A comic about mismatched girlfriends strikes a chord with millions of young women, writes David McNeill in Tokyo
Although she was born in Japan, thousands of Irish women will feel Nana Komatsu's pain: a naive country girl with a talent for falling for the wrong guy goes looking for romance in the big city after her heart is broken by a smooth, married lothario.
On the way, she meets her soulmate: a tattooed, chain-smoking punk chick in ripped jeans and studded leather, also called Nana (Osaki), who won't stop until she is the country's biggest rock star.
Despite sharing little in common except a name, they bond, share a flat and fight for love and respect in the world's largest metropolis, their friendship often stumbling but ultimately enduring conflicts over career, family and boyfriends.
Such is the plot of Nana, a traditional Japanese comic, or manga, serialised in Cookie magazine, then published in volumes - it's now up to number 13, with a staggering 27 million copies in print, making it one of Japan's biggest pop-culture sensations.
The Nana series has spawned novelettes, foreign translations, CDs, a looming US release and a movie, currently in postproduction. Shibuya, Tokyo's entertainment district and a Mecca for fashionable teens, regularly hosts youngsters sporting the Nana look - punky or demure, depending on which character they identify with.
Even in a country boasting millions of adult comic readers and a manga market worth over 500 billion yen (€3.64 billion), with plots dealing with everything from corporate battles to suicide, the success of Nana has stunned the publishing world.
"We've never seen anything like it," said a spokeswoman for publisher Shueisha, which has just released the much-awaited volume 13. The spokeswoman said she had "no idea" why the comic had struck such a cord, but Nana's author, Ai Yazawa, recently gave a clue in an interview with a weekly magazine.
Explaining that she wrote Nana because she wanted to try to help women make it through their "difficult" 20s, Yazawa said: "Realising that you are not alone with your pain and self-doubt can be a source of comfort." Japan's bestselling female manga artist added that she saw her two Nana characters - the dreamy romantic Komatsu and the tough but insecure Osaki - as extreme examples of the same modern Japanese woman.
NOT THAT YAZAWA is touting social realism, or even feminism. Like most characters in the shojo (girls comics) genre, the Nanas are cloying, baby-eyed caricatures much more concerned with clothes, make-up and the mysteries of the XY chromosome than attacking the citadels of male power; Cookie, the magazine that serialises Nana, is a shop window for beauty products.
Still, the two Nanas endure traumas well beyond the limits of typical shojo themes: for much of the early series, Komatsu is stranded between the affections of two men before becoming pregnant and deciding to get married. Her friend must resist pressure from her lover to have a child so she can pursue her career. Sex, contraception and deadbeat boyfriends provide the constant, bitter grit for what might otherwise be a very sweet confection.
Nana is not the only manga to address social concerns - Yoshinori Kobayashi has become a multimillionaire since the late 1990s by penning revisionist comics that argue Japan should stop apologising for the second World War and be more assertive. But if Kobayashi has tapped into Japan's anxieties about its post-Cold War role in the world, Yazawa has tapped into women's concerns about their own role in a changing Japan.
JAPANESE WOMEN IN their 20s are rebelling in unprecedented numbers against the traditional narrow roles assigned to them, working longer and putting off marriage, often until it is too late to have children.
The fertility rate this year dropped to a postwar low statistical average of 1.29 per woman, one of the lowest in the developed world, sparking a series of desperate initiatives by candidates in the looming general election to persuade women to have more babies.
Like the drama played out in Nana, many women are torn between a childless career and life at home with an overworked salary-man. In their 20s there is still space to fantasise about putting this choice off forever, finding the sort of companionship they crave in a female friend instead. Indeed, Nana hints at something deeper: a controversial scene in the new movie involves a kiss between the two leads.
As the success of the story has grown, the dramas of the two Nanas have been swamped by increasingly strained plot machinations. Readers left Volume 12 with Osaki poised on the brink of stardom and pursued by paparazzi, even as her friend considered married life. What will happen in 13? Like all series, of course, Nana will eventually end, leaving millions of fans still searching for answers.
"I feel I've grown up with these characters," says 21-year-old Tokoyo Arima, who began reading Nana in her teens. "The two have completely different personalities but they somehow get on. I've never read anything like that before. Even if they are fictional, it shows two young women helping to change Japan."