Yaoi is, according to aestheticism.com ‘s definition:
“Strictly speaking, m/m stories, usually in cartoon format, drawn by fans using Other People’s charas”.
Here is wikipedia’s entry:
“a publishing genre which focuses on male/male homosexual relationships and is marketed at females. The genre originated in Japan and encompasses manga, anime, novels and dōjinshi. In Japan, this genre is called “Boys’ Love” or simply “BL”, and “yaoi” as a genre name is mostly used by western fans. Yaoi has spread beyond Japan; yaoi material is available in the United States, as well as other Western and Eastern nations worldwide.”
What is interesting with yaoi is the fact that –at least in Japan, where it originates and still holds a colossal publishing industry- it is created and read exclusively by women, most of them heterosexual. Moreover, in the western world “slash fiction” has existed for many decades on the underground, once again written and read by females. This makes yaoi not an aspect of queer culture, but rather an expression of a late 20th-early 21st century young women.
Before proceeding into thoughts and views on the subject, I’d like to explain some additional terms, in order to familiarize those who have no clue of the yaoi or the manga industry.
Diference between Yaoi-Shonen Ai-Tanbi-BL-Dojinshi (again with some help from aestheticism.com). Skip this if you’re more interested in the analysis.
Boys’ Love
Boys’ love (BL) is the common term used by the publishing industry to categorize works focusing on male/male relationships marketed at women. Historically these works were referred to as June, but most commercial works are now called BL. The change in terminology was probably due to the negative connotations of the term yaoi and the association with a specific publication of the term June.
BL is an extension of shoujo and Lady’s categories, but is considered a separate category. The BL category is very broad. It is an umbrella term that includes
- both commercial and amateur works
- works with no sex
- works with sex
- doujinshi about adolescents with little or no sex
- works in all types of media – manga, anime, novels, games, and drama CDs
- characters of all ages (not limited to ‘boys’)
- related terms such as yaoi, shounen-ai, tanbi, June, and original June
However, it does not include gay publications.
Boys’ love is not referred to as shounen-ai. Boys’ love and shounen-ai are two different terms. Boys’ love is also referred to as BL, boys’, boys-mono. Punctuation and capitalization vary, so you will see boys love, boys’ love, boy’s love, bl, BL. We have chosen to standardize on boys’ love and BL.
While early fans of BL were probably fans of doujinshi, most Japanese fans on the net these days appear to be fans of commercial BL work – there are over a hundred such works published every month, more than two-thirds of them novels and the rest manga. BL novels are immensely popular – the number of novels published each month outnumbers manga tankoubon by about 2 to 1.
Some Westerners object to the definition of the category as being written for women. The target market is determined by advertising and is primarily women, although there are publications, such as Zettai Reido, which have multiple target audiences. That does not mean that men don’t read BL, merely that the audience the advertisers, editors, and authors have in mind is women.
Note that BL can also be used as a content descriptor/trope term. When used this way, BL works cross multiple marketing categories.
Shounen-ai
Shounen-ai is an obsolete term. Shounen-ai refers to stories about strong relationships between pubescent or pre-pubescent boys. The stories featured angsty, poetic, platonic or romantic relationships. It is used only to point to shoujo manga written in the 70′s and early 80′s by authors such as Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, etc. (Titles such as Gymnasium in November, Heart of Thomas, and Song of Wind and Trees.) Shounen-ai is no longer written, ceased to exist as a sub-category of shoujo long ago, and this term has long since fallen into disuse. Later stories with male/male sexual relationships are termed yaoi, tanbi, june, or boys’ love.
Shounen-ai is not the same term as boys’ love.
The current common usage of shounen-ai is to refer to adults who like young boys (i.e. pedophiles).
Tanbi
Tanbi is no longer written. Tanbi is a word meaning ‘the worship and pursuit of beauty’. It was used to describe the early male/male stories that mainly ran in June. June was heavily influenced by a well-known author and literary critic who used multiple pen names, so many of the stories utilized a high literary style. These stories came to be called tanbi – stories written for beauty and pursuit of beauty only. Tanbi style includes flowery language and uncommon kanji/words, which makes it a difficult read for foreigners.
The tanbi style is mainly a thing of the past. It has been replaced by BL stories – mass written, easy-to-read stories. Even authors known for their tanbi works like Yoshihara Rieko (Ai no Kusabi) now write mainstream BL and no longer use tanbi style. It’s probably because tanbi, like its name, pursues beauty both in language and storyline. It’s not simple and fast-paced like the modern BL stories.
Tanbi is like shounen-ai, no longer written but important in the evolution of modern BL.
Tanbi sometimes is used interchangeably with boys’ love by bookstores, but that’s an old usage. See June for further information.
Yaoi
The term yaoi was originally used to point to badly drawn doujinshi. It later came to be used to point to doujinshi with male/male sex scenes. It now can also be used to refer to sex scenes in any BL manga, or indicate that such scenes exist in a work, or to refer to commercial works that consist mostly of such scenes. For example, Zettai Reido, Boy’s Pierce, and Comic June are referred to as BL or yaoi interchangeably.
For a while, the word June was used for original male/male stories and manga, but since June is a trade name for a commercial publication, it has been largely replaced with BL. Commercially published works that many Westerners call yaoi fall into the category of BL in Japan.
Many Westerners use yaoi as an umbrella term to mean any story that includes any male/male relationship and is linked to Japan – commercial manga, anime, games, game-based slash fiction, English fan fiction, fan art, etc. just as BL is used as an umbrella term in Japan. In Japan the term yaoi is limited to doujinshi and sex scenes, because of its negative connotations. Referring to a commercial work as yaoi may be considered offensive. Referring to a commercial BL, Lady’s, or shoujo mangaka as a yaoi mangaka may also be offensive. Many titles which are shoujo, such as Yami no Matsuei by Matsushita Youko and Bronze by Ozaki Minami, are categorized by Westerners as yaoi.
