ABSTRACT
‘Women’s magazines are a mirror reflecting women’s culture,’ says Inoue Teruko in one of her studies of Japanese women’s magazines (1985:80). It is, of course, only a qualified truth, but here I will leave aside a possible critique and take the statement as my starting point for an exploration of, firstly, the way in which this women’s culture is transformed through a flow of commercial trends and, secondly, the way in which women’s culture relates to the wider culture of which it is a part. In this I am inspired by Ulf Hannerz’s discussion of cultural complexity (1992), and, following him, I use the term subculture to describe women’s culture not necessarily to imply a marginal or subordinate culture, but simply a segment of a larger Japanese culture.
