The magazines were diverse in content: fiction (both short stories and serials), illustrations both (stand-alone and illustrations accompanying the fiction), non-fiction of all kinds (naturally reports about “the stars” were common), photographs, and poetry. But one of the most important types of comments were the readers pages. Readers would not just send in letters (often with poetry) but solicit pen pals. It was extremely common for girls from different parts of Japan to become pen pals through the pages of the girl magazines.

The shift to manga in the 60s was a steady one, but some magazines shifted more slowly (and perhaps reluctantly) than others, and those magazines were the ones that eventually bit the dust. I don’t see a correlation between manga content and naming conventions, except the coincidental one in which magazines newly created in the 60s were more manga-focused than their predecessors, and also happened to be somewhat more likely to have “fresh” titles that didn’t include the word shôjo.

Yes, there are “Tiger Beat”-like magazines, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t know much about them. The only one that comes to mind is “Myôjô”, which was founded in 1952 and has an extremely old-fashioned name (literally meaning “bright star”) that was given a bit of a face-lift a few years ago when they replaced the kanji in the title with the Latin spelling Myojo. It mostly deals with (very) young male idols. And of course there are many popular fashion magazines geared at teens. None of them include the word “shôjo”. The only way a publisher could get away with putting “shôjo” in the title of a non-manga girls’ magazine today would be to do so in a tongue-in-cheek way.

I imagine the content of those older publications is very fascinating. Was there any content specifically that dominated magazines for girls back then? Also, I think you mentioned before that a shift to comics as content happened in the 60s… does the shift happen all across the board as far as magazines for girls go, or do the ones that are adopting the non-”shoujo” names lean more heavily towards comics? Or is that something that’s totally separate?

And just out of curiosity, I know there has to be comic-less “Tiger Beat”-like publications that lean more towards celebrities, fashion, advice, etc… do those have any special naming conventions that set them apart from the comic-oriented magazines?

That cover is nice, isn’t it? It’s a scan of a color photocopy I made at the International Institute for Children’s Literature in Osaka. Fool that I am, though, I didn’t note who the artist was. It doesn’t look familiar to me. Note that she’s carrying a letter. Girl students in those days exchanged letters on a daily basis, and not with just anyone. There was usually “that special someone”, which is to say another girl in the same school. Instead of mailing the letters or delivering them directly, they would put the letter in the recipient’s shoe locker (shoe box? shoe case?) at school. When they met each other in class, they wouldn’t say a word about the letters. It was their little secret. Except that everyone in school knew who was “attached” to whom. One of the most popular “premiums” included in girls’ magazines before the war were matching stationary and envelope. Needless to say, not just any stationary or envelope would do: they had to be cute and stylish.

That May 1931 Shojo no Tomo cover is exquisite.