Shounen-ai and tanbi are terms that are no longer used, and are of historical interest only.
So, what are the reasons behind this? After making some research on the internet, I’ve discovered the following theories, which might be true, in part, whole or in combinations for many of the readers.
Women read yaoi because they are drawn by:
- the beauty and the distance of the characters
- the idealistic depictions of love
- the exclusion of females from the relationship, thus, the exclusion of being threatened
- the idea of sex between males, in the same way lesbian erotica is extremely popular among males
- the social/psychological aspect of watching how people function in different situations
Truth is, yaoi doesn’t speak about real gay relationships. It’s hardly even close. It is more of a woman’s view on how could or should every relationship be. Yaoi characters are always ideal males and many readers come to think that this might be the man of their dreams (even if according to the story, he has no interest in women at all).
So what’s the difference between heterosexual romance stories, once again marketed to the female public? First, it’s the idea of perfect love, of love crossing the restrictive lines imposed by society. Again: impossible and forbidden romances are common to be seen in heterosexual situations, too (way too common, actually). Why would women be drawn so much by depictions of homosexual relationships then?
Besides the beauty of the characters, and the idea of turning on (which I have no clue why it happens, neither with lesbian erotica, but it does indeed), we come to the psychological factor: women being excluded from the relationship. This, given a thought, might be very worrying.
A feminist’s view on yaoi
Where are all the women?
Significant (and sometimes not even insignificant) female characters are nearly non-existent in yaoi. If they do exist, they’re usually tools for the story to progress, they are low-witted and formed entirely by female clichés.
This might be a result of the tendency in yaoi depicting ideal males. In such a manga who would care for a woman character, who might also be the one to capture the protagonist’s heart, even if she is stupid and irritating – which they usually are? Indeed, most anime and manga don’t have exceptionally interesting or strong female characters, so that female public might be drawn to and identify with. So if it is to be a girl that would get on one’s nerves, it’s better to be another boy. Thus, the threat is over.
In addition to this, the protagonists always suffer from the patriarchal society as much as women suffer, so the reader may identify to both characters (since there is no female-one involved), depending on her needs. You can either feel like the “strong” character, or like the “weak” one, without remorse: they’re both men. No sexism. No remorse.
A more worrying aspect of the non-existent females in yaoi manga, might be an inner desire of readers for women to completely disappear, to stop being women and thus discriminated and threatened. On a first level, this might sound liberating, as a wish for women to be treated as mere human beings. On a second basis, though, the total abscence of women and the actual content of yaoi is entirely dissatisfying.
The limits of the sexual experiment
And here we come to our second point. Some proclaim the unconventionality of yaoi, of a rebellion of women against society’s perceptions of love, gender and romance. It is indeed a step for women, to accept fantasies they might have had, to transgress some of the conventionalities that have been seeded deep inside everyone’s minds. It’s like mocking patriarchy on its face, turning men into puppets -the same puppet roles patriarchy has socially imposed- on one hand, and eliminating genitalia-defined gender on the other.
But here are the limits of the yaoi genre: it is much repetitive, much similar to the norms and prejudices we bear in our own, heterosexual, real lives. Most sub-genres contain sex only, with just a typical, simple storyline, being thus porn. Not really accusable, but I don’t see anything liberating in that either. It is more of a sexual experiment for women, but as it’s proved entirely brainless.
In addition, harlequin romance clichés are sometimes suffocating, resembling something you could easily watch in a typical soap opera. Most importantly, though, society’s core notions on female-male relations, both social and sexual, are represented in exactly the same way (and sometimes worse) in the yaoi world.
Abuse: without remorse?
Here I return to my previously mentioned point: ‘There is a chance to feel like the “strong” character, or like the “weak” one, without the feeling of abuse.’
Let me expose a personal experience. Having read one or two volumes of Ayano Yamane’s “Viewfinder”, an extremely popular BL manga with stunning artwork and daring sex scenes, I experienced something for the first time in my life. In this manga, the young protagonist is repeatedly raped and abused by the other two. He ends up falling for one of them.
Now. How does this sound? To tell you the truth, what I experienced after reading this manga was excactly an unnerving feeling of abuse. Yes, I felt abused. I subconsciously identified myself with the young protagonist and I indeed felt like being raped several times. Not only this, but I felt awful, while he was later on masturbating, thinking of his rapist (!).
Well. I have no words for this. If the young male were a woman, it would be outrageous, wouldn’t it? So turning him into a male lets us fantasize freely about being raped by a cruel and masculine figure which we end up falling in love and thus we don’t feel guilty?
What infuriates me is that I have friends who adore this manga, and with them hundreds of other women. I assume, then, that they identify themselves with the abused or the abuser protagonist and enjoy it? How am I supposed to feel comfortable with this as a human first, and as a woman second? I think that women who enjoy such stories have a strong need for confidence. It is but the same “willing victimization” myth all over again but we have removed the guilt, making this experiment a very dangerous one.
So, not only the concept seme-uke (energetic-passive in abuser-abused terms) reproduces to the extreme everything we’re sick of, but also examples as the previous one, which supposedly cross the boundaries and search for an escape for women’s fantasies, actually submerge them deeper into a constant self-hating, mutilating and castrating them completely from a chance to self-realization.
In my opinion, there are great stories out there, but, alas, few indeed. Yaoi is an extraordinary phenomenon and part of women’s voice, worth of more attention. There are no women characters, but all characters are from and for women. It’s an entirely new way of interpreting genders in literature.
