The WIJA (Women in Japanese Animation) project, which started in 2024, aims to create a database of notable female creators working in the Japanese animation industry, and to explore gender representations in Japanese anime through the lens of the position of female creators involved in the production process of the examined works. The WIJA project page is now live, and you can follow all upcoming updates about the project there: for example, their series of posts on female pioneers in Japanese animation, so far featuring Kazuko Nakamura and Reiko Okuyama.
The WIJA project team members are Akiko Sugawa-Shimada (Yokohama National University), Minori Ishida (Niigata University), Miyuki Yonemura (Senshū University) and Yūko Miyamoto (Rikkyō University).
The WIJA project was inspired by the non-profit advocacy group WIA (Women in Animation), and Jinko Gotoh, WIA vice-president is also a research collaborator on the WIJA project, alongside Hideyuki Ōtsubo (Executive Director of the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA)) as well as Magnus Pfeffer and Zoltan Kacsuk from the JVMG project.
We look forward to exploring the various possible forms of cooperation between the WIJA and JVMG projects, and hope to be able to report new results on this in the near future.