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Home , Animation, Kaze to Ki no Uta, The Heart of Thomas, Yaoi

CHAPTER

PERVERSE SEXUALITIES, PERVERSE DESIRES: REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMALE FANTASIES AND AS DIRECTED AT WOMEN

There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a source within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. Audre Lorde, “The Use of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” In contemporary Japanese society a particular of manga, called yaoi, can be characterized as female fantasies about idealized male homosex- ual relationships. These yaoi comic books are mostly produced by female authors; their readership is also overwhelmingly female. In discussions of this genre, the origin of the term yaoi has been a significant topic of debate. hypothesis is that this term stems from the phrase ‘yama- nashi ochinashi iminashi’ (no , no ending, no meaning); this phrase is considered to have originally been a cynical remark, used to criticize works in which artists dedicated themselves to depicting pornographic sex scenes, while ignoring functions and structures. Another hypothesis is that the term yaoi conjures up erotic elements, specifically the anal intercourse of male homosexuality, from the phrase ‘yamete oshiri ga itaikara’ (Stop, my ass hurts!).1 Whatever the true origin of the term may be, the yaoi genre, as indicates, is female-oriented (both producers and consumers), and thus deeply intertwined with what Alice Jardine calls the gynesis of the female subconscious. The particular revolutionary wave of yaoi can be traced to the latter half of the 1970s, when Kaoru Kurimoto published Mayonaka no tenshi (Midnight Angel, 1979) and manga artists categorized as 1949-ers (the 24-nen gumi, referring to the year of their birth)2 issued a succession of

1 See Azusa Nakajima’s Tanatosu no kodomotachi: kajō tekiō no seitaigaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1998) for a more detailed explanation of these hypotheses. Such terms as tanbi mono (aesthetic ), bishōnen mono (fiction about beautiful boys), june mono (June-type fiction), and bōizu rabu mono (boys’ love fiction) are also used for this genre. 2 The 24th year of the Shōwa period corresponds to 1949. 104 chapter seven male homosexual works, now highly acclaimed, such as ’s (The Song of the Wind and the Tree, 1976), ’s Tōma no shinzō (, 1974), and Ryōko Yamagishi’s Hii- zuru tokoro no tenshi (The Prince of the Land of , 1980). In 1979 a new magazine, June (pronounced ‘Juné’; Sun Publishing), first emerged as a pioneer venue for female fantasies of male homosexuality. Nowadays the yaoi genre, which includes a large number of comic books, novels, and weekly and monthly magazines dealing with male same-sex relationships, occupies a large sector of the Japanese book mar- ket, with many manga artists consistently attaining the bestseller list. Many female yaoi readers are also enthusiastic about dōjinshi (amateur coterie magazines),3 which often the male characters in popular shōnen (boys’) manga and , pairing them in homosexual rela- tionships. In this sense the formation of yaoi dōjinshi thematically paral- lels that of the American ‘/’ (slash) movement, which originated in the fan-fiction recasting of Star Trek characters in homosexual pairings.4 Because of its nature, yaoi discourse provides various theoretical per- spectives from which is possible to analyze the process of gender-creation and other controversial aspects of different cultural backgrounds. Before discussing theory, however, it is necessary to establish the parameters of yaoi . Broadly speaking, yaoi can be divided into a number of firmly established narrative forms: toshishita zeme (in which a younger partner penetrates an older man); shota mono (works about love and sex between young adolescent males); rīman mono (works about business- men, short for sararīman [salaryman, i.e. businessman] mono); gakuen

3 These are similar to ‘zines’ in North America. See Sharon Kinsella’s “Japanese Subcul- ture in the : and the Amateur Manga Movement,” Journal of Japanese Studies 24:2 (1998) and Sharalyn Orbaugh’s “Creativity and Constraint in Amateur Manga pro- duction,” U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 25 (2003) for more details about dōjinshi (including yaoi dōjinshi) marketing. Eiji Ōtsuka’s analysis of yaoi dōjinshi should also be mentioned here. Ōtsuka’s theoretical perspective on yaoi involves an examination of the concept of monogatari (narrative) in a capitalist consumer society. His focus is on the duplicated system of yaoi dōjinshi, in which the basic narrative (main program) is copied from an original, grand-narrative (e.g. original shōnen manga or ), and that narrative is limitlessly rearranged, retold, and parodied. Ōtsuka argues that, in the dominant capitalist consumer society, consumers’ orientation is not limited to consumption; consumers con- sume narratives, and are at the same time interested in producing (arranging) narratives. According to Ōtsuka, yaoi dōjinshi typically materialize the narrative concept of consumer capitalism. See Ōtsuka’s Teihon monogatari shōhi ron (Tokyo: , 2001). 4 See Joanna Russ’s “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love” and Constance Penley’s “, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of ” for more details about the / (slash) zine movement.