Mizoguchi Akiko

10
Theorizing comics/manga genre as a
productive forum:
yaoi and beyond
MIZOGUCHI Akiko
It’s not a “hobby”! To me, reading manga is a synonym for “living”! (Miura
2006: 13)
It’s about being able to see how the other person’s brain and her desire work.
We both develop fantasies based on just a little bit of information we gain fromobservation. We’d say to each other something like, gee, your antennae are way
too sensitive! It’s a pleasure to observe each other. The only word that can describe
what lies between such buddies and myself is “love”, I think. (Miura 2007: 3)

The yaoi genre consists of male-male romance manga (narrative comics) and illustrated
novels created by women for women. Its history spans 40 or 50 years, depending onwhether we locate its origin at the “beautiful boy” manga within the shōjo manga genreof the 1970s, or at Mori Mari’s 1961 novel, Koibitotachi no mori [The Lovers’ Woods].
While it is beyond the scope of this paper to survey this history,1 it is significant tonote that today in early 2010 the wider yaoi genre mainly consists of the commercial“boys’ love” genre, also called BL (pronounced bii eru, and hereafter written BL), andthe fanzines, or dōjinshi. The commercial BL publications have been central in the
1 For a survey of the history of the larger yaoi genre, see Mizoguchi (2003 a, b).

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larger yaoi genre since 1991.2 The first era of BL publications was largely defined byJune (pronounced “juné,” close to the Japanized pronunciation of “Genet”) because
this magazine led the larger yaoi genre as the only commercial publication during the
1980s until it was discontinued in 2004. The second era of BL publications emerges
after 2004. While many of the changes were gradually occurring during the first era,
we can list the following as the characteristics of the second era of the BL-centeredperiod: (1) With the BL-focused labels starting in the U.S., globalization of yaoi
becomes even more prominent than in the first era. (2) In addition to drama CDs andOVA, that is, original video animation (animation works designed for personal viewing
at the consumers’ households and not to be broadcast or theatrically released) that were
produced during the first era, BL content starts to be made into animation for television
networks.3 Also, productions of live-action films based on or inspired by BL begin toappear.4 (3) The number and visibility of BL authors who branch into other genres or
those who publish in both yaoi and other genres increase.5 (4) The publishers started
to re-publish the past works that had been out of print either in the bunko, smaller
and cheaper paperback formats, or hardcover, so-called aizōban, to-be-cherishedfor-long formats. (5) The term fujoshi, literally meaning “rotten girl,” was coined by
the mass media, and much reportage of yaoi women fans under this term increased
their visibility.6 (7) Although many second-era yaoi continue to follow the first-era
2 For the reasons why the year 1991 is identified as the beginning of the BL era, see Mizoguchi(2003 a, b).
3 As an example, see the anime Junjō romanchika [Pure Heart Romantica] (dir. Kon Chiaki,
2008) based on the manga story of the same title by artist Nakamura Shungiku. This anime wasbroadcast on the AT-X network.
4 As an example of the former, see Boys Love (dir. Terauchi Kōtarō, 2007). As an example of thelatter, see the film series based on the novel series “Takumi-kun Series” by Gotō Shinobu. The
titles of the live-action films are as follows: Takumi-kun shiriizu: Soshite harukazeni sasayaite[Takumi-kun Series: And Then, Whisper to the Spring Breeze], Takumi-kun shiriizu: Nijiiro no
garasu [Takumi-kun Series: The Rainbow-Colored Glass], and Takumi-kun shirīzu: Bibō noditeiru [Takumi-kun Series: The Details of the Beautiful Countenance] (dir. Yokoyama Kazuhiro,
2007, 2009, 2010). The fans’ comments online and what my yaoi fan friends have told me bothsuggest that the audience for these so-called “BL movies” does not overlap with BL readershipvery much.
5 As examples of the former, see Nishi Keiko and Yoshinaga Fumi. For the latter, see Nakamura
Asumiko, Aniya Yuiji, and basso who uses a different penname, Ono Natsume, for her non-BL
works.
6 Initially, many yaoi fans openly resisted against the term fujoshi as a negative stereotype thatwas coined by the mass media. By today in 2010, however, many yaoi fans have come to use it

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conventions, their styles and approaches are becoming more diverse. For example,
most second-era yaoi stories continue to assign fixed gender roles to the aggressive
character (sémé) and the passive one (uké) who play top and bottom in sex, and thesestories continue to function on the level of both romantic and buddy narratives. 7
Nevertheless, post 2004, the graphic styles, settings, and storylines have become morediversified and the presence of what I define as the fantasmatic “yaoi formula” such as“homophobic homo” characters and “rapes of love” have significantly decreased.8
Since late 1998 I have taken a dual approach to the field of BL publications as
a researcher and fan of yaoi. My critical examination of yaoi begins with the premisethat yaoi does not represent any person’s reality, but rather is a terrain where straight,
lesbian, and other women’s desires and political stakes mingle and clash, and where
representations are born. My research is informed by Teresa de Lauretis who has
written in relation to her analysis of the feminist debates on pornography (produced forheterosexual men). “Feminist analysis and politics have always proceeded concurrently
with—indeed have been prompted by—the social injury suffered by women, but thestrength of feminism, or what social power it may have, does not disprove that injury”(de Lauretis 1994: 146). In other words, de Lauretis suggests that neither the propornography position that pornographic representation occurs in the realm of fantasy,
nor the anti-pornography position that pornography equals violence against womenis entirely appropriate. By theorizing the female subject as a complex amalgam of
conscious and political subjecthood and private and psychoanalytic subjectivity, she
has shown that the seemingly contradictory double movement is inherently necessary
in feminist work on representation (de Lauretis 1994: 147). As Judith Butler argues,
theoretically a female subject is not restricted to identify with the female position
in a fantasy scenario, but is also capable of identifying with the male position or the
scenario as a whole. However, as the female subject always also functions at the level
as their own. For fans’ opinions on and discussions about fujoshi, see Natō (2007).
7 For a detailed analysis of the yaoi formula, see Mizoguchi (2000)
8 For analyses on the reasons why homophobia and rapes have come to appear less often, see
Mizoguchi (2007). A detailed analysis of the recently diversified styles of BL fiction needs towait for a future opportunity. As for recent examples of popular works and trends, guidebooks
such as Next henshūbu ed. (2008, 2009) are useful.

