During the first two decades of the twentieth century, over a dozen girls' magazines with a nation-wide circulation were founded in Japan. Through the examination of readers' letters in these magazines, the author argues that these magazines provided readers with a new collective identity, which enabled them to transcend the traditional bonds of families and communities and to see themselves as "girls of the nation." The examination of over a twelve year period shows the rise of the "imagined community" of girl readers and its degeneration into the "community in fantasy" as a result of the restrictions placed upon their spontaneous correspondence by educators and publishers.

The paper aims to refine Benedict Anderson's (1983) concept of "imagined communities" by bringing in a gender-sensitive perspective. At the same time, the paper calls into question the notion of "audience" and "reception" and proposes an approach focusing more on the "use" of the media by the consumers. Combining these two perspectives, the author argues that a "national imagination" among women was formed through their active participation in discursive spaces provided by nationwide media such as girls' magazines, but was kept under control so as not to threaten the gender boundary between the public and the private.