Yaoi Research Articles

Femininisation in Chinese Danmei

Danmei, the Chinese version of Boys Love, denotes a literature genre featuring male-male romantic/homoerotic relationships produced for and consumed by women. The history of danmei can be traced to imperial China when male homosexuality involving feminine elements was embraced by elite culture. Currently, a prodigious amount of danmei narratives are characterised by femininisation of uke and even seme protagonists, embodied by characters’ epicene appearance, effeminate manners, transvestism and male pregnancy. Femininisation in danmei, however, is discrepant from fangirls’ act of nisu that depicts male idols as girls. The rationale for femininisation in danmei is partially attributed to female writers’ (un)intentional deviation from partner preferences of homosexual males, impinged on by the prevailing aesthetic trend of ‘soft masculinity’ and readers’ taste. More significantly, femininising male characters enables danmei creators to manipulate traditional gender roles and intensify the female gaze. Potentially, femininisation is the result of the increasing attention and readership of danmei. To cite this article (7th APA style): Shahid, S. E. (2021). Distorted Mirror of Advertising in a Muslim Society: A Study of Television Commercials by Global Companies in Pakistan. Journal Communication Spectrum: Capturing New Perspectives in Communication 11(2), 95-106. http://dx.doi.org/10.36782/jcs.v11i2.2023

Tower of Myriad Mirrors: The first BL ‘quick transmigration’ novel?

Journey to the West is adulated as one of the Four Great Classical Novels in China, which has inspired a veritable cornucopia of sequels and adaptations. Tower of Myriad Mirrors (aka A Supplement to Journey to the West) composed during late Ming (1368-1644) is one of the three most illustrious sequels in pre-modern literature, in that it is characterised by vivid imagination and creativity, Buddhist ethos and philosophical thoughts, as well as biting satire on political reversals and societal predicaments in the 17th century. More significantly, Tower of Myriad Mirrors manifests psychological insights and features enigmatic dreams, which might have inspired a subgenre dubbed as ‘Quick Transmigration’ in China’s online literature. To be more specific, Tower of Myriad Mirrors is parallel to web-based BL (Boys Love) fiction under the category of Quick Transmigration, in terms of their analogous settings, storylines and characters. In this sense, Tower of Myriad Mirrors can be regarded as a prototypical BL novel concerning ‘quick transmigration’.

‘Farming Writing’: An Innovative Subgenre of Internet Literature

As an innovative subgenre of Internet literature, ‘farming writing’ has attained popularity in contemporary China’s cyberspace, which, in a narrow sense, denotes narratives pertaining to agronomic theories and agrarian practices. Disparate from cliché-ridden web romances that deploy authorial ‘golden finger’ to equip protagonists with impeccable demeanour and prowess, ‘farming’ fiction is characterised by reality-oriented, detail-enriched depictions, notwithstanding its essence as ‘feel-good writing’. Furthermore, ‘farming’ works are marked by a slow pace, peaceful setting and plain theme, enabling readers to identify with characters and escape from reality. In this article, I scrutinise a ‘farming’ novel under the genre of danmei (aka Boys Love), and further posit that the popularity of ‘farming writing’ is also attributed to the Chinese ethnicity’s devotion to agriculture since time immemorial.

Narasi Kuasa Konten Homoseksual di Media Sosial “Wattpad”

In the spread of homosexual content on social media platform Wattpad, there is fujoshi community that already exists in Indonesia. The fujoshi community provides homosexual content and making it legal to enjoy it. The purpose of this study is to find out fujoshi homosexual narrative in Indonesia using Wattpad. This research uses discourse analysis method. The results showed that the homosexual narrative built by fujoshi on Wattpad is unique, using other terms from Japanese (yaoi, uke, seme) and English (Boys Love, BL, and M-Preg) in order to be unrecognized by legal censors. The propagator of this content is the opposite sex of homosexuals, namely women, through imagination and fantasy, which is expressed in the form of images and writings. In addition, texts are produced and distributed based on favorite idol pairs. Although it is not produced every day, fanfiction is produced after receiving feedback in the form of fanservice from their idol couples. After being produced, fanfiction is distributed through Wattpad and notified to consumers (readers) through notifications which can be accessed completely freely.