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Mizoguchi Akiko
of social subject, she—who de Lauretis calls “Dworkin”—may not be able to secure
enough distance from the pornographic text, since such a text is a public representationthat depicts women’s debasement. This double movement is clearly manifest in thecontext of the yaoi phenomenon. The fact that women have engaged in reading thesemale homoerotic representations as representing their fantasies for several decades
attests to the efficacy of the theory of the psychoanalytic subject of fantasy; that is,
the fact that the subject is not restricted to identifications with one position (usuallyequivalent to their own position in real life) in the fantasy scenario. At the same time,
however, the fact that so many Japanese women continue to need male homoerotic
representations that are significantly remote from their own reality also indicates theinjury suffered by women.
Such a double movement has been criticized as an escapist trope and evaluatedas a system of pleasure, as critics such as Kaneda Junko have surveyed (Kaneda
2007a, b). This paper will examine the way in which the discursive battlefield of yaoifunctions as a forum or community of women through the representations of beautiful
male characters. First, I will discuss the special sense of community yaoi has come toconstitute. I will also discuss the way in which the yaoi genre operates as a “virtual
lesbian” space. BL fictions are public representations since they are commercially
produced and sold. At the same time, however, BL fictions nurture extremely privatebonds among women fans. Nearly twenty years into the BL centered period of thelarger yaoi genre, a few hundred women, many of them veterans with over a decadeof experience, make their living as professional BL authors,9 while at the same timethese professionals have functioned as fellow yaoi fans within the intimate “virtual
lesbian” space inhabited by almost all women. In this paper, I will suggest that sucha unique combination of public and private spheres has given birth to the possibilities

9 A recent guidebook on BL manga, Next henshūbu ed. (2009) lists 314 manga artists as theauthors of major manga paperbacks (tankōbon) published between October 2008 and September
2009. A guidebook on BL novels, BL shōsetsu pāfekuto gaido [The Perfect Guide to Boys’ Love
Novels] lists 151 BL authors. Both lists do not claim to be comprehensive. It is impossible tofind out how many of the listed authors are full time professional writers and artists. However, it
should be fairly reasonable to assume that these figures are close to BL authors who make theirliving at the profession.

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of productive queer forum.10 The examples of feminist, lesbian and queer activist
moments which this paper can only briefly touch upon will be further developed
elsewhere in the near future.
As award-winning literary author Miura Shion,11 who is arguably the most
famous yaoi fan in Japan, has declared in the earlier quote, “reading” yaoi means“living” yaoi, that is, to live the life of a yaoi-community member. In addition, what
Miura calls “love” between her fantasy buddies also exists among many yaoi womenfans. This paper aims to explicate such “love” in the preparation of analyzing thepossibilities of that “love.” By doing so, it also attempts to present a possibly new
approach to genre studies of comics and manga from and beyond the realm of yaoi.
As I noted in the beginning, this paper defines male-male romantic manga andillustrated novels as the constituents of the larger yaoi genre. The reason why I include
the illustrated novels even though the venue is specifically designed for comics andManga Studies comes from the yaoi genre itself. Sagawa Toshihiko, while editor-inchief of both the manga-centered and novel-centered volumes of June magazine,
replied to the question why the novel-centered ones sold more copies as follows. He
said that most of the novel authors who sent in their works to June had been raised on
manga and when writing text-only stories, “they are merely creating manga withwords” (Schodt 1996: 121). Sagawa’s theory applies to the contemporary BL novels as
well. In fact, it seems fair to say that the BL novels are not complete until the seme(aggressive) and uke (passive) protagonists (sometimes along with other major
subsidiary characters) are visualized in illustrations drawn by manga artists of the samegenre (there are some illustration-only artists as well, but their drawing style is thesame as the manga artists’) For example, author Sakiya Haruhi describes one of her
10 Kurihara (1993: 338) has suggested, as early as in 1993, that yaoi women fans resemble
lesbian separatists and perhaps are spiritually lesbians. This paper is inspired by Kurihara, but
is also motivated by my feminist awareness that economical independence and activities in
the public sphere are crucial for women in capitalist society. This is the reason why this paper
focuses on professional BL authors and their readership in contrast to Kurihara who observed
amateur fanzine creators and readers. Of course, some professional BL authors do engage in the
fanzine world and many readers of BL fiction participate in the fanzine world as well, including
myself. Recent scholarship on yaoi fanzine (dōjinshi) practitioners, for example, Kaneda (2007),Natō (2007), Azuma (2010), does not seem to relate to Kurihara (1993).
11 Miura Shion received the Naoki Award in 2006 for Mahoro eki mae Tada benriken [TheHandyman Shop Tada in Front of the Mahoro Station].

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Mizoguchi Akiko
passive characters as a 30-year old plain looking and very skinny man whose narroweyes have eyelids that are only slightly double-edged. The image of this character thatmoves around in the minds of the readers is the guy on the left in this illustration (fig.
1). While admittedly he looks a little more plain and slimmer than the aggressive sémécharacter on the right, I suggest that he belongs to the category of “beauty” from thegeneral point of view. Author Sakiya writes in her
postscript: “In fact, it occurred to me, ‘Ms. Shimizu
would surely draw even the plain character nicely,’and I created this character” (Sakiya 2010: 344). In
other words, manga artist Shimizu Yuki’s style andskill spawned the creation of the “plain” passive
character in question. In this sense, even though
Shimizu and Sakiya may not have conferred, they canbe said to have collaborated on this illustrated novel.
In addition, since a BL manga artist tends to be
Fig 1: Sakiya Haruhi, Shinzô
ga fukaku hazeteiru (The HeartIs Deeply Bursting). Gentôsha
ruchiru/Rutile bunko, 2010.
Cover illustration by Shimizu
Yuki.

