Mama is My Rival (1972-): Shōjo manga and television depict the "fluctuating relationship between the home and women

Mama is My Rival (1972-): Shōjo manga and television depict the "fluctuating relationship between the home and women

Mama is My Rival" is a girls' manga by Yoko Chutsu (illustration) and Mamoru Sasaki (original story), which was later made into a TV drama series produced by Daiei Television and broadcast on TBS. The protagonist of the story is Jun Saotome, a high school girl who attends Shirobara Academy. She lives with her father, a pilot, and thinks that having a father is enough. Jun finds herself in an unusual situation where she is a classmate and a "prospective mother," and she and Mari compete both inside and outside the home.

The TV drama version was broadcast from October 1972 to September 1973 on TBS every Wednesday from 19:30 to 20:00, for a total of 52 episodes. It starred Tomonori Okazaki and was positioned as the third in a series of light comedies following Okusama wa 18-sai (The Okusama is 18) and others. It was produced by Daiei Television and co-starred Jun Alice, Etsushi Takahashi, Manami Fuji, and others. The theme song was also a hit, sung by Yuki Okazaki.

In Japan in the early 1970s, when this work was created, shōjo manga (girls' manga) was taking a great leap forward as "emotional literature" and increasingly dealt not only with love, but also with family, self-realization, and gender conflicts. Behind this trend was the movement for women's liberation, symbolized by the women's lib movement, and the changing image of the family that accompanied the progress of the nuclear family and urbanization. At first glance, the extreme gag setting of a mother and daughter competing for the same man may appear to be a light romantic comedy, but it is a device that simultaneously brings out the dual perspective of the mother as a woman and the daughter as a woman who may someday become a mother. The film is designed to show us the dual standpoints of "mothers are also women" and "daughters are also women who may one day become mothers.

The triangular relationship over the father shifts the conventional division of roles between "devoted mother and honest daughter" in a funny way, and lightly shakes the stereotype of mothers. The composition of the two women, who clash as classmates at school but live under the same roof as "mom" and "daughter" when they return home, is a device that allows us to look at the family system from a slightly different perspective. When shown as a TV drama, this light-hearted slapstick may have served as an opportunity for viewers at the time to unconsciously relativize their own views of family and gender.

In other words, "Mama is a Rival" was a work in which a shoujo manga and a TV drama teamed up and wrapped the "wavering image of women" and the "restructuring of the family" of the 1970s in a form of laughter and romance.