Yaoi

also known as Boys' Love, is a popular Japanese term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors. Originally referring to a specific type of dōjinshi (self-published works) parody of mainstream anime and manga works, yaoi came to be used as a generic term for female-oriented manga, anime, dating sims, novels and dōjinshi featuring idealized homosexual male relationships. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the who pursues the .

In Japan, the term has largely been replaced by the rubric , which subsumes both parodies and original works, and commercial as well as dōjinshi works. Although the genre is called Boys' Love (commonly abbreviated as "BL"), the males featured are pubescent or older. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labeled shotacon, and seen as a distinct genre. Yaoi (as it continues to be known among English-speaking fans) has spread beyond Japan: both translated and original yaoi is now available in many countries and languages.

Yaoi began in the dōjinshi markets of Japan in the late 1970s/early 1980s as an outgrowth of (also known as "Juné" or "tanbi"), but whereas shōnen-ai (both commercial and dōjinshi) were original works, yaoi were parodies of popular shōnen anime and manga, such as Captain Tsubasa and Saint Seiya.

BL creators and fans are careful to distinguish the genre from bara, including "gay manga", which are created by and for gay men. Yuri is a wider blanket term than yaoi, because it refers to comics with lesbian relationships, regardless of the target audience, which may be (presumptively heterosexual) men, heterosexual women, or lesbian women. Yuri made by and for lesbians tends to resemble a distaff counterpart of bara, while men's yuri manga is more like yaoi manga, since both are targeted at the opposite sex and are not about realistic gay relationships.

Terminology

Usage

Although different meanings are often ascribed to the terms yaoi and Boy's Love (with yaoi generally said to be more explicit and BL generally said to being less so),

Yaoi is an acronym created in the dōjinshi market of the late 1970s by Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu focused on "the yummy parts". The phrase also parodies a classical style of plot structure. Kubota Mitsuyoshi says that Osamu Tezuka used yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi to dismiss poor quality manga, and this was appropriated by the early yaoi authors. A joking alternative acronym among fujoshi (female yaoi fans) for yaoi is .

Originally in Japan, much BL material was called , a name derived from June, a magazine that published male/male romances, stories written for and about the worship of beauty, used such unusual kanji for her characters' names that she converted to spelling their names in katakana. Kaoru Kurimoto had also written shōnen ai mono stories in the late 1970s that have been described as "the precursors of yaoi". June magazine, in turn, had been named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. Eventually the term "june" died out in favour of "BL," which remains the most common name. "801" can be read as "yaoi" in the following form: the "short" reading of the number 8 is "ya", 0 can be read as "o" - a western influence, while the short reading for 1 is "i" (see Japanese wordplay). For example, an Internet manga called Tonari no 801-chan, about a male otaku who dates a fujoshi, has been adapted into a serialized shōjo manga and a live-action film. 801-chan, the mascot of a Japanese shopping centre, is used in the manga.

Yaoi has become an umbrella term in the West for women's manga or Japanese-influenced comics with male-male relationships, Yaoi is used in Japan to include dōjinshi and sex scenes, However, Kaze to Ki no Uta was groundbreaking in its depictions of "openly sexual relationships", spurring the development of the Boys Love genre in shōjo manga, and the development of sexually explicit amateur comics. The use of yaoi to denote those works with explicit scenes sometimes clashes with use of the word to describe the genre as a whole. Yaoi can be used by fans as a label for anime or manga-based slash fiction.

While shōnen-ai literally means boy's love, the two terms are not synonymous. In Japan, shōnen-ai used to refer to a now obsolete subgenre of shōjo manga about prepubescent boys in relationships ranging from the platonic to the romantic and sexual. The term was originally used to describe ephebophilia, and in scholarly contexts still is. Boy's Love, on the other hand, is used as a genre's name and refers to all titles regardless of sexual content or the ages of characters in the story (with the exception of titles featuring prepubescent boys, which are categorized as shotacon, a distinct genre with only peripheral connections to BL). It is an even smaller niche genre in Japan than yaoi manga; none has been licensed in English and not much has been scanlated into English. Considered a subgenre of (men's erotica) for gay males, bara resembles comics for men (seinen) rather than comics for female readers (shoujo/josei).