assigned the job to draw illustrations for novels thatshare settings and subject matter with her own manga
works, BL manga andliterary works often

organically interact with each other. For example, uponseeing the cover of Matsuoka Natsuki’s novel Hanayakana
meikyū [Gorgeous Labyrinth] (fig. 2), drawn by artist
Yoshinaga Fumi, many readers would correctly expect thestory to be related with the French court as depicted in
Yoshinaga’s period manga stories such as Jerāru to Jakku[Gerard and Jacques] (fig. 3). For those readers who haveFig 2: Matsuoka Natsuki,

only been familiar with either the manga artist or the literary H a n a y a k a n a m e i k y ū(Gorgeous Labyrinth).

author, the new combination can and does introduce them to Shinshokan diapurasu/
Dear+ bunko, 2004. Covera formerly unknown artist or author.
illustration by Yoshinaga
In addition, there are always some fans of Yoshinaga Fumi.

who decide to read Matsuoka’s novel for the first time because of the illustration,
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Mizoguchi Akiko
and some fans of Matsuoka who liked Yoshinaga’s illustrations would purchase her
manga books for the first time next time they shop. For these reasons, especially for the
purposes of this paper that examines the community andforum of yaoi fans, it is not appropriate to only discuss BL
manga.
1. The sense of community of yaoi fans
In order to show the special sense of the yaoi community,
I will discuss the incident in which X, my co-worker at
the time, contacted me via the author of the BL novel
Rimuresu no sora [The Rimless Sky] after I was thanked
in the postscript to that novel as follows: “Especially inthe latter half of this series, I have received precious advice F i g 3 : Yo s h i n a g a F u m i ,Jerâruto Jakku (Gerard andfrom Mizoguchi Akiko, Grass-Roots Cultural Lesbian Jacques). Biblos Super Be

Boy comics, 2000. (TheActivist and my dear friend, about issues of sexuality” currently available version
Hakusensha in bunko(Eda Yūri 2002: 306).12 X emailed the author, Eda Yūri, fromformat has a different
to ask if the “Mizoguchi Akiko” in her postscript might be illustration for the cover.)her own colleague by giving the name of the institution where she worked. Eda replied
to X after she confirmed with me that it was okay to let X know. Thus I came to be reintroduced to X as a yaoi fan who liked the same novel I did. This episode suggests thatyaoi women fans feel psychologically closer to another member of the yaoi community
than to someone who she suspects to be an outsider. For X, it was easier to email Eda,
the author of her favorite novel, whom she had never met in person, than to simply ask
me with whom she shared the community of the workplace, because X was sure that
Eda shared membership with herself, while she was not sure about me.
This sense of membership is strengthened by participation in fanzine(dōjinshi) conventions. As is well known, the fanzine conventions are conducted ina decidedly non-hierarchical manner in which all persons, whether professional or
12 The story can be found in the currently available combined aizōban volume Natsu no kodomo,
which does not contain the postscript. In her publications and website, Eda writes her first nameas “Yuuri”. In this paper, I employ a more usual spelling, “Yūri”, in order to avoid confusions forEnglish-language readers.

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amateur, famous or obscure, are equally considered voluntary participants. Thus, atfanzine conventions one feels equal to one another in the yaoi community. It does notreally matter if one is too shy to actually say hello to her favorite author and ends up
wondering which person among those manning the author’s booth might be the author
herself. The fact that the famous author is basically indistinguishable from her friends
and assistants actually enhances the sense of community to which all the yaoi fans,including the popular commercial authors, equally belong. Thus the fans come to feel
psychologically closer to professional authors in general including those one has not
actually “met” at the convention. It is this “feeling” that is extended to the authors who
one only knows through their works.13
2. Mini-comments
What bridges the fans’ experiences of sharing the same physical space with professional
authors are the authors’ personal mini-comments and postscripts.14 First, there are themini-comments. When a reader picks up a BL paperback (tankōbon) edition, she seesa cover that usually portrays two male protagonists (sometimes one), and then, when
she flips the book open, she sees the mini-comment on the flap on the right hand side,usually facing a color illustration on the left page.15 In other words, the mini-commentis the first textual information written by the author that the reader sees before reading
the story itself, immediately after reading the title and the blurb on the cover thatreaders know is written by the editor. In the mini-comments on the flaps, most of the
13 This argument has been developed from Mizoguchi (2007: 60).
14 There are yaoi fans who never participate in fanzine conventions, but they extend theirexperiences of face-to-face communication with their fellow fans to their favorite professional
authors. Most yaoi fans communicate with other fans online on a daily basis. While it istechnically possible for some fans to “talk to” other fans solely online for a long period oftime without seeing them in person, I have never met such a fan in my field work as a fan andresearcher for longer than a decade.
15 Exeptions exist. For example, the paperbacks (tankōbon) published under the label “Bamboo
Comics Reijin” from Take shobō print the plot summaries instead of the mini-comments. This
does not necessarily mean that readers are less encouraged to form the sense of community withauthors and other readers, because the volumes of this label often print the authors’ comments
and bonus manga episodes directly on the cover of the book itself, that is, beneath the “official”
cover. The “official” cover is made of a sheet of paper that wraps the book. When the reader
unwraps it, she finds the bonus comments or manga on the surface of the book itself. Many
readers are aware of this and take the cover off before reading the story.

