Boy's Love and Women's Something

The most popular form of representation of homosexuality in Japanese culture is the boys’ love genre in manga, Japanese comics. It goes by other names such as BL, yaoi and shounen-ai (boy love). Boys’ love depicts stories that focuses on the romantic and/or sexual relationships between young boys and men. The genre is known for being a female-gendered space – it is written and illustrated by predominantly female ‘mangakas,’ a term for the author/illustrator of manga, for a female audience (McLelland, 2005, p. 11). This is contrary to the western context where it is assumed that the dominant consumer of comics, especially ones of pornography, are men. As a matter of fact, in Japan, there are numerous pornographic content provided for and created by women (Jones, 2002, p. 5).

It is enjoyed by many fans in Japan but also by enthusiasts all over the world. Yaoi has become a global phenomenon, producing a diverse amount of media, including manga, doujinshi, anime, fictional stories written by fans, fan artwork, commercial and fanmade videos, video games, audio drama CDs, movies, and cosplay (McHarry, 2011). In the United States, yaoi mangas is stocked up in major chains of bookstores including Barnes & Noble and Borders (McLelland, 2005, p. 16). Furthermore, according to a poll conducted in 2017 by June Magazine, the earliest and ongoing yaoi magazine in Japan, more than fifty percent of fans of anime, Japanese animation, enjoy the boys’ love genre (MacDonald, 2017).

Despite its global success, yaoi remains controversial amongst different social spheres due to its biased representation of homosexual males. Boys’ love is a genre that is created by the minds of heterosexual females, a different gender and sexual orientation of gay men which are the subjects explored. By employing a historical, legal and homosexual male perspective, this paper will use a multidisciplinary approach in exploring how boys’ love presents an unrealistic presentation of male homosexuality to young girls who are the genre's primary audience.

Historical Perspective

The phenomenon of the genre’s representation of male homosexuality can be understood by exploring the environment in which yaoi is brewed. In the twentieth century, Japanese comics, predominantly written by men for male audiences, emerged. Japanese men’s comics feature sex as a commodity and women constantly being coerced into the sexual victim role. Men depicted in the comics were laced with attributes of sexual addiction, violence, aggression and narcissism. The comics advocated that sex should be provided for men by women (McLelland, 2005, p. 15).

For example, the Japanese comic, Ryoota, written in 1997 by Hatanaka Jun, presents a story about a young high school boy who spies and sexually harasses his female teacher at a field trip to a hot spring. At nighttime, he forces the drunken teacher to perform fellatio. The next night, she conveniently forgets about the incident. Throughout the story, the teacher is actually seen enjoying and welcoming the sexual harassment and rape.

In reaction to the ubiquitous male-centric comics, female mangaka began publishing their stories within the genre, shoujo, in the mid-twentieth century. Not only did the genre choose to not feature sexual denigration and exploitation of women, but it did not feature much sexual exploration at all. Shoujo was targeted towards a very young female audience and presented light-hearted stories about heterosexual love often set in elementary, middle or high school (McLelland, 2000, p. 15). Shoujo consisted of a "contrived and formulaic" blueprint of romance stories between heterosexual partners (McLelland, 2005). It was too narrow of a genre that did not satiate women’s desire for a variety of subject matters and topics of exploration in manga.

So, shounen-ai was developed. Shounen-ai, especially works created by the "Fabulous 49ers," a group of distinguished female artists including Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, Yamagishi Ryoko and Kihara Toshie, paved a wider culture for what shoujo could become (Pagliassotti, Nagaike, & McHarry, 2013, p. 1). The genre allowed for the expression of female sexuality for Japanese girls and women who experienced constricting patriarchal pressure to fulfill their gender roles during that period. So, the genre led to women finding different outlets to express their sexuality and desires in the form of art and storytelling of male homosexuality. Furthermore, yaoi allowed for a safe space where gender can be "subverted or overturned" (McLelland, 2000, p. 19).