Recently a subgenre of BL has been introduced in Japan, so-called or "muscley-chubby" BL, which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, This material has been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, but it is distinct in publishing terms (and often in content and style), and should not be confused with gei comi proper.

Seme and uke

The two participants in a yaoi relationship (sometimes also in yuri) are often referred to as and . These terms originated in martial arts and uke is used in Japanese gay slang to mean the receptive partner in anal sex. Seme derives from the Japanese ichidan verb and uke from the Japanese ichidan verb . Though gay males are often referred to in English as "tops" or "bottoms", seme and uke are more nearly analogous to "pitcher" and "catcher." The seme and uke are often drawn in the bishōnen style and are "highly idealised", with a stronger chin, shorter hair, smaller eyes, and a more stereotypically masculine, even "macho", demeanour than the uke. The seme usually pursues the uke, hence the name. The uke usually has softer, androgynous, feminine features with bigger eyes and a smaller build, and is often physically weaker than the seme. Zanghellini notes that anal sex is almost always in a position so that the characters face each other, not in the doggy style Zanghelli states is portrayed by gay pornography. Zanghellini also notes that the uke rarely fellates the seme, but instead receives the sexual and romantic attentions of the seme. but is also pointed to as avoiding having to address prejudices against people who consider themselves to have been born homosexual. In recent years, newer yaoi stories have characters that identify as gay. It has been questioned if yaoi is heteronormative, due to the masculine seme and feminine uke stereotypes. Additionally, yaoi stories are often told from the uke's perspective. The possibility of switching roles is often a source of playful teasing and sexual excitement for the characters, which has been said to show that the genre is aware of the "performative nature" of the roles. Sometimes the bottom character will be the aggressor in the relationship, or the pair will switch their sexual roles. Riba, リバ (a contraction of the English word "reversible") is used to describe a couple that yaoi fans think is still plausible when the partners switch their seme/uke roles. In another common mode of characters, the author will forego the stylisations of the seme and uke, and will portray both lovers as "equally attractive handsome men". In this case, whichever of the two who is ordinarily in charge will take the "passive role" in the bedroom. and idealistic. Suzuki describes shōnen-ai as being "pedantic" and "difficult to understand", She says that this challenged the young readers and expanded their minds. Although they could not understand the works at first reading, as they grew older they would come to understand the works more. In the meantime, "the readers' attention became focused on the figure of the male protagonist" and how he navigated his sexual relationships. For a time, yaoi dōjinshi was known as “Captain Tsubasa”. Dōjinshi has been described by Comiket's co-founder Yoshihiro Yonezawa as being "girls playing with dolls";

Important characteristics of the early yaoi dōjinshi were that they were amateur publications not controlled by media restrictions, the stories were by teens for other teens, they were based on famous characters who were in their teens or early twenties, the same age as the yaoi fans. During the early 1990s, dōjinshi played a part in popularising yaoi. Yaoi dōjinshi has been compared to the Plot, what Plot? subgenre of fan fiction.

Though collectors often focus on dōjinshi based on particular manga, any male character may become the subject of a yaoi dōjinshi, even characters from non-manga titles such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, or video games such as Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy, real people such as politicians, or personifications such as , or complementary items such as salt and pepper or peanut butter and jelly. Patrick W. Galbraith sums this up by saying "Among fujoshi, there seems no limit to the potential of transgressive intimacy imagined in yaoi relationships in pursuit of moe."

Most dōjinshi are created by amateurs who often work in "circles"; for example, the group CLAMP began as an amateur dōjinshi circle, drawing Saint Seiya yaoi. Some publishing companies have used dōjinshi published in the 1980s to spot talented amateurs,

Convention when labelling stories differs between Japanese fandom and slash-influenced fandoms. In Japan, the labelling is to put the two names of the characters separated by a multiplication sign, with the seme being first, and the uke being second.

Global BL

As Japanese yaoi gained popularity in the U.S., a few American artists began creating original English-language manga for female readers featuring beautiful male-male couples, Since approximately 2004, what started as a small subculture in North America has become a burgeoning market, as new publishers began producing female-oriented male/male erotic comics and manga from creators outside Japan. Because creators from all parts of the globe are published in these "original English language" works, the term "American Yaoi" fell out of use; terms like 'Original English Language yaoi' shortened to 'Global Yaoi'. The term Global BL was coined by creators and newsgroups that wanted to distinguish the Asian specific content known as 'yaoi', from the original English content, and so the term Global BL was used. "Global BL" was shortened by comics author Tina Anderson in interviews and on her blog to the acronym 'GloBL'.