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Mizoguchi Akiko
authors include chatty, trivial comments about such topics as diet, food, shopping, andeven laundry from their everyday life as women, not as professional authors, usually
under the profile section giving her name, date of birth, constellation, and blood type.
For example, on the cover of Takaido Akemi’s manga story Ren’ai no
kamisama ni ie [Tell It to the God of Love Affairs] two slim beautiful boys are
portrayed with blue as the dominant color, befitting the story in which water plays theimportant role as the setting and the visual motif as the two boys fall in love with eachother (fig. 4, right). When the cover is flipped open, we find an illustration in which
the torso of an androgynously beautiful passive character is depicted. To its right,that is, what is inserted between the cover and the color illustration is Takaido’s minicomment. Accompanying a simplified self-portrait is Takaido’s hand-written commentthat reads: “There’s something I remember when summer comes.” It is followed byher name both in roman letters and Japanese,and the word “PROFILE” (in English capitalletters) and her comment in printed types:“Summer is approaching again this year but
I have not lost any weight. / I realize I am
writing the same comment every year. / I’min trouble” (Takaido 2007, the flipped side of
the cover). Decidedly unrelated to the content
of the story, Takaido here is chatting with her

Fig 4. Takaido Akemi, Renaino kamisamani ie [Tell It to the God of Love Affairs].
Hôbunsha hanaoto comics, 2007. Cover andWhen the story is gloomy, the gap flap.

readers as if they were her girlfriends.

between the author’s comments and the content of the story may seem almost absurd.
Konohara Narise’s novel Well is a psycho-drama set in a futuristic world where only
a few human beings, including the protagonists, have survived catastrophe that turned
everything on the ground into white sand. Konohara’s mini-comment reads:
I knew that jeans fade in the wash, so I always used a special detergent fordelicate clothes to wash them. But recently I felt I could not bother any longer
and used a regular detergent. And well, fine, they did fade. I’ve told this to my151© International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. ISBN 978-4-905187-01-1 http://imrc.jp/

Mizoguchi Akiko
mother and she said, “I’ll dye them for you.” But I have mixed feelings about it.
(Konohara 2007, the flipped side of the cover)
Just before the story begins, the reader is assured that no matter what will follow in thefiction part of the book, the author is an ordinary Japanese woman next-door. In otherwords, even though the BL comics and illustrated novels all depict romance between
impossibly beautiful male characters and sometimes even extreme situations in which
they fight, through repeated reception of such fictions, what is cultivated among thefans is the sense of membership to the yaoi community, which is the community of
their fellow women fans.
3. Postscripts
In addition to the mini-comments on theflaps, most of the BL paperbacks havepostscripts that are usually two-to-fourpages in length and much more substantial
than the mini-comments on the flaps.
Besides nearly obligatory phrases such as“Thanks for reading my story”, “Hope to
see you again soon in a future volume”,
and acknowledgments to the editors,
assistants, friends, and family who helped,
postscripts usually include two otherelements. The first consists of discussionsof the production of the story that often
include how the story was conceived. The Fig 5: Machiya Hatoko, Mata ashita (SeeYou Tommorow). Biblos Super Be Boy

second element consists of the author’s comics, 2006, 201.

reflection on what she has discerned about her own tastes in the story, characters,
settings, and so forth. This shows BL creators as fans who are on a journey, as it
were, of pursuing their pleasure by trying out the possibilities of male-male narrative
fantasies.
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Mizoguchi Akiko
They make it a point of sharing that experience with other fans to show that they
consider themselves fellow fans.
For example, manga artist Machiya Hatoko writes in the postscript of her first
paperback Mata ashita [See You Tomorrow] (fig. 5):
I came to realize my own “taste” (shikō) through this volume. I noticed that all
my passive characters are sasoi uké [literally meaning “inviting bottom”,] (andall of them are unaware of their making the initiative). Well, I myself had notbeen aware of my liking such characters before. [sweat mark] (Machiya 2007:
201)
On the left side of this comment, we find the three passive characters from the stories
in the volume. Drawn in an extremely simplified and comical style, the three malecharacters look at the reader as they take off their shirts with flushed cheeks, with theline: “Eat me/us [heart mark].” While all forms of narrative fiction reflect the creator’s“taste/liking” in the characters, story lines, settings, and so forth, at least to someextent, it is significant that in BL fictions, such favorite elements are not only reflectedin the representations but also being discovered by the creator herself during—orafterwards as in the case above—the process of creating these stories. While new artists
tend to present such “discoveries” and “reporting/sharing” activities in succession, eventhe experienced authors continue to engage in an ongoing process of discovering her“taste/liking” throughout their career. And they share that discovery with their readers.
For example, artist Yorita Saemi whose first professional paperback volume
was published in 1997, relates such a “discovery” in the postscript of her 2004 book
Buririanto burū [Brilliant Blue]:
After an entire volume, all they have done is kiss on the forehead…/ In
addition, this story/ must be like hell for those who hate stupid bottom (aho uké)characters…./ But then, before creating this work, I myself had not been awarethat I had the attribute (zokusei) of liking the stupid bottom. / Since I started
drawing Nanami, I have made a succession of discoveries. It was fun.
153

