Beautiful and Innocent Female Same-Sex Intimacy in the Japanese Yuri Genre
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Beautiful and Innocent Female Same-Sex Intimacy in the Japanese Yuri Genre Verena Maser Dissertation aus dem Fachbereich II: Sprach-, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaften der Universität Trier (überarbeitete Fassung) Fach: Japanologie Datum der Disputatio: 27.9.2013 ii In memory of my grandfather Gottlob Maser iii Table of Contents List of Illustrations and Tables iv Acknowledgments v Note on Language vii Introduction. A Lily Is a Lily Is… No Lily? 1 Chapter 1. The Yuri Genre as Site of a Discursive Struggle 9 Part I. Content of the Yuri Genre 31 Chapter 2. “Sisterhood” before World War II: Hana monogatari and Otome no minato 32 Chapter 3. From Esu to Distress: Shīkuretto rabu and Shiroi heya no futari 49 Chapter 4. Fans’ Imagination Galore: Bishōjo senshi Sailor Moon 63 Chapter 5. The Monumental Text: Maria-sama ga miteru 76 Chapter 6. Developments in the Yuri Genre after 2003 92 Part II. Producing Yuri Manga 104 Chapter 7. The Yuri Manga Market in Japan 105 Chapter 8. Interviews with Japanese Manga Magazine Editors 113 Part III. Reception of the Yuri Genre 132 Chapter 9. Characteristics of the Yuri Genre’s Fandom in Japan 133 Chapter 10. Online Survey among the Fans of the Yuri Genre in Japan 141 Conclusion. Yuri at the Crossroads 159 References 163 iv List of Illustrations and Tables Figure 1. Structure of the Yamayurikai (compiled by the author) 78 Table 1. Websites from which Respondents Originated 141 Table 2. Valid Responses 142 Table 3. Respondents’ Age 144 Table 4. Respondent’s Top Five Yuri Titles by “Sexual Identity” 146 Table 5. How Respondents Came into Contact with Yuri Manga/Anime 147 Table 6. How Often Respondents Read/Watched Yuri Manga/Anime 148 v Acknowledgments This is a revised version of my dissertation (2013, Universität Trier, Fachbereich II) with new material and a newly designed overall structure, and would not have been possible without many individuals and institutions. The generous funding from the German Institute of Japanese Studies (DIJ) in 2011/2012 enabled me to conduct research in Japan, and I would like to thank its administrative staff, its researchers and my fellow Ph.D. students for their support. The final stage of the dissertation writing process was funded through a scholarship provided by the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. I would also like to thank Spielwarenmesse eG and its team for encouraging me and for employing me part-time during the initial three months of my research. During my fieldwork in Japan, I was supported by many individuals and institutions. The resources at the Gendai manga toshokan and the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures were invaluable. Their staff was always helpful and answered even the most obscure questions. I would especially like to thank Fujimoto Yukari who was always helpful and answered my every question on manga. I am especially grateful that she invited me on a research trip to the Kikuyō library in Kumamoto prefecture. Its vast collection of pre- and postwar girls’ magazines gave me a hands-on experience that was invaluable. I would also like to thank its librarian Murasaki Shūzō for opening the collection to us and answering all questions. My thanks are also due to all those in Japan who helped me conduct my research on the yuri genre. These are first and foremost all the editors who agreed to be interviewed for this study and all the fans who participated in my online survey. This work would not be what it is without them. I am also indebted to all the fans I met at numerous fan works events and who provided me with insights I would never have gotten had I stayed in front of my computer. I would especially like to thank Hanaka, Michiru and Takamune. Thanks are also due to the pretesters of my survey. A special thank you goes to Takahashi Macoto who sat down with me for an impromptu interview at his art gallery in Chiba prefecture. For their help with Japanese terminology, I would like to thank Akino Yūki, Asano Keiko, Nishioka Nami and Sugimoto Eiko. Help with the English version of the fan survey was graciously provided by Jon Dodd. I also thank Asano Yūki for answering my every question on the translation of Japanese terms. vi This study began in 2008 when I started researching for my M.A. thesis (accepted by Universität Trier in 2009). I presented preliminary results at the conference “Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics” (2010), at the DIJ History & Humanities Study Group (2012), and at the German language Japanese studies conference (2012). I would like to thank all those who commented on these occasions. I would especially like to thank the participants of the 8th EAJS PhD workshop 2012 at Newcastle University