The works produced in the early boys’ love genre, in particular, developed the bishounen. They are boys who possess the femininity and sentimentality usually associated with a woman but still possess the advantage of having the body of a man (McLelland, 2000, p. 13). They did not resemble gay men depicted in gay or heterosexual stories and media, and not like real gay boys and men. The bishounen were considered neither male or female but rather constituted a “third sex/gender” (Welker, 2011, p. 213). These young boys are frequently portrayed as victims in violent, sexual conflicts and interactions that women are usually subjugated to (McLelland, 2000, p. 21). One example is the 1993 manga entitled, A Cruel God Rules, by Hagio Moto. It is about a young boy who experience constant sexual abuse by his stepfather for years but is unable to tell his mother the truth in fear of destroying her dream of having a perfect marriage and family (McLelland, 2000, p. 22). By placing the bishounen in the role of the victim, BL allows female readers to not only identify with the characters but also become a removed spectator rather than a prey usually sexually exploited in comics produced by male mangakas.

The historical perspective of yaoi allows for the exploration of the environment in which the genre emerges. The genre becomes not simply about the stories of romantic and sexual relationships between beautiful boys, but importantly, it becomes a solution to the lack of stories targeted towards young girls and women and a haven for women to express their sexuality in the absence of men. Though it is this absence of the heterosexual and gay male readers and mangakas that boys’ love, a genre of stories about gay men, becomes controversial.

Legal and Civil Rights Perspective

A key perspective of looking at the phenomenon of the representation of homoerotic relationships in yaoi is through that of the law. Japanese censorship laws are restrictive and very specific. It forbids explicit depictions of the genitalia but ignoring the general graphic scene. So, Japanese manga are able to depict a variety of sexual scenarios so long as the genitalia is not drawn, drawn as another phallic object, or covered by drawing a body part over it (McLelland, 2005, p. 12). These censorship laws also apply to the boys' love genre. BL encompasses many different types of subgenres, including bara, the depiction of muscular, bestiality and shota, the depiction of romantic and/or sexual relationships between younger boys (McLelland, 2005, p. 15). And young female minors make up that majority of the audience of boys’ love. A reason why censorship laws exist is to protect the moral innocence of children from the unrealistic representation of sex and sexual practices in media.

Furthermore, the genre can be considered pornography because it includes manga that feature hardcore sexual acts between gay men. Yaoi narratives include a wide variety of sexual activities such as hand jobs, fellatio, anal penetration and S&M. Its hardcore nature and themes such as "rape as an expression of love" in yaoi could prove troubling when it is absorbed by young female minors (McLelland, 2005, p. 12). Moreover, yaoi, or “YAma nashi, Ochi nashi, Imi nashi” translates to “no climax, no point, no meaning” (McHarry, 2011). The genre, in its very nature, emphasizes sex scenes of the bishounen more than the plot. Its hardcore nature and exploration of themes such as Stockholm syndrome, a phenomenon where the victim falls in love or sympathizes with his or her captor, present in yaoi could prove ethically and legally troubling when absorbed by under-aged female minors (McLelland, 2005, p. 17).

The legal perspective of yaoi provides insight to how the genre is scrutinized in the eyes of the Japanese government. The Japanese government explicitly guarantees its citizens with human rights in the 1946 Constitution of Japan that officially took on human rights, with Article 11 that specifically includes a provision on “fundamental human rights” ("Overview: Human Rights in Japan"). With the purpose of protecting its minors, the government censor pornographic materials, including yaoi. However, the genre is a female-dominated space that is consumed by young female girls. When these young girls encounter real homosexual boys or men, they would compare them to the bishounen stereotype or unrealistic hardcore sexual activities.

Gender and Sexual Orientation Perspective

Another important perspective to view boys’ love’s unrealistic representation of male homosexuality is through the studies of gender and sexual orientation. Compared to other countries, the United States is touted as a socially progressive nation. However, with the recent storm of news of powerful men sexually harassing and/or abusing females in the United States and the rise of the #MeToo movement as a result, it is clear that gender inequality is still prevalent.

When looking at the gender discrimination of Japan, patriarchal standards become more intense. Japanese society has a "strict double standard" pertaining to sexual expression of men and women (McLelland, 2000, p. 14). These women experience intense pressure to be married in their twenties, and the only sanctioned expression of female sexuality exists within marriage.