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Mizoguchi Akiko(Yorita 2004: 171-172)
Aho uké literally means a silly passive character, but in this story, Nanami is no simple
ninny. An electric specialist, Nanami is a unique amalgam of extreme good looks likea pop idol, an exceptional ability to calculate numerical figures, and a simple-minded,
innocent way of thinking and speaking like a small child, despite the fact that he is in
his mid-twenties. It is artist Yorita herself who has created such a complicated characterand has the power to move him around in the story. At the same time, however, throughher creative process, Yorita loses some control of herself by making an unexpecteddiscovery of her previously unconscious “self”. And once again, Yorita does not only
disclose this personal discovery to her close friends but makes a point of sharing
this discovery with her readers through her postscript. Because of that, a reader who
has just finished reading Machiya’s and Yorita’s manga stories and is now reading
the postscripts would feel as if she were participating in the moment of these artists’discoveries for their formerly unrecognized tastes for “inviting bottom” and “stupidbottom” characters. If this reader herself has read the story with such characters for the
first time and has just realized that she is fond of them, she would strongly sympathizewith the artists. In this way, receiving the romantic narratives with male characters andcommunicating with female authors of such stories always happen simultaneously inthe yaoi community. By repeating this process, veteran fans often come to build such
relationships with many more authors as fellow fans.
4. Shikō/shikō（Taste/Orientation）
The concept of “taste” (shikō) is important in this context. Each fan is considered topossess a certain propensity towards favorite patterns, and such a propensity is calledshikō which literally means “taste”. But what yaoi fans really mean by “shikō” is closer
to the concept of “orientation”, as in “sexual orientation”. The Japanese words for“taste” and “orientation” are homonyms, “ 嗜好 taste (shikō)” and “ 指向 orientation(shikō)”. As a homosexual person recognizes his/her sexual orientation towards
members of the same sex, yaoi fans recognize their orientation towards first, malemale narratives, and second, such types as the “inviting bottom”. Although, of course,
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a fan might very well manifest various orientations, for example, liking the “inviting
bottom” characters as well as regular “bottom” characters who never initiates sex and/or “feisty bottom (yancha uké)” characters who are full of childlike energy. Even so,many yaoi women fans generally share the understanding that serious fans should have,and be aware of, their own “orientations”.16
Such an idea about one’s “taste” as similar to “orientation” has an interesting
parallel to the popular discourse surrounding women’s sexual orientations in Japan.
Yaoi women fans call non-fans “general people” (ippanjin) and consider them “normal”
in contrast to themselves. Yaoi fans consider themselves “abnormal” for two reasonsthat both deal with a sense of taboo. Firstly, yaoi fans regularly create and read
pornography in a society in which women are not supposed to act as subjects of sexualdesire. Secondly, yaoi fans like male-male romance even though they are themselves
women. Even though most yaoi women fans are straight in their real-life sexuality,
they consider themselves a sort of sexual minority.17 Just as non-heterosexual people
in contemporary Japanese society are expected to be aware of and declare their nonnormative sexual orientations, yaoi women fans expect to be able to determine anddeclare their own tastes/orientations. It is as if serious yaoi fans are supposed to “comeout.” What is important is that yaoi fans have mixed feelings of pride and shame about
being abnormal and special, as opposed to normal yet simply ordinary non-fans. In thissense, it should be fair to say that yaoi fans share the identity of the minority sexuality(sexual orientation) of yaoi.18
16 I thank Kakinuma Eiko for having suggested that the way yaoi fans tend to know andcontinue to pursue what they like is similar to many homosexual individuals. A detailed analysisof the similarities between the two needs to wait for a future opportunity.
17 One such example can be found in a yaoi fanzine practitioner’s comment as quoted by Natō(2007: 74): “I feel that to publicly declare that I am ‘fujoshi’ is a bit similar to publicly declare
one’s sexuality”. The context of this quote makes it clear that what she means by “sexuality”
here is the same as the “minority sexual orientation”.
18 Kaneda Junko states that for each practitioner of ani-paro yaoi fanzines (dōjinshi) to reveal
her favorite coupling, that is, which of the two protagonists borrowed from the original non-yaoi
fictions to be assigned the aggressive/passive roles in the fanzines, functions at two levels. At
one level, it is to reveal one’s own code of interpretation. At the other, it is to “reveal what kindof sexual aspiration (shikō 志向）
she has.” What Kaneda (2007a: 174) refers to by the term “sexual
aspiration” seems to overlap the concept of sexual taste/orientation shikō: 嗜 好 ／ 指 向 in thispaper.

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5. Virtual lesbian
As a person of yaoi sexual orientation, yaoi women fans exchange their sexual
fantasies. The reason yaoi fans can comfortably discuss their sexual desires in a society
where women are conditioned not to behave as subjects of sexual desire is that, in themind of the fan, she is merely talking about her favorite representation, not discussing
her own sexuality. Because she can count on the fact that her fellow fans have readthe same fictions, she usually does not even have to employ a sexual vocabulary to
discuss her sexual fantasy. For example, a dialogue about Yamane Ayano’s manga story
Faindā no hyōteki [You’re my love prize in my viewfinder] such as the following isvery common among the fans: “Isn’t it great how the uké (passive character) runs off
with all that cheerful vigor the morning after?” “Yeah. A feisty bottom (yancha uké) isthe best!” (Mizoguchi 2007: 59). This dialogue refers to a frame on the last page of theepisode called “Fixer”, which portrays the upper half of the passive character’s bodyas he is running (fig. 6). No sexual vocabulary is used in this dialogue.19 However, as
the fans talk, they surely have in mind the graphic sex scene on the previous pages aswell. The fans share the assumption that of course they have enjoyed the entire story,
including the sex scene. But especially notable, in a sense of being different frommany other BL stories and of providing bonus surprise at the end of the episode, is that
portrayal of a beautiful and slender passive character energetically running off.
The yaoi community is similar to other sexual subcultures in which theparticipants exchange sexual fantasies and that exchange itself is part of sex withother people. Sherry Turkle quotes a seventeen-year-old male high school student who
engages in netsex on MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) as follows:
With netsex, it is fantasies. My MUD lover doesn’t want to meet me in RL[reallife]. With Playboy, it was fantasies, too, but in the MUD there is also the otherperson. So I don’t think of what I do on the MUD as masturbation. Although, you
might say that I’m the only one who’s touching me. But in netsex, I have to think
19 The fact that the term uké refers to bottom in sex is only instantly clear to yaoi fans since uké
primarily means a “receptor” or “receiving” in Japanese. Gay men use uké to refer to bottom,
but the combination with the adjective yancha successfully makes the term yancha uke foreign
enough to them.

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of fantasies she will like too. So now, I see fantasies assomething that’s part of sex with two people, not justme in my room (Turkle 1997: 21).
The yaoi community, including the commercial BL
industry, is the virtual space where all the participants,
professionals and amateurs alike, must always function as
fellow players of the game, as this young man and his MUD
lover do. Unlike netsex in the MUDs, the yaoi community isfundamentally promiscuous, and the “lovers” do often meeteach other in RL (real life). While the lovers of netsex can act
raunchily with each other based in the safety of anonymity, Fig 6: Yamane Ayano,

Faindā no hyōteki (You’reyaoi women fans feel comfortable engaging in virtual sex m y l o v e p r i z e i n m ywith each other precisely because they know each other to be viewfinder). Biblos SuperBe Boy comics, 2002, 70.