for their feedback. The numerous drafts have been read by many people and I want to thank them for their comments and suggestions: Wolfgang Bäcker, Carolin Fleischer, Denisa Hejlova, Björn-Ole Kamm, Marissa Maurer and Christian Weisgerber. I would also like to thank all those who discussed my thesis with me for their feedback: Ruth Achenbach (BAMM!), Olga Antononoka, Aaron Berthold, Erica Friedman, Gerrit Fröhlich, Barbara Holthus, Imada Erika, Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, Michael Jäckel, Doris Lang, Nele Noppe, Ronald Saladin, Sabine Schenk, Sabine Schneider, Jolyon Thomas and James Welker. An especially big thank you goes to Ernest Ngai and Patrick Murphy for proof reading. I would like to thank my dissertation supervisors Hilaria Gössmann and Shiro Yoshioka for their always helpful comments and for their support and encouragement. Last but not least, I have to thank my family and especially my parents for their never ending support. You never let me down and you are always encouraging me. vii Note on Language Japanese names appear with the family name first with the exception of Japanese scholars who have published in English and who are cited with their family name last. The spelling of Japanese words follows the revised Hepburn system, but macrons are omitted from words common in English, such as Tokyo. I give the English title of fictional works, if available, with the Japanese title given in brackets at the first mention. I however usually cite from the Japanese version. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. Since manga and shōsetsu do not always contain punctuation in direct speech, I have added it as I thought best. 1 Introduction. A Lily Is a Lily Is… No Lily? “I think, therefore yuri is.” (Kurata 2011, 30) This is the credo of Keisuke, the male main character of Kurata Uso’s manga Yuri danshi (Yuri males). Keisuke is a fan of the so- called yuri (“lily”) genre in Japanese popular culture. It comprises texts1 about female same- sex intimacy and is the topic of this study. I begin with this credo because it alludes to three important topics of this study: It is a reference to its basic theory that genres are not inherent qualities of texts, but are rather the products of a discourse. It further shows that fans play an important role for the yuri genre since it is their imagination that mostly forms it. Finally, on a meta-level the credo is also an example for the importance of manga editors since it was originally made up by Nakamura Seitarō, the editor in charge of Yuri danshi (161–62). When I first came to Japan in 2005, I was eager to find manga about love between girls. Manga about love between boys (a genre variously known as boys’ love/BL, shōnen ai [boy love] or yaoi)2 had experienced a boom on the German manga market, so I was convinced that there should also be a corresponding genre about girls. It took me almost six months to find the yuri genre which back then was not yet fully established on the Japanese market. The situation has changed tremendously ever since. When I came back to Japan to conduct research for this study in 2011/12, I was no longer able to buy every yuri text I came across— my office shelf was just not big enough. Scholarly research has not yet caught up with this trend. While they boys’ love genre is a vibrant field of research (e.g. Levi, McHarry, and Pagliassotti 2008; McLelland et al. 2015),3 neither narratives about female-same sex intimacy or “female homosexuality” nor the yuri genre (or even their audiences or producers) have received much scholarly attention. The few studies that do exist have mostly been devoted to the texts’ content, often from a feminist point of view. An example for this is Fujimoto Yukari ([1998] 2008), the first to address the fictional portrayal of female same-sex intimacy in Japanese popular culture. She argues that the stereotypical depiction of failing intimate relationships between females in shōjo (girls’) manga from the 1970s to the 1990s is based on the assumption that females can find positive reassurance only through a male, and never through another female (243–305).4 James Welker (2006, 2010a, 2011) expands on Fujimoto’s argument with concepts of feminist theories and finds that only science-fiction allows for gender disruptions. A different approach is taken by Deborah Shamoon (2008, 2012) who writes on Japanese girls’ culture and homosociality in early twentieth century fiction for girls. By incorporating the texts’ 2 content, their production and reception, she argues that these early narratives serve as a framework for understanding later portrayals of homosocial relationships in manga. Studies that explicitly discuss the yuri genre are still rare. Kumata Kazuo (2005) focuses on Japanese male fans of the genre and compares them with Japanese female fans of the boys’ love genre.