are mostly focused on love and romance.
Some of them take on parody-like or mysterious elements. Others become often animated cartoons or games like "Sailor Moon", "Chibi-Maruko Chan" "Card Captor Sakura".
It also would be unique to girls' comics that "something extra goods" featuring popular characters are thrown in the magazines.
Some magazines include "attachment" of stationary goods or paper bags.
Others offer the chance of hitting presents if applied with postal cards.
Anyway, some presents are prepared for the readers.

● The relation between Manga, ANIME and commodity
Basically, the character business in Japan depends on Manga very much.
It is said that there is more than 6,000 professional Manga-ka(cartoonists ) in Japan. Most of them usually make the story and finish drawing by themselves.

In a Maga, there are frames by the scenes.
The time flow and speed can be expressed by an imitation sound drawn as a letter.
Manga can be said as one of general public art that can express 3 dimensional world by 2 dimensional method.
Such method was established by a Manga-ka, "Osamu Tezuka", who was famous as the God of Manga.
I suppose you may have already watched his works like " AstroBoy" and "Jangle Emperor LEO".
He was born in 1928 and dead of stomach cancer in 1989 at the age of 60.

For 40 years or more, he had drawn hundreds of story Manga by himself and directed many ANIME. The Japanese Manga and ANIME culture became mature by his influence.

Now, when a serial cartoon became quite popular, the author was often asked to use them for ANIME and games etc.
However, some Manga-ka dislike such offers because the authors' opinions are sometimes ignored.
Though Manga is a personal works of an author, the ANIME and games are "products" (commodities) which many staffs are concerned in the production.

On the other hand, the original ANIME or games, which were not Manga-based works, come to be produced recently.
There increased some fans who likes ANIME or voice actors more than the original works. It still cannot be said some girls who like Manga or ANIME also like its digital games.
However from another viewpoint, it could be said there are many choices of amusements for girls in Japan.

● The distance with friends
Besides the characters in the world of Manga or ANIME, there are also those that came from the digital world.

A PostPet, for example, is a character of mail software that delivers the Internet mails.
MOMO, a pink bear is one of them.
Not only delivering the mails, MOMO sometimes shows a fickle act, and often goes out to play at will.. If brought a friend-PostPet to the screen or given sweets, it becomes in a good mood. It attracts the user because they cannot control it in many cases.
Now, MOMO came out from the game world to be widely used in various products like picture book, key-chain, stuffed toys etc.

A game software named "DOKO DEMO ISSHO (I will be with you at anywhere)" is a Pocket Station software for the SONY Playstation.
In this game, you can choose the favorite character from 5 different characters and can have a "conversation" with them by teaching it a language. At the end of the game, you would be impressed by the separation with them.

One of the characteristics of this game is to give users such impression, not only amuse them by playing with pets.
A cat, "Toro" is the most popular character in this game.
It is commercialized in the various way as well. As you can see here, it is a monochrome illustration drawn with dots, which was familiar illustration method in the past. You would be attracted by its extreme uniqueness and would feel like a real small freiend.

Besides these characters, there are many "Cute goods" based on the games. The reason for their hit was not only because they were pretty.
The "Tamagocchi", for instance, won a big hit in 1995. It was praised for the following reasons: You can enjoy keeping "only your treasure" of your hand size. You can play with it at anywhere, anytime. You can enjoy talking with it though you know it is just a computer.

● Digital Communication
In 1998, PHS (Personal Handyphone System service was started in Japan. Over 6,000,000 people joined the service at the time. To raise the profit by communication charge, the telephone bodies itself were distributed for free or at almost free price, so that many young people started to use them. It became a fashion to have several phones for different usage: the one for a boyfriend, for family, and for specific friends.
( In Japan, Cell phone call charges the senders.)

Before the PHS boom, the pager became popular among high school girls in around 1990. They created the "code play" with the pager that could only transmit figures.
It became the basic item of high school girls for their amusement rather than adults for business usage. It also becomes popular to paste stickers on the black pager of those days in order to customize them. Therefore, the sticker collection and Print Club play (so-called Puri-Kura), an instant photo-sticker-making with simple photo-printing machines also became a boom in Japan.

The various digital telephone services between the same models are newly released for the young people who can enjoy the message service or short mails service as playing a game.
For instance, iMODE, a new model that can transmit and receive Internet e-mail is forecasted to reach 7,000,000 subscribers in March 2000.
There increased the young people who are good at inputting Cell phones though they cannot type a usual keyboard.
About one of five person who are walking in Shibuya's bustle enjoy talking with Cell phone today. Some just watch the screen, not applying the phone to their ears.
I also have 2 Cell phones. One of them is used only for mail service with the arrival call sound off. Moreover "the communication without talking" is getting practical at anywhere and anytime by the new Cell phone models.
In the new model, "ZAURUS" produced by Sharp Co. and "TEGACKY" produced by TOSHIBA Co., for example, the conversational function was removed completely and became more compact.
One more things, Cell phone in Japan have a eyelet for the strap.
Although the main body become lighter and smaller, it become a fashion among young girls to put many straps. Moreover, they like to use the another sound or music installed originally in the body by inputting the favorite one or the downloaded music in order to make them more "unique".
The model released at the end of last year has a chord sound and can display a color screen. As the progress of technology, the telephone would be Personal Disital Assistant in the future.

● Pocket Board
In July 1997, our company was the first to open the web-site for women in Japan. In those days, it is said that there were only 3% of female Internet user and even the private companies had not introduced personal computer, needless to say, their homepages.
When we interviewed 100 women of the Internet user in 1996, most of them answered "I usually check the mail once in a week." In 1997 after one year, it became quite natural to check the mail "more than once in a day".
However, even at that time those who had their own PC and can connect Internet directly were limited to the special people.
In 1997, NTT DoCoMo Ltd. started selling "Pocket Board", a mail job-oriented terminal, which reached 400,000 subscriber in one year. This model had a lot of elements to attract women, unfamiliar with PC: First, the price was almost 10,000 yen and quite cheap for them.
Second, the dry battery could be used.
Third, the popular TV-animation character named "Connie" was a navigator.
Fourth, the machine design was lovely. Afterward, the various models that used the popular character were released. Unlike male products, the convenience and the design are often given priority more than functions for women. It also praised that it was the female planner that had developed this model..

On the other hand, the iMODE that can display net information on liquid crystal screen of cellular phone also have the following functions:
transmitting and receiving mails, bank transfer, an online ticket reservation, and news delivery. Of course, it can check the Internet web-site if they produced for iMODE version. And you can install the wall-paper of Manga character for your own iMODE.

The pocket board and iMODE therefore widen the demand for mail usage of women and played a great role to enlarge the user of Internet.
In 2001, a new-typed Cell phone and PHS would be available. It is expected that you can enjoy the animation and music with those cellular phone or PHS.

I've been to Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vagas before I came here.
There were various kinds of pagers and Cell phones.
Casio showed their wristwatch Camera holds up 100 images and transfers them to a PC or another watch through infrared beams.
　It's just a matter of time until we can enjoy MANGA or ANIME on the wristwatch-type Cell phone.
I believe the phone-like gadget in Japan is getting more popular and might be exciting tools by girls side.

　

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