Furthermore, female sexuality does not exist outside its association with the sex trade or reproduction (McLelland, 2000, p. 14). With the advent of shounen-ai, everything in the genre becomes a reaction to the structured model of Japanese society. By reading stories about homosexual bishounen who are feminine and androgynous, women can vicariously experience love and romance without the pressure of marriage and or childbirth involved. Women to view the bishounen as an idealized version of themselves as these androgynous figures retain their femininity and sensibilities (McLelland, 2005, p. 22). The BL comics actually advocate for how gender should be: "negotiable, malleable, [and] a site of play" (McLelland, 2000, p. 23). With BL featuring character roles of seme (the top or masculine role) and uke (the bottom or feminine role), females have the option to share the experience of either roles ((Pagliassotti, Nagaike, & McHarry, 2013, p. 2).

Compared to the heterosexual feminine perspective, the gay male perspective views yaoi as a less liberating medium. The dispute among different social and gender spheres about the politics of the representation of gay men in boys’ love manga is called yaoi ronsou, or yaoi dispute (Lumsing, 2006). One of the most opposing voices is that of Satou Masaki, a gay activist/civil servant/drag queen. In 1992, he openly attacked yaoi and female readers and authors in an article in Choisir, a feminist magazine that discusses female sexuality. Satou delved into how yaoi manga did little for the rights of gay men and actually injured their human rights. He attacked BL of promoting a distorted, rose-colored representation of gay men and calling men who do not fit into that stereotype as "garbage" (Lumsing, 2006). He also accused these women as being similar to okoge, or fag hag, who are women who court gay men to be their friends (Lumsing, 2006).

Other male authors echo Satou Masaki's concerns. Hirosegawa Susumu, a Japanese gay male mangaka, insisted that yaoi manga often lack realism because female authors, by the nature of their gender, do not know how men feel and thus create unrealistic depictions of gay men (Lumsing, 2006). Tagame Gengoro, one of the most influential gay manga authors in Japan, felt like an outsider when approaching yaoi manga. He fortified the lack of realism in BL by giving an example of a story that showed a boy's anus becoming wet, simulating a vagina when a female is sexually excited (Lumsing, 2006).

Barazoku, first published in 1971 and edited by Itō Bungaku, was a magazine that "celebrated many types of male homosexual desire and sexual practices" and fostered a strong sense of community of men who referred to themselves as “homo,” gei (gay), or members of the barazoku, or rose tribe (Welker, 2011, p. 215). Many of the shounen-ai fans being introduced to the magazine came with limited knowledge from yaoi and other gay magazines that consisted of a "rose-colored understanding" of Japanese homosexual men. With this new audience of Barazoku, the blurring of the line between yuri, a term coined by Itou Bungaku to denote female homosexuality, and bara occurred. Yuri began to be confused with female attraction to gay men instead of female homosexual desire (Welker, 2011, p. 220-221). These women conflated their love for the genre with love for real homosexual men.

Self-Reflection

After researching the topic, I have gained a wider perspective of the boys’ love and insight to my own reasons for enjoying the genre. As an avid reader of yaoi and part of the heterosexual female-dominated community, my perspective of the genre has always been a personal and first-person. After learning about the historical aspect of the genre I adore, I greatly share the experiences of the Japanese women who self-projected themselves onto the characters they read about. I enjoy the type of relationship that is explored in yaoi that is untethered by Asian cultural pressures to marry, bear a child and bear a family. It is difficult to talk to my parents about my future without one that doesn’t involve a husband and child. In BL, I can escape reality to experience a world where love does not involve any reference to reproduction.

I felt that using a multidisciplinary approach allowed me to view this subject more holistically. Especially as a person who has prior knowledge about the topic, I was able to broaden my personal perspective on the topic. It reminds me of how in an art museum, I must walk around a sculpture to be able to get a grasp on all of its characteristics. However, forcing myself to use a third person point of view felt limiting as I wanted to interject my own experiences and beliefs in almost every sentence I wrote.

 I want to apply this approach to any topic I will challenge, especially one that I am passionate about, in the future. I feel that it is important to learn about different perspectives to get a more holistic grasp on the subject.

Conclusion

By analyzing the historical, legal and gender perspectives of the genre, it is safe to say that yaoi’s depiction of homosexual men has become more open-minded and diverse than just than that of bishounen and of hardcore sexual acts. Many BL manga has shifted towards addressing the realistic struggles of homosexuality that mirrors the real concerns of Japanese gay males. With yaoi increasingly becoming more of a global phenomenon, the issues that boys’ love represent will reach audiences of different nationalities and ages, making them analyze their own country’s representation of male homosexuality.

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