Current North American publishers of 'Global BL' are Yaoi Press, and publisher DramaQueen, which debuted its 'Global BL' quarterly anthology RUSH in 2006. RUSH ceased publishing when the company experienced financial issues and were uncommunicative with the creators involved in the project. Dramaqueen began publishing again in 2010, and on their forums, CEO Tran Nguyen indicated RUSH would return in a new format in 2011.

Former publishers include Iris Print.

Prolific GloBL creators include Yayoi Neko, Dany & Dany, Tina Anderson, and Studio Kosen.

The most recent publishing boom in GloBL is happening in Germany, with a handful of original German titles gaining popularity for being set in Asia. Some publishers of German GloBL are traditional manga publishers like Carlsen Manga, and small press publishers specialising in GloBL like The Wild Side and Fireangels Verlag.

Publishing

on Otome Road.]] Mizoguchi divides BL publication into two eras - the first era from the time of June to 2004, and a second era from 2004 onwards. The earliest magazine about Boy's Love was June, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of Keiko Takemiya, Moto Hagio and Yumiko Ōshima.As of the mid-1990s, Shōsetsu June outsold June. As of 2008, June was still running, although the target audience's ages have widened and the style of stories has changed from being "soft love" to more overtly pornographic. The Japanese publisher Biblos was a BL publisher established in 1988 but their bankruptcy due to failure of their parent company caused them to fold in April 2006. Most of their titles were picked up by Libre. A 2006 breakdown of the Japanese commercial BL market estimated it grosses approximately 12 billion yen annually, with novel sales generating 250 million yen per month, manga generating 400 million yen per month, CDs generating 180 million yen per month, and video games generating 160 million yen per month. as well as DramaQueen, Kitty Media, Central Park Media's Be Beautiful In 2001, the only BL-type manga available in print in English were the barely-suggestive Banana Fish and X/1999, and in 2002, commercially translated BL was "not common". According to McLelland, the earliest officially translated BL manga in print appeared in 2003, and as of 2006 there were about 130 English-translated works commercially available. In 2007 following Biblos' bankruptcy, Libre published an open letter on their website which said that English-language publishers had to renegotiate publishing rights for Biblos' former series with Libre, specifically naming CPM's releases as "illegal". Diamond Comic Distributors estimated the U.S. sales of yaoi manga as being approximately $US 6 million in 2007. In English-speaking countries explicit stories are either sold online or displayed in shrink wrap. Mark McLelland surveyed 135 yaoi books published in North America between 2003 and 2006, and found that 14% was rated at 13 years or over, 39% was rated for readers aged 15 years or over, and 47% was rated for readers 18 years or older. BLU reports that although bookshops are becoming more willing to stock BL titles, they are conservative about how the books are labelled, leading to books being shrink wrapped and rated for over 18s which previously would have garnered an over 16 rating, and do not "really follow through on the [adult content] promise."

Thematic elements

BL has similar themes to heterosexual shōjo manga, several exploring adolescent romance and the "interiority of the characters." Common characters in yaoi are schoolboys and yakuza. Sometimes, schoolboys are depicted in sexual situations, which is controversial when these titles are licensed in countries where underage sexuality and its depiction is taboo. Nariko Enomoto, a yaoi author says she feels that when women are shown, "it can't help but become weirdly real". When yaoi fan works are created from a series which originally contained females (such as Gundam Wing), the female's role is either minimised or the character is killed off. Early shōnen-ai and yaoi has been regarded as misogynistic, but Lunsing detects a decrease in misogynistic comments from characters and regards the development of the yuri genre as reflecting a reduction of internal misogyny. Also, there are many female characters in Yaoi who are Fujoshi themselves.

