ABSTRACT
Open almost any of the widely circulated magazines that appear in abundance in every bookshop, convenience store or railway station kiosk in Japan and images of the human body appear. In some cases these images are simply photographs of people in the news, but in many they are in the form of advertisements – which in many of the over 2,000 magazine titles currently published in Japan constitute 50 percent or more of the total content (Moeran 1991) – or of posed figures placed there precisely to receive the gaze of the reader or viewer. A high proportion of these images (usually photographs, but – in the case of the tabloid newspaper and manga or comics published independently or as part of magazines – also drawings) are of the female body. In the case of women’s magazines, these images are largely to promote consumption – of fashion, appliances, food, travel or cosmetics especially; in men’s magazines, the image is itself consumed – by the male gaze (Figure 5.1). ‘Beautiful nudity' – front cover of an-an (October 2, 1992) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315026312/df22a5e3-11fb-47b5-ba27-ec1051f69eec/content/fig5_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