Brian Wilson’s Song Cycles

ABSTRACT In the Beach Boys’ eleventh studio album, Pet Sounds (1966), the group’s primary creator, Brian Wilson, set forth a compelling flow of lyrical themes across a shimmering soundscape to create what has been described as one of the earliest concept albums. Its eleven songs and two instrumentals in fact constitute a “song cycle” as conventionally defined, with a transparent narrative and artful progression of interwoven musical ideas. Further, Pet Sounds was but one of several explorations of multisong narrative and musical structures in Wilson’s work on Beach Boys albums, extending back to side two of their Today album (1965) and continuing in later years through the unfinished Smile (1967), Wild Honey (1967), and The Beach Boys Love You (1976). Since Brian Wilson began recording as a solo artist in the late 1980s, he has continued to conceive albums as unified artistic statements, achieving his goals with special clarity on That Lucky Old Sun (2008) and on the reunited Beach Boys’ That’s Why God Made the Radio (2012). Each of his song cycles is a unique realization of principles of organic unity found in the art-song tradition and makes its own important contribution to the history and development of the concept album in pop and rock music.

Hyperreal homoerotic love in a monarchized military conjuncture: a situated view of the Thai Boys’ Love industry

ABSTRACT The rise of Boys’ Love (BL) TV series in Thailand over the past decade has sparked critical attention from both academics and journalists alike. Rather than rehashing the trajectory of this development, we analyze Thai popular culture as a contested sexual and political space in which BL performs a paradoxical function within Thailand’s contemporary crisis dominated by a royalist military junta with a penchant for pinkwashing. Through adopting and reappropriating Korean and Japanese BL aesthetics, we argue that BL culture in Thailand recasts such East Asian idolization with its own characteristics, yielding the dual effect of simultaneously bolstering yet challenging Thai discourses on both homosexuality and monarchized military politics.

Contemporary Danmei Fiction and Its Similitudes with Classical and Yanqing Literature

Danmei, aka Boys Love, is a salient transgressive genre of Chinese Internet literature. Since entering China’s niche market in 1990s, the danmei subculture, predominantly in the form of original fictional creation, has established an enormous fanbase and demonstrated significance via thought-provoking works and social functions. Nonetheless, the danmei genre is not an innovation in the digital age, in that its bipartite dichotomy between seme ‘top’ and uke ‘bottom’ roles bears similarities to the dyad in caizi-jiaren ‘scholar-beauty’ anecdotes featuring masculine and feminine ideals in literary representations of heterosexual love and courtship, which can be attested in the 17th century and earlier extant accounts. Furthermore, the feminisation of danmei characters is analogous to an androgynous ideal in late-imperial narratives concerning heterosexual relationships during late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and the depiction of semes being masculine while ukes being feminine is consistent with the orthodox, indigenous Chinese masculinity which is comprised of wen ‘cultural attainment’ epitomising feminine traits and wu ‘martial valour’ epitomising masculine traits. In terms of modern literature, danmei is parallel to the (online) genre yanqing ‘romance’ that is frequently characterised by ‘Mary Sue’ and cliché-ridden narration.

NONNORMATIVE MASCULINITY IN DANMEI LITERATURE: ‘MAIDEN SEME’ AND SAJIAO

Masculinity in contemporary China can be embodied by myriads of works featuring male-male same-sex intimacy and eroticism, which fall into a genre dubbed as danmei ‘addicted to beauty; indulgence in beauty’, aka Boys Love (BL). As a marginalised yet increasingly visible subculture, danmei writing has attracted legions of female producers/consumers, who are (self-)referred to as ‘rotten girls’. The female-oriented fiction is overwhelmingly marked by a conspicuous dichotomy differentiating seme (top) from uke (bottom) roles, and a prodigious amount of narratives concern feminisation of uke characters, motivated by the prevailing ‘soft masculinity’. Nonetheless, readers also delight in a subcategory of danmei featured by shaonü gong ‘maiden/adolescent-girl seme’ manifesting epicene demeanour and conducting sajiao which denotes playing cute/winsome/petulant or performing pettishness/coquettish. The sajiao acts of semes indicate authorial personae and the ‘cuteness’ youth culture, especially the ‘paradoxical cuteness’ integrating masculinity and femininity as well as cross-dressing and cross-gender performance. Furthermore, seme characterisation entailing enfeebled virility enables female readers to challenge heteropatriarchal and heteronormative zeitgeist, and it mitigates women’s dread and anxiety concerning sexual violence, exploitation and oppression in real-world contexts.