Gachi muchi

Recently, a subgenre of BL has been introduced in Japan, so-called "muscley-chubby BL" or gachi muchi (from and ) which offers more masculine body types and is more likely to have gay male authors and artists. Although still marketed primarily to women, Although this type of material has also been referred to as "bara" among English-speaking fans, such as Zettai Reido, a yaoi anthology magazine which had a number of openly male contributors. Homophobia, when it is presented as an issue at all, Hisako Miyoshi, vice editor-in-chief for Libre Publishing, has said that she feels that boys love manga has become less realist, with more comedic elements or being "simply for entertainment". She thinks that earlier BL focused "more on the homosexual way of life with a realist perspective." Makoto Tateno has said that she feels that BL with a focus on realistic gay issues "won't become a trend, because girls like fiction more than realism." Akiko Mizoguchi feels that while depictions of homosexuality as "shameful" to heighten dramatic tension are still shown, BL is including more coming out stories which portray a gradual acceptance from the wider community. Mizoguchi feels that BL is showing far more gay-friendly depictions of Japanese society, which she regards as activism. Sandra Buckley felt that the characters have equality in their relationships, which were "free of domination and exploitation".

Rape

According to Suzuki, sexual intercourse in yaoi is a way of expressing commitment to a partner, and "apparent violence" in sex is a "measure of passion". Suzuki elaborates that when a woman is raped, she is stigmatised by society, but in yaoi, boys who are loved by their rapists are still "imbued with innocence", a theme she attributes to Kaze to Ki no Uta. Rape fantasy themes have been said to free the protagonist of responsibility in sex, leading to the narrative climax of the story, where "the protagonist takes responsibility for his own sexuality".

Tragedy

June stories with suicide endings were popular, Matt Thorn theorises that depicting abuse in yaoi is a coping mechanism for some yaoi fans.

Critical attention

Boys' Love manga has received considerable critical attention, especially after translations of BL became commercially available outside of Japan in the 21st century. Japanese critics have seen BL as allowing girls to distance sex from their own bodies, as allowing girls to avoid adult female sexuality while simultaneously creating greater fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality, and as rejecting “socially mandated” gender roles as a “first step toward feminism.” In more elaborate theorizing, Kazuko Suzuki sees BL manga emerging from girls' contempt and dislike for masculine heterosexism and from an effort to define "ideal relationships" among men. Mizoguchi, writing in 2003, feels that BL is a "female-gendered space", as the writers, readers, artists and most of the editors of BL are female. BL has been compared to romance novels by English-speaking librarians. Parallels have also been noted in the popularity of lesbianism in pornography, Mariko Ōhara, a science fiction writer, has said that she wrote yaoi Kirk/Spock fiction as a teen because she could not enjoy "conventional pornography, which had been made for men", and that she had found a "limitless freedom" in yaoi, much like in science fiction.

Other commentators have suggested that more radical gender-political issues underlie BL. Shihomi Sakakibara (1998) argued that yaoi fans, including herself, were homosexually oriented female-to-male transsexuals. For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations" and James Welker described the bishōnen character as "queer", observing that manga critic Akiko Mizoguchi saw shōnen-ai as playing a role in how she herself had become a lesbian. Dru Pagliassotti sees this and the yaoi ronsō as indicating that for Japanese gay and lesbian readers, BL is not as far removed from reality as heterosexual female readers like to claim. but has had later echoes, for example when Mizoguchi in 2003 characterised stereotypes in modern BL as being "unrealistic and homophobic". There has been similar criticism to the Japanese yaoi debate in the English-speaking fandom. In 1993 and 2004, Matt Thorn pointed to the complexity of these phenomena, and suggested that yaoi and slash fiction fans are discontented with “the standards of femininity to which they are expected to adhere and a social environment that does not validate or sympathize with that discontent.”

As women have greater economic power, commercial demand for the sexualization of men may correlate. Korean manhwa writer Jin Seok Jeon wrote in a commentary to Vol. 5, Chp 2 of an Arabian Nights themed shonen-ai work, A Night of a Thousand Dreams, "Men are now marketable. It's also a time where women are big consumers and can buy almost anything they desire. Some men think this is degrading...but the tables have turned, and I like the fact that men are just as commercialized now." He jokes that after researching guresh wrestling, which requires extreme physical fitness, he does not feel as marketable, illustrating that yaoi and other pornography exploiting men is subject to traditional criticisms, such as the objectification human beings to sexual caricatures and creating unrealistic expectations and negative body images. For the same reasons, it may be celebrated for evening the field between genders and opening a fuller debate on personhood and sexuality.

