The Love Between ‘Beautiful Boys' in Japanese Women's Comics

McLelland, Mark

doi:10.1080/095892300102425

Cited by 39 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Earlier the analysis demonstrated how the uke is strongly identified with his mother. However, although feminised, he does not risk, like her, the physical and social dangers of reproduction (see McLelland, 2000) and, as I discuss in the conclusion, power still bypasses the mother and settles on her son. As Irigaray (1985) points out: 'the rivalry [over the phallus] is, in fact between the man and (his) mother.…”

Section: Men On the Marketmentioning

confidence: 87%

Men on the market: Feminist analysis of age-stratified male–male romance in Boys’ Love manga

Madill

2016

Studies in Comics

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Male–male sexuality is the central trope of Boys’ Love (BL) manga with stories tending to revolve around a central uke-seme (‘bottom’–‘top’) pair. Although focused on men, BL is produced and consumed primarily by women. This article presents, from an anglophone British perspective, analysis of age-stratified male–male romance – paederasty – as portrayed in BL. My corpus consists of 234 commercially-translated original Japanese BL manga stories, created by 100 different mangaka (author-artists), published commercially in English between 2003 and 2012. A total of 68 (30%) of these stories were identified as involving agestratified relationships, eight of which were selected for detailed analysis. Seven were selected for typicality: Waru (2007) by Yukari Hashida deemed the most typical. Fangs (2008) by Hiroki Kusumoto was also included in analysis as the most atypical age-stratified story in order to test the robustness of identified patterns. I argue that that, from an anglophone perspective, the characteristic themes of age-stratified BL map surprising well onto the eroticised intra-familial dynamics of Freud and the intra- and inter-familial economics of Lévi-Strauss. The patterns identified are evidenced and discussed under the following headings: the mother identified son, the doubly divested man, the castrated father, men on the market and the mother with the phallus. These themes help build and substantiate my argument that age-stratified BL might work, within an anglophone context at least, as a feminist critique of patriarchy through the mechanism of phallic divestiture.

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Section: Men On the Marketmentioning

confidence: 87%

Men on the market: Feminist analysis of age-stratified male–male romance in Boys’ Love manga

Madill

2016

Studies in Comics

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“…162-163), as well as an iconographic counterpoint to substantivist models of maturity. The Japanese Lolita seems to align with manga characters such as bishō nen 'pretty boy', whose female fandom would variably allow female escapism or lesbian refuge through the invocation of a utopian fantasy space where gender is rescued from maturational consolidation (for example, McLelland, 2000;Welker, 2006). As phantasmagoric creations, they deliver the frisson of the oscillation between identifications and complementations, whether phallic, maternal, puerile, sororal or post-human.…”

Section: Kawaî: Signaling and Signifying Maturitymentioning

confidence: 95%

The semiotic predicament of developmental psychology

Janssen¹

2010

Subjectivity

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This article critically assesses various proposals for a cultural semiotics of maturity and developmental stages. Semiotic theories consider developmental subjectivity as a function of a person's progressive immersion into sign systems, and are key to a denaturalization and contextualization of the life-staged subject. A semiotic understanding of maturity inspired by the post-Marxist work of Jean Baudrillard suggests that neo-Marxist indictments of consumer society as alienating individuals either by 'hurrying' or infantilizing them, is complicit with a more profound and ambient naturalization of life stages. However, a look at Japan's 'cute culture' (kawaî karucha) is taken to suggest that both developmental psychology and its critique, may be, importantly sidetracked by late capitalist mass production and circulation of maturational markers. Various implications of this case study for developmental psychology are discussed.

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“…Rather than exclusively taking place in modern-day Japan, the settings of equus range from Europe to historical Japan. As Mark McLelland (2000) and others have observed, shōjo manga of the late 1960s and 1970s oft en featured exotic locations, allowing artists to explore themes such as male-male desire that would have been considered taboo in early postwar Japan (see also Prough 2010). Th is "anti-realism" was established by setting narratives in locations outside of Japan, such as Europe or America (McLelland 2000, 18).…”

Section: Pleasure and Play In Equusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, Akiko Mizoguchi (2010) suggests that certain non-BL works would not exist without BL as a platform for "examining the fundamental questions of sexuality, reproduction, and gender … within the framework of entertaining fi ction with sexual depictions" (163). Kumiko Saito (2011) expands on this further, noting that the heterosexual romances in a number of successful manga for women such as Tomoko Ninomiya's Nodame Kantābire [Nodame Cantabile;2001] and Chika Umino's Hachimitsu to kurōbā [Honey and Clover;2000] are informed by the common BL trope of romances forming out of friendship based on "matching abilities and competition" (188). est em's fi rst centaur manga, Hatarake, kentaurosu!, notably falls within this spectrum of non-BL works informed by BL.…”

Section: Nioi-kei and Bl Literacymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Shōjo manga became increasingly defi ned in the 1960s and 70s, and shōnen ai (少年愛; lit., 'boys' love') narratives featuring romantic relationships between beautiful young boys grew exponentially in popularity within the genre (McLelland 2000). Th ese stories about love between boys were an outlet for readers, from adolescent girls to young adult women, to explore their sexuality without the risk of alienation, depicting love between equals and more graphic depictions of sex than was acceptable in heterosexual romances of the time (Ishida 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Centaur in Salaryman's Clothing: Parody and Play in est em's Centaur Manga

Lee¹

2016

NVJS

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Japanese manga artist est em (esu to emu) is notable for blurring genre boundaries and subverting established conventions in various publications since her debut in 2006. Two of her works, Hatarake, kentaurosu! ('Work, Centaur!') and equus, focus exclusively on male centaurs in homosocial settings. Classifi ed as shōjo (girls') manga and BL ('boys' love') manga respectively, these two works allow female readers to enjoy the pleasures of homoerotic subtexts and intertextual parody. Th is paper examines how conventions of sexuality and gender, particularly hegemonic masculinity and heterosexuality, are constructed/deconstructed in est em's centaur manga using the framework of intertextuality, with particular emphasis on parody, pleasure and play. By placing centaurs in realistic, everyday settings, these works present a critique of Japan's contemporary salaryman culture, while also highlighting issues of alienation and otherness that both female readers and gay men face in their daily lives.

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The Love Between ‘Beautiful Boys' in Japanese Women's Comics

Cited by 39 publications

References 4 publications

Men on the market: Feminist analysis of age-stratified male–male romance in Boys’ Love manga

Men on the market: Feminist analysis of age-stratified male–male romance in Boys’ Love manga

The semiotic predicament of developmental psychology

A Centaur in Salaryman's Clothing: Parody and Play in est em's Centaur Manga

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