Engagement with Female-oriented Male–Male Incest Erotica: A Comparison of Sinophone and Anglophone Boys’ Love Fandom

ABSTRACT Boys’ Love (BL) is a global by-and-for women genre of youth culture focused on male-on-male sexuality and romance. Incest relationships are not uncommon in BL yet there is no research on what kinds are of most interest to the audience, and with which sub-demographics, and none offer an intercultural comparison. We address this lacuna analyzing data from the largest BL audience survey to date in both Anglophone (N = 1715) and Sinophone (N = 1922) regions. CATPCA reveals a strikingly similar component structure across the two cultures with a preference hierarchy descending from non-blood relationships, blood intergenerational, then brothers. For both regions, it is the avid fans who tend to consume incest material while, for the Sinophone, it is the less socially empowered who appear most engaged: women, the other-gendered, and the nonheterosexual. Moreover, Sinophone fans are more concerned about legal issues than are Anglophone. Other subtle cultural differences suggest Sinophone BL fans focus on family rules and roles and the Anglophone on the intimacy of brotherly bonds. As young women have increasing opportunity to create and consume sexuality explicit material geared to their particular tastes and needs, our study provides important information to inform debates about the forms, functions, and legislative context around pornography.

A heteropatriarchy in moderation: Reading family in a Thai Boys Love lakhon

A subgenre of popular culture, Thai Boys Love (BL) series is increasingly significant within Asia, but it remains under-researched in the light of new series that push the parameters of viewer acceptance of homoerotic romance in Thai society. Drawing upon a close reading of the BL lakhon Love by Chance, this article explicates how Thai cultural concepts surrounding the family are reflected in the series. While acknowledging the impact of East Asian popular culture on Thai understandings of gender and sexuality, the article highlights how the themes of familial dynamics and parental acceptance in Love by Chance represent a glocalization of the BL genre, or BL with Thai characteristics. By introducing the concept of ‘moderated heteropatriarchy’ and sketching the role of family in Thai queer lives, the article suggests that there is still space for subtle challenges or changes to the heteronormative structure as plotted in Love by Chance, even as the lakhon continues to uphold national and patriarchal principles that deny overt expressions of homoerotic romance.

KONSTRUKSI IDENTITAS GENDER PADA BUDAYA POPULER JEPANG (ANALISIS ETNOGRAFI VIRTUAL FENOMENA FUJOSHI PADA MEDIA SOSIAL)

This study discusses the phenomenon of fujoshi which is a favorite of a woman in enjoying anime and manga that has the genre Yaoi or Boys Love. Yaoi is a genre that tells about same-sex relationships made by men. This research was conducted with qualitative research methods with virtual ethnographic analysis. This study will examine how the construction of gender identity is built on yaoi fans on social media by using the communication theory of gender from Michael Hecht. The results showed that the gender identity of fujoshi was formed through three layers, namely the personal layer, the enactment layer, and the communal layer. This study also found that Fujitsu tends to have multiple identities in their lives. Fujoshi is more willing to show identity about their passion for yaoi on social media.

From Boyfriend to Boy’s Love: South Korean Male ASMRtists’ Performances of Digital Care

YouTube-based ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has become widely popular in South Korea as a readily accessible mode of self-care. However, ASMR scholarship in South Korea has largely overlooked a discussion of its engagement with gender norms. This essay fills the gap by analyzing South Korean male ASMRtists performing digital care through “boyfriend role plays” and “boy’s love (BL) role plays.” Probing into these examples from the perspective of digital gender, I argue that the ASMR’s haptic encounter has the potential to turn the ASMRtist, the audience, and the Internet itself into active performers rehearsing the possibility of subverting the offline society’s normative expectations of gender roles.

