Editing Shōnen manga (section)

===Pre-war and wartime era===
[[File:Shōnen Club April 1929.jpg|thumb|Cover of the April 1929 issue of ''[[Shōnen Club]]'']]

Children's magazines with sex-segregated readerships have existed in Japan since the early 1900s. While early youth magazines were ostensibly unisex – ''[[Shōnen Sekai]]'' was the first youth magazine in Japan in 1895, targeting a readership of both boys and girls{{sfn|Theisen|2013}} – in practice, the editorial content of these publications largely concerned topics that were thought to be of interest to boys.{{sfn|Shamoon|2012|p=19}} This provoked the emergence of first exclusively {{Transliteration|ja|shōjo}} (girls) magazines in 1902, and {{Transliteration|ja|shōnen}} magazines subsequently began to exclusively target a male audience.{{sfn|Theisen|2013}} Initially, these magazines did not publish manga;{{sfn|McCarthy|2014|p=12}} the first {{Transliteration|ja|shōnen}} magazine to do so was ''[[Shōnen Pakku]]'', first published in 1907. This was followed by ''[[Shōnen Club]]'' in 1914 and later ''[[Yōnen Club]]''. Among the most successful and influential manga series in these early {{Transliteration|ja|shōnen}} magazines were ''[[Norakuro]]'' by [[Suihō Tagawa]], which follows the life of an [[anthropomorphic]] dog soldier, and ''[[Tank Tankuro]]'' by [[Gajo Sakamoto]], about a robot-like character who can change his appearance.{{sfn|McCarthy|2014|pp=16-21}}

{{Transliteration|ja|Shōnen}} magazines enjoyed significant popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, with ''Yōnen Club'' selling over 950,000 copies. During the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]] and [[Second World War]], magazine sales declined and publications were used increasingly for [[Propaganda in Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II|wartime propaganda purposes]]. The manga content in these publications was reduced,{{sfn|Schodt|1983|p=51}} and the series that remained typically focused on patriotic and militaristic themes, such as stories about [[samurai]]. In other stories, robots were depicted as fighting in the war against the Allied forces, as analogous to western [[superhero comics]] that depicted superheroes fighting the Axis powers during this same period.{{sfn|Schodt|1983|p=51}}