Josei

Josei is 女性, woman, used in publishing to mark magazines edited for adult female readers. It is a demographic label, not a genre, so the shelf holds romance, workplace comedy, historical drama and grim domestic realism side by side. What links them is an assumption about the reader: she has a job, a lease, a complicated family, and no patience for a confession scene that takes forty chapters.

The category grew out of shojo in the 1980s, when the readers of girls' magazines aged out and publishers built somewhere for them to go. Kodansha's Kiss is one of the anchors, and Tomoko Ninomiya serialised Nodame Cantabile there from 2001, which then became one of the more successful live-action and animated adaptations of the decade.

Animation adapts josei less often than the other categories, and the reason is money rather than taste. Late-night anime is funded by disc sales, merchandise and events aimed at a young audience, and a story about a thirty-four-year-old editor does not sell figures. Television drama picks up the slack, which is why several famous josei titles are better known in Japan as live action than as anime.