Kaonashi Ga Suki

As I’ve mentioned before, my boyfriend works for a manga publishing company. This weekend he’s flying to San Francisco for Yaoicon, a convention dedicated to yaoi manga. His company is hosting a panel discussion since they carry this product line. What is yaoi manga, you ask? Well, here’s a brief description. To see the full description, see here.

What is Yaoi?

Yaoi is a Japanese publishing genre that encompasses manga, novels and short stories produced by female artists and writers for the enjoyment of female readers. It’s a fantasy form which focuses on the romantic, emotional, and above all, sexual relationships of guys together. The word yaoi is derived from the first syllables of each word in the expression, yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi, which means “no peak, no point, no meaning,” and originally referred to badly drawn self-published fan comics (doujinshi). Yaoi is similar to the American genre of slash (m/m pairings based on popular tv series, movies or books), but typically with more of a visual aspect.

Boy’s Love (BL) is the usual term used by the Japanese publishing industry to categorize works focusing on male/male relationships marketed at women. Many Westerners use yaoi as a catchall term to indicate any story that includes a male/male relationship and is linked to Japan, be it commercial manga, anime, games, game-based slash fiction, English-language fan fiction, fan art, etc., just as BL is used as an umbrella term in Japan. In Japan the term yaoi typically refers to just doujinshi and sex scenes. Referring to a commercial work as yaoi, or to a shoujo (girls’) or BL manga artist as a yaoi artist may be considered offensive.

I find it interesting that yaoi manga is aimed at girls, because it makes one think- why on earth would heterosexual girls want to read about gay males’ love? Frederik L. Schodt’s book, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga, offers a suggestion. In a quote by Toshihiko Sagwa, an editor at a manga company in Japan:

The stories are about males, but the characters are really an imagined ideal that combine assumed or desired attributes of both males and females. Thus the heroes can be beautiful and gentle, like females, but without the jealousy and other negative qualities that women sometimes associate with themselves. The women readers are also attracted to the friendship between males…On the surface these characters are gay males, but in reality they are a manifestation of females; they’re like young women wearing character costumes.

On a related note, I heard that another reason yaoi is popular with Japanese women and girls is because the male characters represent the ideal, fantasy man, their ideal boyfriends or husbands- much like how many American women in the early 90’s felt that the muscular, dashing, golden maned Fabio was their ideal dream man. Anyway, Japanese men are not known for their romantic, sensitive side. I once asked a male student of mine how guys tell their girlfriends that they love them, and he started laughing. As I recall, he said something like, “We Japanese men…we don’t say that sort of thing….that’s only in the movies.”

I wonder though…while yaoi is widely accepted among Japanese females, are they really as accepted by American females? Somehow I don’t envison American adult women reading yaoi manga., but perhaps junior high girls who have never dated? Japanese American females? Really shy females? I don’t know.