Embedded Niche Overlap

This article offers an industrial history of yaoi anime’s distribution in the United States by companies that acquired official distribution licenses. During the course of this history, the term “yaoi” was not always dominant in American anime vernacular; rather, it only ascended to widespread American usage after it was adopted by American distributors as an industry term. Yaoi anime’s complex distribution history reveals that, unlike yaoi manga, yaoi anime began and continues to be industrially situated at the overlap of seemingly disparate niche categories.

Female-Oriented Male-Male Erotica: Comparison of the Engaged Anglophone Demographic and That of the Greater China Area

Our aim is to compare comprehensive data on the engaged demographics of female-oriented male-male erotica in Anglophone regions and that of the greater China area. Our study constitutes the largest such data set in each region (Anglophone N = 1707; Chinese N = 1498). Data were analysed from our online Boys’ Love (BL) fandom survey: one version in English and an almost identical version in Chinese. We confirm that the engaged Anglophone demographic includes more men, people with a wider range of sexual orientations, lower proportion of heterosexual identification, and a wider and older age range. We provide greater detail than ever before and demonstrate engagement with BL by young straight men and questioning of sexual identity by female fans, at least in the Anglophone West. Finally, we provide novel evidence that a broad demographic of young people in the greater China area is familiar with BL as a casual interest in contrast to Anglophone regions where it is more of an intense and niche pass-time. We offer important insights into a global erotic entertainment by-and-for women which is influencing the mainstream but under increasing legislative scrutiny.

Girl power in boy love: Yaoi, online female counterculture, and digital feminism in China

ABSTRACT This article employs in-depth interviews with 64 female authors of Yaoi fiction, a popular online narrative genre among young Chinese women, to examine the discursive strategies adopted in their creation of homoerotic stories, and theorize such strategies within contemporary Chinese political, cultural, and social contexts. Three discursive constructions are distilled and discussed through analysis of Yaoi fictionists’ cultural production practices: the idealization of intimate relationship, the deconstruction of the heteropatriarchal gender norm through female gaze, and the imagination of female power in negotiation with state discourse. The article then indicates the deliberate intention incorporated in the production of the Yaoi counterculture to subvert the state-backed gender hegemony. It proposes that a comprehensive understanding of contemporary Chinese feminism can only be achieved through intersectional analysis of its interactions with China’s authoritarian state discourse, and calls for closer attention to the feminist political potential brought about by digital technology.

Towards a queer affective economy of boys’ love in contemporary Chinese media

ABSTRACT This article expands the existing research on the boys’ love (BL) cultural phenomenon by analysing two popular BL films, A Round Trip to Love and Uncontrolled Love, and one TV series, Addicted, all streamed online in 2016. Previous research has explored the various aspects of BL such as cultural globalization from below, the online publishing industry and censorship, and the theme of incest and queer sexuality. This article turns a greater attention to the dialectical relationship between affect, queer desire and neoliberalism by unpacking further the affective work that BL performs in contemporary China. BL is both structurally constrained by the economic infrastructure of heteronormative kinship norms in neoliberal China and residual forms of socialism, as well as offering alternative modality of affective tendency that exceeds these structural impediments. Conceptually, this research explicates three forms of affective work in BL in contemporary China, namely affective imprisonment, queer affective reparation and affective overcoming, in order to illuminate the relationship between affect, queer desire and neoliberalism in contemporary China.

The bitches of Boys Love comics: the pornographic response of Japan’s rotten women

ABSTRACT Boys Love (BL) manga in Japan have a 50-year history that highlights women’s fantasies of male–male romances that at times feature sexual scenes. In recent years, however, sexual depictions in BL manga have become increasingly vulgar and graphic as fans use the term ero (alluding to its ‘eroticism’) to describe BL works that feature stories with visual and narrative similarities to mainstream pornographic comics called eromanga. The popularization of these ‘ero BL’ titles indicates fans’ growing appreciation and knowledge of mainstream pornography literacies as these are worked on and transformed in this non-heteronormative media. Using approaches in New Literacy Studies, this article examines the works of ero BL artists and the discussions surrounding these titles to understand the development of fans’ affective learning and transformative engagement with pornographic literacies in BL manga that challenge normative notions of pornography in Japan.