“fellow regular women next door” and “women who share (The re-print is currently
available from Libre

the identity of the minority sexuality of yaoi” in an almost shuppan.)
women-only space.

The majority of yaoi women fans are heterosexual. Some might argue that callingthose fans who are in heterosexual relationships in real life “lesbian” is inaccurate.
Of course, they are not generally considered lesbians nor are they lesbian-identified
themselves. But, if their sexual fantasies are filled with male-male homosexualepisodes, is it still accurate to call them completely heterosexual? A friend, a happily
married woman in her 30s with two kids, told me, “Not so much these days, but until a
few years ago, I could not really recognize sex with my husband as a male-female act.
In my mind, I transformed what I was doing to the male-male act in the BL fictions”. Is
it adequate to call her completely heterosexual?
From the point of view of defining sex as genital activity, the answer is yes.
At the same time, however, we know that fantasies are deeply involved in humansexuality. My friend’s male-male fantasy, which happens simultaneously with herheterosexual genital act, is as important as the act itself. In this sense, it is not accurate
to consider her 100% heterosexual. In addition, I would argue that a person’s sexual157© International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. ISBN 978-4-905187-01-1 http://imrc.jp/

Mizoguchi Akiko
fantasies, accompanied by her genital act with another person, a masturbatory act, orno act at all, are equally significant for the subject of such fantasies to such an extent
that calling such fantasies “virtual sex” is appropriate (Mizoguchi 2007: 56-62).
Of course, at the most overt level, my friend was engaging in sex with her
husband as “virtual gay men”, just like the male characters in yaoi narratives in her
mind, but at the same time she was aware that the characters were women fans’ agentsand not really representations of real-life gay men. Thus she was psychologically in thecompany of her fellow female fans in the yaoi community while physically she waswith her husband.
Kitahara Minori, who has run a retail business of sex toys for women for twelve
years and who has sold a total of over 30,000 dildos and vibrators, has recently called
many of her customers the “athletic types” (tai’ikukai-kei, literally meaning “the sportsoriented types”) and explained that they “do not feel that they need fantasies. Whatthey need is the switch”, and “the batteries, not the erotic episodes”. She differentiates
such “athletic types” from the “cultural types” (bunka-kei) who “can enjoy eroticism
through fantasies” including yaoi manga and novels (Kitahara 2008). Within the yaoi
community, sexual fantasies are created, provided, and exchanged among yaoi womenfans. Therefore I should add the following to Kitahara’s explanation: Yaoi women fansneed each other, not the switches and batteries. Just as the above-quoted male teenager
can be called a “virtual heterosexual person” even though he never touches his sexual
partner’s body, yaoi fans can be called “virtual lesbians”. Needless to say, being a“virtual lesbian” and being a heterosexual woman are completely compatible. 20
6. Towards the possibilities of activism
This community of women who are bonded through the pleasure of “virtual lesbiansex” has increasingly been functioning as a discursive space that points towards
lesbian, feminist, and queer activism. While more detailed and comprehensive analyses
need to wait for a future opportunity, let me briefly discuss two points.
First, the BL genre in recent years has constantly produced manga and
20 Also, it is possible to praise “love” as a “virtual lesbian” simultaneously as one denounces
lesbians/lesbianism. For an example, see Emikuri (1989: 40).

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illustrated novels which portray characters who come out. In many of such works, theprocesses in which gay characters go through conflicts against and negotiations with
their families, friends, colleagues and local community and are eventually accepted bythem are depicted. Of course, the genre still produces stories in which the protagonists’homosexual orientation/taste is defined as “shameful disposition” (ushirogurai seiheki)
which is used to make the story more dramatic. But at the same time, the genre also
produces stories in which coming-out episodes and the ensuing events are portrayedin such a way that is a few steps ahead of reality in contemporary Japanese society, inthe direction of equal rights for homosexual individuals. For example, I was recently
surprised to read a story that was set in contemporary Japan where, if an employer
terminates a contract with an employee because the latter is revealed as gay, such an
employer would surely receive severe social sanctions (Akizuki 2006: 144). Also,
BL produces such gay characters that are not really found in other genres. Here are
two examples. One twenty-something character responds to his co-workers’ teasing
comment about his gay sexuality with humor (Yorita 2005: 176-177). (In this story,
the protagonist works for his father’s construction business in a rural city and many of
his co-workers are middle-aged.) There is even a gay “parent” who raises “his” twochildren of his late lover, who had been married prior to engaging in a homosexual
relationship (Takeuchi 2003). (His lover had adopted him. He is legally the older
brother in law to the teenagers.) The fact that this protagonist is gay and a good “parent”
is accepted not only by his “children” but also by his supportive neighbors. As I “meet”
these gay characters almost every week, I cannot help but think that the BL genre
today is constantly holding a workshop, as it were, that pursues and experiments withcase studies on gay-friendly society and gay citizens, even though the genre is mostly
populated by heterosexual women. These BL stories with gay characters are different
from those fantastic ones in which the fact that the two male protagonists fall in love is
not even recognized as homosexual by the other characters. Rather, these stories pursue
and present the realistic strategies homosexual individuals can take in contemporary
Japan in order to overcome the existing discrimination and negative stereotypes.
Needless to say, representing the better future constitutes activism in itself even if onlyat the level of representation.
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I do not mean to suggest that these gay characters are free of yaoi formulae.
Rather, such formulae as top/bottom (semé/uké) roles in sex and straight malecharacters falling in love with the members of the same sex still persist in the majorityof the stories. In addition, as the number of gay-identified characters has increased, thefollowing strange episode is increasingly seen in many stories. “The protagonist finds
out that his new business associate is his ex whom he dumped. As he is surprised at thecoincidence, his ex goes ahead and outs him as gay to his colleagues.” (Does this meanthat the protagonist’s ex has told his colleagues that he used to date the protagonist?
How would he explain that he was able to penetrate the protagonist’s closet without
coming out himself?) Such unrealistic yaoi formulae and the representations that reflect
the authors’ activist imagination coexist within the BL genre today, and sometimes even
within one story. The fact remains, however, that many BL authors have been seriously
thinking of what might happen to gay (homosexual) people in contemporary Japanesesociety from the minority position of yaoi sexuality (though many of them would
not be conscious of it). From this involved position, they have been coming up withpossible scenarios in which the gay characters can live a better live in a society that
seems slightly advanced than, but is feasibly extended from, the real one. The mixtureof such an activist impulse and fantastic tropes is admittedly complicated. NeverthelessI suggest that the activist power of such representations does not disappear despite theyaoi formulae. Of course, the readers who are unfamiliar with such formulae mightfind it difficult to continue reading the stories and end up giving up before they getto the activist-oriented contents. For this reason, as an example I refer to a non-BL
novel, Yōkian yawa: sono tantei, hito ni arazu [The Story of the Strange Ghosts: That
Detective Is Not a Human]. Written by BL author Eda Yûri（ 榎 田 尤 利 ）under her
non-BL penname that is pronounced the same but is differentiated by the first namewritten with kana syllabary instead of Chinese characters ( 榎 田 ユ ウ リ ), the story
is set in a fantastic world where human beings and various kinds of yōjin (subspeciesof humans that are endowed with special abilities) coexist (Eda 2009). As far as
the appearances go, yōjin can usually pass as humans. The way this story portrays
discriminations against yōjin in a highly political manner resembles homophobia in
reality so much that it enables the reader to interpret yōjin activism as a metaphor of160© International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. ISBN 978-4-905187-01-1 http://imrc.jp/