In China, BL became very popular in the late 1990s, attracting media attention, which became negative, focusing on the challenge it posed to "heterosexual hegemony". Publishing and distributing BL is illegal in mainland China. Zanghellini notes that due to the "characteristics of the yaoi/BL genre" of showing characters who are often underage engaging in romantic and sexual situations, child pornography laws in Australia and Canada "may lend themselves to targeting yaoi/BL work". He notes that in the UK, cartoons are exempt from child pornography laws unless they are used for child grooming.

Youka Nitta has said that "even in Japan, reading boys' love isn't something that parents encourage" and encouraged any parents who had concerns about her works to read them. Although in Japan, concern about manga has been mostly directed to shonen manga, in 2006, an email campaign was launched against the availability of BL manga in Sakai City's public library. In August 2008, the library decided to stop buying more BL, and to keep its existing BL in a collection restricted to adult readers. That November, the library was contacted by people who protested against the removal, regarding it as "a form of sexual discrimination". The Japanese media ran stories on how much BL was in public libraries, and emphasised that this sexual material had been loaned out to minors. Debate ensued on Mixi, a Japanese social networking site, and eventually the library returned its BL to the public collection. Mark McLelland suggests that BL may become "a major battlefront for proponents and detractors of 'gender free' policies in employment, education and elsewhere."

See also

BL game

Glossary of anime and manga

Girlfag and guydyke

List of manga magazines – includes BL magazines

Men who have sex with men

Pornography in Japan

Glossary of anime and manga

Notes

References

Further reading

Aoyama, Tomoko (1988) "Male homosexuality as treated by Japanese women writers" in The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, Gavan McCormack, Yoshio Sugimoto eds. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-34515-4.

Butcher, Christopher (11 December 2007). "Queer love manga style". Xtra!.

Cooper, Lisa "Laugh it up" Newtype USA, October 2007 (Volume 6 Number 10)

Fujimoto Yukari (2004). "Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynes". U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 27: 76.

van de Goor, Sophie (2010) Slashing Japan: the self-depathology of the female fan

Haggerty, George E. (2000). Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-8153-1880-4.

Kakinuma Eiko, Kurihara Chiyo et al. (eds.), Tanbi-Shosetsu, Gay-Bungaku Book Guide, 1993. ISBN 4-89367-323-8

KUCI Subversities 18 October 2010

Lees, Sharon (July 2006). "Be Beautiful: Yaoi Publishers Interviews Part 3". Akiba Angels.

Levi, Antonia (1996)

Lewis, Marilyn Jaye (editor), Zowie! It's Yaoi!: Western Girls Write Hot Stories of Boys' Love. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006. ISBN 1-56025-910-8.

Mautner, Chris (2007) "Introduction to yaoi, part 1"

McCarthy, Helen, Jonathan Clements The Erotic Anime Movie Guide pub Titan (London) 1998 ISBN 1 85286 946 1

McHarry, Mark. "Identity Unmoored: Yaoi in the West". In Thomas Peele, ed., Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ISBN 1-4039-7490-X.

Mizoguchi Akiko (2003). "Male-Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of Yaoi Fictions". U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, 25: 49.

Nagaike Kazumi (2003). "Perverse Sexualities, Perverse Desires: Representations of Female Fantasies and Yaoi Manga as Pornography Directed at Women. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, 25: 76.

Nishimura Mari (2001) Aniparo to Yaoi Ohta Publishing ISBN 978-4-87233-643-6

Newtype USA, August 2007 (Volume 6 Number 8) "Why we like it"

Newtype USA, November 2007 (Vol. 6 No. 11) "Favorite authors" p. 109

PiQ, June 2008 (Volume 1 Number 3)

PiQ, July 2008 (Volume 1 Number 4)

Salek, Rebecca (June 2005) More Than Just Mommy and Daddy: "Nontraditional" Families in Comics Sequential Tart

Solomon, Charles (30 June 2004) Young men in love Los Angeles Times

Thompson, Jason (31 July 2006) Boku no Shonen Ai (or "Jason overanalyzes something and takes all the fun out of it") livejournal.com

* Category:Hentai Category:Anime and manga terminology Category:Japanese sex terms Category:LGBT terms Category:LGBT art