Construction of Gender Identity in Japanese Popular Culture

This study discusses the phenomenon of fujoshi which is a favorite of a woman in enjoying anime and manga that has the genre Yaoi or Boys Love. Yaoi is a genre that tells about same-sex relationships made by men. This research was conducted with qualitative research methods with virtual ethnographic analysis. This study will examine how the construction of gender identity is built on yaoi fans on social media by using the communication theory of gender from Michael Hecht. The results showed that the gender identity of fujoshi was formed through three layers, namely the personal layer, the enactment layer, and the communal layer. This study also found that Fujitsu tends to have multiple identities in their lives. Fujoshi is more willing to show identity about their passion for yaoi on social media.
 
 Keywords: Popular Culture, Fujoshi, Social Media, Gender Identity Communication

An Overview of the Commercial Publication of Japanese Boys Love (BL) Manga in Poland

An Overview of the Commercial Publication of Japanese Boys Love (BL) Manga in Poland Agata Włodarczyk (bio) When discussing the history of manga publishing in Poland, it is important to note that after World War II the country was governed by the communist party (PZPR)1 and until 1989 remained under the influence of the USSR; both conditions heavily affected the publishing market in general. During that time comic books were not regarded as a legitimate medium, and access to foreign comic books was highly restricted.2 The situation changed with the dramatic political shift in 1989, paving the way for manga to appear in mainstream book markets beginning in the second half of the 1990s, with the establishment of Japonica Polonica Fantastica (JPF) in 1996, soon followed by Waneko in 1999. Manga and anime culture in Poland grew not from an already established comics culture, but from a culture based around gamers as well as young teenagers watching anime on TV. It was apparent to these publishers that, rather than classic titles, these potential manga consumers would want to read currently popular works, manga usually known through anime broadcast on local TV, or those that fans accessed online. While JPF and Waneko began to respond to the perceived interest of this nascent fandom, they did not publish boys love (BL) manga, either by conscious choice or ignorance, creating a situation in which fans knew of the genre by accessing it online, often on scanlation sites or by purchasing foreign language editions, but were unable to buy a Polish language copy. As a result, for a long time CLAMP's X, first published in Poland in 2000,3 was regarded by fans as BL (or, more correctly, as "yaoi," an older Japanese label that still is a dominant umbrella term used among Polish fans). This was not because X was actually BL, but because the manga, by a collective association with works that sometimes include same-sex couples, was as close as fans could get to it in a commercially published work in Polish. Although an exact date is impossible to pinpoint, BL fandom itself started forming in Poland around 1998, when many female fans began discussing a possible romantic relationship between two of Sailor Moon's antagonists, [End Page 167] Zoisite and Kunzite—who are presented in the Polish version of the anime as brothers—during offline meetings, on online forums, Yahoo mailing lists, and on mIRC (chat client) channels. In 2001, a specifically BL-related webpage was created by a Japanese language student,4 with its author often organizing BL-themed meetings in Warsaw. In 2003 and 2004 the group organized Aicon, Poland's first yaoi-themed convention, involving around 350 participants each time. One of the more interesting aspects of BL fandom in Poland from its coalescence at the end of the 1990s is the fact that many of its members have enjoyed the reading and writing of slash fanfiction. Nowadays "slash" and "yaoi" are generally used synonymously by fans about male-male love relationships in any media and any form.5 The slowly growing visibility and activity of Polish BL fans since the late 1990s evidences a demand for this kind of work. In response, the tiny shortlived publisher Saisha was established and in 2003 published the first volume of Higuri You's BL manga Cutlass (Katorasu) as its first title, followed that same year by Rieko Yoshihara's light novel At no kusabi (The space between).6 Both gave fans hope that they would be able to see more of their favorite BL works translated into Polish. Saisha managed to publish one more manga, this time including explicit sex scenes, Takashima Kazusa's Wild Rock in 2005.7 However, the poor quality of the translation and editing of Ai no kusabi, combined with the complicated and restrictive purchase process, whereby fans were required to provide proof that they were of legal age to read a comic with sexual content when ordering either of the publisher's two manga by mail, seems to have brought about Saisha's downfall. While the existing manga publisher Studio JG revived the commercial publication of BL in Poland several...

