ABSTRACT
Japanese picture books are internationally recognized as artistically innovative, beautifully produced, and amongst the most outstanding in the world. Like Japanese art and culture, they are richly intertextual, heavily influenced by international philosophies, literature and art. While cultural transformations have helped shape the Japanese female image over time, the innovations of earlier authors and artists, both Japanese and international, have also influenced the representation of gendered subjectivities in Japanese picture books and the development of the resistant shôjo figure. In art and literature, the new decorative, tragic, and emotional "girl" came to contrast with the roles prescribed by the earlier "good wife" model. The subversive shôjo is simultaneously associated with the Taishô Romanticism, which was disseminated by many children's artists and literary figures during the artistic developments of the early 1900s. Maimai's gaze further indicates her bid for independence in resisting parental or societal authority and in catering to her internal needs by keeping and caring for her invisible friend.