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gay activism.
Secondly, the BL genre has increasingly been producing works that problematize
or provoke examinations of the existing gender system and human sexuality more
broadly, that is, marriage, reproduction, heterosexuality, the relationship between
romantic love and the institution of marriage, and the traditional concept of family
versus non-biological family. One recent powerful example is Kotobuki Tarako’s
manga story Sex Pistols (Kotobuki 2004 a, b, 2005 a, b, 2006).21 Set in a world where
30% of humans belong to the madararui (brindled kind), which evolved from various
animals, while 70% belong to enjin (monkey people), which evolved from apes just as
men in reality, the story is dramatic and unpredictable. Significantly, in this fantastic
story’s world, complex strategies are necessary for the “brindled” individual’s effective
reproduction, and a variety of reproductive technologies are available to make them
reproductive regardless of their genders. The reproductive couples include five malemale ones, one female-female one, and a three-some heterosexual one.
Sex Pistols offers numerous topics for discussions among fans because it bothsubverts and enforces heteronormative assumptions concerning love, sex, reproduction,and family. On one level, the fact that male-male couples and even a female-female
couple get married and have children seems to subvert the heteronormative system. It
is simply refreshing to see, even in representation, a renowned male English architectof aristocratic origin clad in a perfect suit recounting his days of nursing his son as his“mother” (fig. 7). But at the same time, this is a world in which everyone lives to fall inlove and reproduce. There is no question that through a complicated double movement,
Sex Pistols manages pleasurable narratives that are appealing and provocative at thesame time. And it generates lively conversations among fans.
A comment such as, “I so love that Norio is cute and Kunimasa manly”, and “I
think it’s a great work. All the characters are so attractive. But, I just can’t stand thateverything resorts to making a child and a marriage”, “Well, yeah, but isn’t it natural?”are made freely among the fans. Discussing the characters’ charms is common amongfans of any genre. However, such fundamental discussions about reproduction,
romantic relationships, marriage, and family are usually avoided as “too serious”,
21 As of the summer of 2010, the story is serialized in Magazine Be-Boy.

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especially among women of different marital status, sexual orientation, educational andpolitical background. As we fellow fans share the minority “taste/orientation” of yaoi
sexuality and primarily form bonds through pleasure as the subjects of sexual desire,or through “virtual lesbian sex” in the yaoi community, we are comfortable enoughexchanging thoughts on numerous issues related to the broad concept of sexuality. In
this sense, it seems reasonable to call the contemporary yaoi community an effective
arena for feminist discourse even though only a small number of women haveproclaimed themselves feminists.
Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ōoku, or The Inner Chambers, is arguably the most criticallyacclaimed manga work by an artist who started her career as a BL author. The story is
still ongoing, but it has already won several prizes including the very prestigious 13th
Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize Grand-Prix Award. In addition, it has been dramatized
into a live-action film, which was theatrically released in Japan in October 2010. It isa Science Fiction period story set in the parallel world of Japan during the feudal Edoera, where the male population has diminished to one forth of the female one due toa strange epidemic. Thus, the shōgun in this feudal Japan as well as the other lords
ruling the country are all women, while theinner chambers are populated by young andbeautiful men whose job is to be the “stud”
to the female shōgun. Artist Yoshinaga andaforementioned author/fan Miura Shion haveagreed that this work is queer to an extent thathas become possible only via shōjo manga(girls’ comics) and BL (Yoshinaga 2007: 86).
If I may add an explanation to their comment,
what they mean by “via BL” does not referto the love scenes between beautiful malecharacters of the inner chambers. (Thoughsome of my undergraduate students who are
Fig 7: Kotobuki Tarako, Sex Pistols. Libre
shuppan Super Be Boy comics, 2006, 14.

