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8 Dec 2014

Japanese straight women see gay love as pure love

The appeal of Boy’s Love comic stories is seen as unlike romance between a boy and girl that comes with pressures such as pregnancy which can negate the purity of romantic desire.

Anime tales featuring man-on-man passion is becoming more popular among Japanese women who view love between same-sex couples as pure love.
“BL (Boy’s Love) is not gay. This is the most important thing you need to know,” said Hana, a woman taken up with fictional stories that detail the romantic entanglements of two men, according to Brandon Presser, a writer for thedailybeast.com. 
While the cover art of most BL-themed comics may depict two males embracing and which may be construed as gay romance to foreigners, it’s all about “pure love,” she said.
Hana is one of the many burgeoning group of ardent manga (comic book) and anime (animation) women who are taken up with gay romance. This group even calls themselves “fujoshi” a pun on respectable women to men “rotten girls” in Japanese who love their Boys’ Love romance. 
“We self-deprecatingly call ourselves rotten girls because we indulge in this obsession with pure love even though society tells us that it’s a waste of our time,” Hana says.
Nonetheless, they have their own special meeting place at Tokyo’s Otome Road or “Maiden’s Road” -- a wide boulevard with a line of animation-related boutiques selling figurines and thousands of comic books.
“In fact, the entire genre itself is squarely targeted at a straight female readership and is almost always created by female artists as well,” wrote Brandon Presser.
For Hana, the appeal of BL is largely about the beauty of what she calls a “genderless love” because she can’t consciously or subconsciously insert herself into the narrative as would be the case if it were about love between a boy and girl. Moreover it is unlike romance between a boy and girl that comes with pressures such as marriage and pregnancy which can negate the purity of romantic desire.
Patrick Galbraith, a researcher at Sophia University who has spent years in Tokyo studying BL superfandom has calculated that this genre has grown to rake in more than US$120 million annually and accounts for about 4 percent of all printed manga in Japan, according to thedailybeast.com.
Galbraith estimates that there are over a million “rotten girls” in Japan for whom Boys’ Love is also called yaoi in Japanese, an acronym used to refer to a homoerotic relationship of two males for a female audience.
Same-sex relations were legalized way back in 1880 in Japan and although Japanese culture does not have a history of hostility toward LGBT people, they nonetheless lack legal recognition and are often subjected to social discrimination.
A recent nationwide poll found a little more than half of those polled saying that they oppose same-sex marriage, which is not legally recognized in Japan.

Anime tales featuring man-on-man passion is becoming more popular among Japanese women who view love between same-sex couples as pure love.

“BL (Boy’s Love) is not gay. This is the most important thing you need to know,” said Hana, a woman taken up with fictional stories that detail the romantic entanglements of two men, according to Brandon Presser, a writer for thedailybeast.com.

While the cover art of most BL-themed comics may depict two males embracing and which may be construed as gay romance to foreigners, it’s all about “pure love,” she said.

Hana is one of the many burgeoning group of ardent manga (comic book) and anime (animation) women who are taken up with gay romance. This group even calls themselves “fujoshi” a pun on respectable women to men “rotten girls” in Japanese who love their Boys’ Love romance.

“We self-deprecatingly call ourselves rotten girls because we indulge in this obsession with pure love even though society tells us that it’s a waste of our time,” Hana says.

Nonetheless, they have their own special meeting place at Tokyo’s Otome Road or “Maiden’s Road” -- a wide boulevard with a line of animation-related boutiques selling figurines and thousands of comic books.

“In fact, the entire genre itself is squarely targeted at a straight female readership and is almost always created by female artists as well,” wrote Brandon Presser.

For Hana, the appeal of BL is largely about the beauty of what she calls a “genderless love” because she can’t consciously or subconsciously insert herself into the narrative as would be the case if it were about love between a boy and girl. Moreover it is unlike romance between a boy and girl that comes with pressures such as marriage and pregnancy which can negate the purity of romantic desire.

Patrick Galbraith, a researcher at Sophia University who has spent years in Tokyo studying BL superfandom has calculated that this genre has grown to rake in more than US$120 million annually and accounts for about 4 percent of all printed manga in Japan, according to thedailybeast.com.

Galbraith estimates that there are over a million “rotten girls” in Japan for whom Boys’ Love is also called yaoi in Japanese, an acronym used to refer to a homoerotic relationship of two males for a female audience.

Same-sex relations were legalized way back in 1880 in Japan and although Japanese culture does not have a history of hostility toward LGBT people, they nonetheless lack legal recognition and are often subjected to social discrimination.

A recent nationwide poll found a little more than half of those polled saying that they oppose same-sex marriage, which is not legally recognized in Japan.

Reader's Comments

1. 2014-12-09 22:06  
If without prejudice from the society, straight relationship is far more problematic than gay relationship!
2. 2014-12-10 04:53  
Hmmm, I've always found the Japanese people and culture to be fascinating. But how can boy on boy love not be gay, even in manga? I guess as a foreigner, it's simply beyond my understanding. But regardless of any negative views on Japan, I'm a devoted fan ! I think I've found a new screen name, henceforth I'll be known as 'fujoshi'.
3. 2014-12-10 09:08  
Typically, the researcher Patrick Galbraith does a "study" of this trend which ends up being purely statistical and financial. One could dream of a less narrow-minded study...
4. 2014-12-10 11:23  
In response to lost_angel's query, I think the "rationalization" of such fiction not being "gay" is a mixture of varying factors. I have heard of instances where these BL fans display homophobic repulse at real-life gay relationships. This is a manifestation of compartmentalization that draws distinct differences between what is acceptable in fiction vs. real-life; either that or as the article states they subconsciously remove all gender labels and so wind up with essentially two "subjects" in love with each other. This is why they also do avoid using two female characters - because the target audience will invariably identify with them and "ruin" the perspective. Sexual scenes are also relatively rare, if not completely absent ("shounen-ai" aka "boys' love" is usually the more "PG" and purely-romantic material compared to "Yaoi", where sex is usually more explicit).

Note that the fiction is written BY women, FOR women - there is arguably zero 'masculine' input into the development of the story, and so it's unlikely that the fictional relationships resemble their 'real-life' counterparts. For instance, the relationships are usually exclusively top (seme) and bottom (uke). They generally do not have 'versatile' characters - this is interesting because despite the ostensible desire to extract the emotion of "pure love" from the plot, 'traditional' gender roles invariably seem to creep back in.
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