“Yaoi” in Japan

There is a genre, “yaoi” or “Boys Love (BL)”, in Japanese popular culture, such as comic books, books, cartoons. I don’t know how famous it is or if anyone in our class knows it. Gay depiction in popular culture, “Ellen”, reminded me of this. To explain it briefly, its storyline is mostly relationship between male couple, and it often includes sexual depiction. As “Ellen” failed, this genre has not caused political change, I guess even personal struggles with family is rarely described.

I think the pioneer of this genre was a comic book, “Kaze to Ki no Uta”, which was published in 1976 and awarded in 1979. Unfortunately I’ve never read this. So I can’t explain about it well, but it seems to depict a relationship between boy couple seriously.

Nowadays this “yaoi” genre is, I think, basically just love story and very popular among girls who are not lesbian. It might be prejudice, but I think these girls are likely to be “otaku”, kind of nerd. Authors are mostly female as well. So this genre is made by women, and made for women. Although this genre got big fans, it’s not really “public genre”. I don’t know about when “Kaze to Ki no Uta” was published, but now this “yaoi” genre seems to be for selling products or just for fun, not for sending message.

I think it’s interesting that even though gay society has not permeated in Japanese society, our popular culture established one genre about it, and it has big fans among certain people, not among gay male but female.