Looking at feminist fictional writings since the time of Charlotte Gilman's Herland from the perspective of how they dealt with the issue of reproduction, one can find a group of works using unisexual reproduction as the central theme or as an important motif. This paper examines one of them, Marginal (1985), a girls'manga (comic) by Moto Hagio. Girls' manga are an important source of insight into Japanese women's views on their gender, and this paper outlines the history of girls' manga in comparison with the boys' counterpart, which provides a clue as to what made Hagio use the theme of unisexual reproduction inMarginal, in which she attempted to examine the concept of maternity.
In the first phase of manga's development from the late 1960's up to the 1980's, both girls' and boy's manga were based on illusions about the opposite sex. Boys in girls' comics were either dashing gentlemen or handsome rebels aching for maternal love, whereas boys' comics were interested in girls only as the object of the macho hero's desire. However, from the late 1980's, while Boys' manga stayed with its fantasies of women as mere recipients of the male sex drive, girls' manga started to see men in a more sober light. The gap between the ideal of equal partnership and reality began to feature strongly, and themes such as homosexuality, transsexualism and transvestism have been given a serious examination.
This shift was a result of a significant change in Japanese women's view on reproduction. As women acquired education and financial independence, they rejected the notion that a woman's happiness lies in love, marriage and childbearing ; the link between marriage and motherhood was broken. Stories centring on the theme on unisexual reproduction appeared in girls' manga amidst this tidal change.
Marginal is a sci-fi manga set in 2999A.D., when Earth is a polluted and diseased planet long deserted by most humans after a pandemic viral infection 700 hundred years earlier made all women infertile. A company that runs an economic empire across the solar system maintains experimental colonies on Earth where no babies can be born and all inhabitants are men. The company supplies the colonies with test-tube children through a pseudo-religious system, but inhabitants live under a dark shadow of apocalyptic pessimism. Hagio examines maternity in an imaginary world where, in the absence of women, motherhood is artificial and there are no heterosexual relationships.
A scientist who has been running illegal reproductive experiments in a hideout on Earth is killed by the company, and a product of his experiments, a telepathic hermaphrodite with the ability to tune into other people's dreams and wishes, survives the attack and encounters colony men. The psychic child causes a catastrophic flood when he responds to the wishes of colony dwellers who dream their doomed world to end, but in a dramatic climax, he empathizes with the Earth's dream of ancient blue seas that nurtured life, a dream of life.
The ambiguous ending ofMarginal seems to support conventional praise of maternity, but here the hope of regeneration comes not from the child's ability to conceive but through restoration of the Earth's productive potential. Hagio sees maternity as something more fundamental than the materialistic notion of baby-making; to her, restoration of the fertility of the Earth, the source of life itself, is the paramount concern.

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Le Japon, qui occupe aujourd'hui le premier rang en matière d'aide publique au développement, est qualifie de leader parmi les pays donateurs. Ses activités de coopération internationale constituent un de ses plus importants instruments diplomatiques et lui permettent de remplir un role positif dans la communaute internationale. Tout en maintenant cette position de leader dans le futur, le fait de s'attaquer de concert avec les pays en voie de développement aux problèmes auxquels ils font face contribuera également à la promotion de ses propres interets nationaux. Le probleme du genre et du développement est abordee ici dans un tel contexte, du point de vue de la creation d'un partenariat encore meilleur avec ces pays, et des problèmes communs qu'elle souleve pour tous les etres humains appartenant a une meme epoque.
Dans le present article, nous mettons en evidence la situation actuelle sur le probleme du genre en Afrique islamique, en presentant en exemples le Maroc et la Mauritanie, pays islamiques de l'Afrique francophone, ainsi que la Guinee, pays laique mais ou l'on compte 90 de musulman. Le present article se compose comme suit. Il commence par un survol des prpblemes du genre aux trois pays en presentant des exemples concrets, principalement a la lueur de resultats d'etude de terrain. En suite it effectue un examen des elements communs. Enfin, sur la base de cet examen, une proposition de renforcement (empowerment) au niveau local est presentee pour la resolution de ces problèmes. Il s'agit principalement de sensibiliser et d'eduquer les filles et les femmes, et de creer des opportunites pour qu'elles puissent deployer leur savoir-faire sur la scene sociale, sans toutefois negliger l'importance que revet pour cela la comprehension et la coopération des garcons et des hommes.
Finalement, une fois termine ce travail de mise en lumiere de la situation actuelle en matière de genre et développement, nous esperons pouvoir attirer l'attention sur nos propres problèmes. Puisque le Japon apporte son aide aux pays en voie de développement a toutes les etapes du processus (propositions de mesures, realisation, puis suivi des projets), de meilleures perspectives de développement et de partenariat ne seront possibles que si le partenaire que nous sommes se libere lui-meme de ses propres problèmes de genre. Il s'agit de ne pas concevoir le probleme du genre comme le probleme de pays lointains et ne nous concernant pas, de ne pas considerer l'aide au développement comme un moyen de promotion des interets du Japon, et de retourner notre regard sur nous-memes. Autrement dit, d'aborder ces problèmes dans ce qu'ils ont de commun a toute l'humanité.

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In Japan, The idea that elderly people in a family should be cared for by any of their family members, especially their daughter or their son's wife, has been considered to be the best solution for a long time, in spite of a rapid enlargement of aging in Japanese society. In this situation, a nursing care insurance system was inaugurated as a new nationwide governmental policy in December 1997.
Why was this socialization of aged people's care actualized officially?
There seems two reasons in its background. One is the breakdown of nursing care by a family. The other is a change into nursing care idea that we should focus on elderly patient's human right and quality of life. It might be said that the philosophy of normalization about caring for the aged has been introduced finally into the field of nursing care. This means that we should have a correct understanding of the facts that elderly people can take part in my social activities and can live independently to the end of life as possible. It is our social obligation to help these people as much as possible.
As a result, nursing care system has been compelled to change from simple physical care to supporting their independent life. When we care for the elderly, the first thing we must do is to grasp their present physical conditions, the long history of their life and the characteristics of their disablement and after that we must form our reliable human relationships.
Next, the qualification of care-workers as professionals must be approved. They can encourage elderly people to have motivation to live and can help them with forming their new life together with care-workers'.
This text deals with considerable treatment of licensed care-workers and the ways how to train them. We need human resources who can understand this philosophy of nursing care and realize their duty, and guarantee their workplaces, their status and income.
After nursing care insurance came into effect, we have expected professional care-workers to be made match of. But, in reality, there are some problems from a gender point of view, in which nursing care is still considered as a woman's role and any women, qualified or not, can do it.There is a stereotyped point of view that nursing care by a member of family is a good custom in Japan and also housework is neglected in nursing care insurance because it is a housewife's duty, not an object of The insurance. The government is planning to make matrons in the establishments into part-time workers, and to increase only the number of registered care-workers.
In conclusion, we can accept this policy to establish the nursing care system on condition that (1) the elderly's quality of life should be improved, (2) the elderly's independence be supported, (3) the status of care-workers as professional workers should be properly evaluated and guaranteed.
Meanwhile, care-workers need more opportunities to be trained and educated and the more important thing for care-workers is to participate in the decision-making of nursing care services, whenever it may be.

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