<em>Yaoi</em>, YouTube, and Arabic-Speaking Fans

Yaoi, YouTube, and Arabic-Speaking Fans Ahmed Baroody (bio) Given the global popularity of manga and anime from Japan, it is unsurprising that these media, anime in particular, have countless fans in Arabic-speaking countries. While popular culture from abroad can easily clash with local conservative Islamic values, the focus on male characters and largely patriarchal gender roles depicted in long-popular shōnen anime such as Grendizer (Force Five: Grendizer), Mazinger, and Dragon Ball Z makes the storylines acceptable, even if the sexuality and violence in the uncensored versions available at underground stores and online are as problematic as they are exciting for viewers. The increasingly global genre of boys love (BL), which depicts male-male romance and intimacy, is quite another story, however. Although BL and its fandom have rapidly expanded around the world, given the strong Islamic prohibition of homosexuality, its small but possibly growing number of fans in the Middle East might seem unexpected, although the fans' lack of openness certainly is predictable. While the genre may be too sexual or taboo to be sold in local video stores, even in the underground stores selling uncensored shōnen anime, the internet has allowed it to reach Arabic-speaking Muslim fans via anime streaming websites, manga scanlation websites, and other channels. This availability has brought about the development of online Arabic-speaking fandoms in spite of local taboos, or perhaps in response to them. On various social networking platforms, fans have started to create their own groups and channels dedicated to yaoi—the Arabic pronunciation of which can be Romanized "yawi" or "yawe"—an older Japanese label for BL, which remains what most fans call the genre in Arabic. Yaoi has a strong presence on major platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as more narrowly focused platforms such as Wattpad, dedicated to reading and writing fiction. Arabic-language yaoi fandom also has a strong presence on YouTube, with numerous fans uploading scenes from various anime as well as fan-produced anime music videos containing or edited to include BL scenes. Such users [End Page 176] are called ashig al yawi, meaning roughly, "I love yaoi," or, in other words, yaoi lovers. There are a large number of such users who flock to channels to view clips from BL anime, as well as mash-ups thereof, and imagery from BL manga and other media to evoke BL tropes. For instance, YouTubers Ashig Al Yawi, with over 6,000 subscribers, and Hidoeyuki Maya, with over 2,400 subscribers, have uploaded various BL-themed videos featuring Korean pop idols and as well as Arabic subtitled clips and mashups of BL anime, such as Yuri!!! on Ice and Banana Fish, and Thai BL dramas, sometimes with Arabic-language subtitles and always with Arabic comments, often accompanied by emoji expressing these fans' excitement over the videos. Each of these videos gets thousands, sometimes tens if not hundreds of thousands of views. Ashig Al Yawi's profile itself has received almost 1.4 million views as of January 2020 and the channel's videos seem to be enjoyed by fans. For instance, a pop music video with clips from various anime, "Video Voiced by Yaoi Lovers on How We View Our World," posted by Ashig Al Yawi in December 2017, has had over 8,500 views, and currently has over 200 comments and nearly 400 likes, against just 26 dislikes.1 Comments with a relatively high number of upvotes—roughly 20 to 30—include "This video is not just amazing, it's the BOMB," "Damn it I'm going to die from embarrassment, I love YAOI," and "It represents me." Such comments express fans' generally enthusiastic responses to the short clips of high school boy-on-boy romance and to the genre itself. Similarly, on Hidoeyuki Maya's YouTube channel, a since-removed video with an excerpt from the Korean BL anime Hyperventilation, received over 300 comments and 800 likes compared with just over 100 dislikes. Popular comments were a mix of general statements of fan pride and reactions to the video itself, such as, "My family always lectured me to not watch anime because it was childish, but . . . [now] I...