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gives the story the status of a BL work, as I have seen in their book reports.) Rather,
examining the fundamental questions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender as shown
above within the framework of entertaining fiction with sexual depictions itself isthe practice cultivated within the BL genre in recent years. Ōoku is a shōjo manga
work and as such, it does not include graphic sex scenes. However, it does convey thecharacters’ sexuality. That is, the way they experience pleasure and pain by engaging insexual acts involving membranes and bodily fluids is portrayed, through deft ellipticaland symbolic techniques typical of shōjo manga, with a sense of physical immediacy.
In addition, the extremely dynamic and intense female shōgun characters make astrong impression on the reader, because their emotional range greatly surpasses thatof shōjo manga heroines. Yoshinaga has portrayed, in her BL stories, a number of malecharacters who are tossed around by and indulged in love and sex as both subject andobject of sexuality, who suffer in the conflict between his identity as a male social
subject and his newly assumed passive (uké) role (and thus a feminine position) in aromance with another man, and who put in all his energy for his profession which hefeels is his vocation, all of them with an uncompromising vigor, sense of humor, andsometimes with splashes of bodily fluid. Through portraying such male characters forover a decade as a BL artist, Yoshinaga has undoubtedly gained such representational
skills that I would liken to the well-trained musculature with a much wider mobility
range than that of a regular woman. It is such a musculature that is mobilized in thecreation of Ōoku. Once again, I have to stress that Ōoku is not a BL work. Judging
from the magazine in which it is serialized, it is a shōjo manga work. Its story line
suggests that it belongs to the context of feminist Science Fiction. Unlike Yoshinaga’s
BL stories, it is read by a cross-over readership of both genders. All this does notdeny the fact, though, that Ōoku is an offspring of BL, or rather, the larger yaoi genre
including the yaoi fanzine (dōjinshi) world, if we recall that Yoshinaga has been its
active participant for many years.
7. The potential of the unconscious queer continuum
I have effectively claimed Ōoku, authored by the openly feminist artist Yoshinaga,22 as
22 Yoshinaga has “come out” as feminist in a published dialogue with Miura Shion (Yoshinaga

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the fruit of yaoi as a feminist and queer forum. But I want to add that we should not bewrongly directed to the developmental schema in which yaoi women fans need to growout of yaoi in order to become overt feminists. Rather, I repeat that the fact that manyyaoi fans think that they are only having fun by reading, chatting, and enjoying theirfantasies and not engaging in activism at all is exactly why the yaoi community has
functioned and still functions as an unprecedented, effective political arena for womenwith the potential for activism. Some might criticize me for thinking too highly of aforum that after 20 years of commercialization has presented only such changes as I
have described in this paper and only a few openly feminists. But I would argue thatthe quick, clear-cut feminist activism is an impossible dream to begin with.
Artist Watanabe Ajia has published an essay comic in which she relates her
experience of attending the Pride March in New York City (fig. 8). In the last frame,
her monologue goes: “It does not matter whether one is homosexual (homo), lesbian(rezu), or heterosexual (hetero)./Gentle feelings./
Let’s live powerfully.” At one level, Watanabe
identifies with the position of the heterosexual inthis sentence. But if we remember how yaoi fansconsider themselves as members of the minority
sexuality of yaoi as I have shown, the sentence
should be interpreted as referring to the queer
continuum that consists of gay, lesbian and yaoi
sexuality. The gentle feelings here should refermore to the gesture to affirm Watanabe herself
as a member of the queer continuum than totolerate gays and lesbians from the position of
the majority. Significantly, I participate in thisqueer continuum both as an out lesbian and a

Fig 8: Watanabe Ajia, “Watanabe Ajiaga

person of yaoi sexuality. In effect we, fellow yaoi iku honba NY geiparêdo (Watanabe
fans, say to each other “Let’s live powerfully”, Ajia Goes to the Gay Parade in NY, aeveryday and exchange “love”.

Mecca [for Gays])” Boy’s Piasu/ Pierce,
November 2008, 109.

2007a: 70).

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It is then very unfortunate that this community of “love”, and by extension
the possibility of productive queer activism involving over a million women, is indanger of diminishing today due to problems such as the so-called “new second-handbookstores”,23 “scanlations”,24 and censorship. As a fan, researcher and educator, I havecome to strongly feel the need to address these imminent problems. For example, I
have started to lecture in class how buying used books contributes to the diminishingof the BL industry. I have seen many startled faces when I explain to the students that
only when they buy new copies their favorite authors and their publishers can gain
some part of the money they pay for the books. (In their minds, they were just engaging
in the “virtuous acts of recycling and saving money.”) While my primary commitmentlies with the larger yaoi genre which today mostly consists of the commercial BL
industry and the fanzine world, I wish to start dialogues with the fans, researchers,
educators, and industry representatives of other genres, as I am certain that many of us
face similar problems regardless of genre. I hope that publishing this paper in the venue
for global researches of comics and manga will encourage such conversations.

23 This seemingly contradictory term, the “new second-hand bookstore”, was coined to refer tosuch second-hand bookstores as Book Off and Amazon Marketplace that emerged in recent years
in order to differentiate them from the traditional second-hand bookstores that usually carry
the titles after a significant duration has passed since their publication. On the contrary, “newsecond-hand bookstores” often carry the titles shortly after their publications, sometimes even on
the same day, and in much larger quantities. Several people who work at the regular bookstores
have informed me that the number of shoplifting cases had obviously increased after the “newsecond-hand bookstores” proliferated.
24 “Scanlation” is an illegal act of scanning manga works, giving translations, and putting themon the web without permission. As for the “scanlation” in the English-language world, a numberof participants including Nicole Nowlin gave me information at the Yaoi-Con 2009 (October 29–
November 1, San Mateo, U.S.) I learned about the recent situation of the “scanlation” problem
in South Korea from Yoshihara Yukari’s presentation whose title can be translated as “Report:
About Copyright Problems in the Korean Comics Industry, Based on an Interview with Won Soo
Yeon.” Yoshihara’s presentation was given at a mini-symposium in conjunction with the She
Draws Comics exhibition (Kyoto International Manga Museum, 2010/02/14).

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kokoromi [Whose and What Kind of “Real” Is It? An Attempt to Sort Out theDiscursive Space of Yaoi]”. In: Imēji & jendā (Image & Gender), Vol.4, pp. 27-53.
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Ghosts: That Detective Is Not a Human]. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten.
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