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NANA is the highest selling manga in 2008 in Japan. The story was written by Ai Zawa and has also been produced as drama later in 2009. The fourth best selling shōjo manga worldwide tells the story of two girls with the same name Nana. They however have extremely different personalities and their linguistic patterns are completely different as well. The two girls are typical examples represent the different speech pattern of current young Japanese females in contemporary time. Nana Komatsu in the manga is considered as a clear example of the KIREII group ideal Japanese women, which I mentioned in the last section. The long hair Komatsu NaNa is soft, polite good at housework. She goes all the way to Tokyo from her hometown just to follow her boyfriend, she wishes to get marry with him and dreams of becoming a perfect housewife. Whereas Nana Osaki is the lead vocalist of her band who is considered to be a very tough girl, she is a heavy smoker with short hair, always dressed up in so called “punk” style. Different from NaNa Komatsu, her image is rough, outspoken and rebellious which could be referred to the KAKOII type of Japanese ideal women.

The following is one of the dialogs in the manga (vol2, p.67)

Nana Komatsu:

kohan taberu no?

Do you want to have dinner?

Nana Osaki:

mou 10 ji dazo?

It’s already 10 pm right?

shigoto no uchiawase ga tara kutte kita

there was a staff meeting for work so I have already eaten

Nana Osaki employs masculine form of sentence-final particles like dazo and the verb “kuu” is a very rough way of saying “to eat”, whereas Nana Osaki uses feminine form like “no” when speaking. The above dialog is just one of the example, same speech forms utilise by the two characters can bee seen all over the manga.

According to Katherine (2001) the phenomenon of utilizing mixed gendered speech by Japanese females indicates that there is a desire for them to reject the traditional gendered roles, they are aiming to redefine their gender identity in the society and to create an image of new Japanese modern woman.

Pop music

There are also countless examples of popular female singers use masculine linguistic form in their songs these years. This is not surprise to see boku (vulgar form of pronoun) has been commonly used in their lyrics.

The following are examples of songs utilizing boku in the lyrics

Days by Hamasaki Ayumi

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