Bishounen Boys in Love and Fighting Anime Girls: The Politics of Gender in Anime and Manga
Disclaimer: Here is an essay I wrote for my Asian Pop Culture class last semester, which I aim to eventually turn into a video essay. I’m hoping that by publishing the raw written file, I will be motivated to work on the video component.
Question: How has Japanese pop culture, specifically anime and manga, influenced the changing identities of femininity and gender in 20th century Japanese society?
Japanese pop culture, specifically anime and manga, left an incredibly influential and traceable mark on the politics of femininity and sexuality in Japanese society, because it has served as a platform for women to explore their sexuality and the gender debate. Within the three eras of the shoujo sub-genre, Mahou Shoujo (Magical Girl), the medium has served as a reflection of the dominant political ideology about womanhood and girlhood of the time, and through a culturally odorless aesthetic (Iwabuchi, 2007), gradually evolved into a social commentary and power fantasy for women to deconstruct these ideas free from the constraints of the patriarchal paradigms of 20th century Japan. In this way, the history of the magical girl genre is synonymous with the changing political landscape of Japanese society, reflecting the instability periods of post-World War II, otaku fanaticism, kawaiisa and the new social order of contemporary Japan. The Boys Love genre, emerging as a reaction to traditional understandings of femininity, also provided a space for women to experience various positions of sexual and political power. As such, the feminist iconography of anime and manga has served as a powerful mascot for the feminist social revolution, while demonstrating Connell’s definition of masculinity as socially-constructed. In this essay, I will be drawing on asian pop culture, queer and feminist theorists to explain the connection between the changing politics and female identities of Japan and the representation of feminism, femininity and sexuality in the Japanese pop culture phenomenon of anime and manga.
Before even beginning to deconstruct these genres, it should be noted that the marketing and history of manga has always been gendered. Manga is often classified as either shounen (for young boys) or shoujo (for young girls), and the stories told in each genre visualise the idealised attitudes of what a Japanese man and woman should be in post-war society (Lamarre, 2006, p. 47). Shounen manga features young boys in conflict, often destined to save the world from an external “other,” using a patriotic sense of dedication, the power of friendship and martial arts, and echoing the propaganda heroism of young males devoted to Imperial Japan; whereas shoujo manga features everyday domestic lifestyles, drama and romance with little physical conflict. The dual personality of Osamu Tezuka’s Ribbon Knight, a princess born with a male and female spirit, is torn between “be[ing] a boy and rul[ing] a kingdom or be[ing] a girl and marry[ing] a prince.” (Ribbon Knight, 1963–1966) (Toku, 2007, p. 22) Many male mangaka (manga authors) in the 1960s began their careers writing girls comics (Toku, 2007, p. 22) as women during this period were not allowed careers outside of education and maternal duties (Toku, 2007, p. 23). Shoujo manga was therefore popularised by an underground community of female writers known as the 24 nen gumi (Magnificent 24, due to being born during the 24th year of the Showa Period) (Thorn, 2001, p. 44), and this group introduced subgenres such as sci-fi, history and adventure to the traditional shoujo style (Toku, 2007, p. 26). As Iwabuchi examines, anime and manga are uniquely culturally odorless, meaning non-conforming to physical or cultural aspects of Japan (Iwabuchi, 2007). In this way, I argue that while animation production companies like Toei Animation produced programs perpetuating male idealised concepts of femininity (Saito, 2014 p. 146), the lack of a traditional Japanese identity of the medium’s actors thereby allowed marginalised groups to explore themselves in a world devoid of the criticisms of their own reality, as shoujo manga became a place for these women to “collectively and critically explore their bodies, gender and sexuality” (Anan, 2014, p. 41).
As such, the history and evolution of the magical girl subgenre of shoujo manga parallels the changing interpretations of female identities in Japanese society. As Napier explains, anime creators tell stories of metamorphosis and identity (Napier, 2005, p. 292). The magical girl genre depicts this through the adventures of young girls who transform into cute warriors and inspiring symbols of female heroism. Yet, although the act of transforming serves as an “identity transcendence that undermines fixed gender norms,” (Sato, 2014, p. 145), the genre began in the 1960s as a reflection of patriarchal interpretations of womanhood. The aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left a powerful imprint on the consciousness of Japan’s people as they began to reclaim a sense of cultural identity and societal values (Ristola, 2017) (Rizzo-Smith, 2018). Japanese pop culture and society defined women by their ability to produce a child, portraying them as reserved, obedient and financially dependent (McLelland, 2000, p. 13). As Anan explains, private girl schools taught young girls how to be a “good wife [and] wise mother” (Anan, 2014, p. 46), idolising the eternally youthful wonder of girlhood and destined path to domesticity. In this way, the first magical girls of the genre were gendered role models: using magic to resolve conflict and feminine-coded iconography like makeup and mirrors as magical tools, these preteens aspired to be brides, princesses and teachers (Sato, 2014, p. 147–151) (Sally the Witch, 1966). Not only did these depictions reinforce the value of femininity and idealised feminine youth in a post-war Japan, but taught girls to see marriage and parenthood as the desired goal once they grew out of adolescence (Minako, 1998, p. 41).
At the same time and as a reaction to this representation, heterosexual women began writing stories of same-sex high school romance. Disappointed with the lack of Japanese comics for older women, the 24 nen gumi began telling romantic narratives about eternally youthful and beautiful bishounen boys falling in love, called Boys Love (Toku, 2007, p. 27–28). The boys in these tales are androgynous, slim and femininely built, cursed with eternal beauty or a tragic past, and the sex is passionate and new as they often experience love for the first time (McLelland, 2000, p. 14). As Yoko Nagakubo writes: “in heterosexual love relationships, it is extremely difficult to exclude the normal power structures in which men are strong and women are weak. Using male couples makes it possible to describe a more equal relationship between two individuals.” (Nagakubo, as cited by, Toku, 2007, p. 29). Asides the bishounen archetype, the relationships in these texts are defined by the power dynamic of the uke and seme persona: the uke (taken from ukeru, which means to receive) is more feminine-coded, submissive and akin to the reserved women in pop culture at the time, while the seme is masculine-coded, dominant and the one that penetrates (Rizzo-Smith, 2018). While this may appear to reinforce heteronormative understandings of positions of power, the absence of female characters and ambiguity of the young boys in these relationships gave female readers the ability to explore their sexuality and sexual power from the perspective of either character and sexual position, subverting traditional notions of power and gendered sexual identities in heterosexual relationships. In this way, these women reclaimed their sexual desire and political identity in a way that echoes Connell’s definition that masculinity is defined by positions of power rather than biology (Wedgwood, 2009, p. 331). Similarly, while it adhered to the understanding youthhood should be cherished and idealised, like the first magical girl, it defied the patriarchal expectations of the time and helped women reclaim a sense of sexual and emotional freedom that other fields of pop culture were failing to represent. It is here that shoujo manga “reflects female aesthetics and female dreams,” (Toku, 2007, p. 20) albeit without the physical identity of femininity.
Following this, with the emergence of kawaii aesthetics and otaku culture in the 1980s, the magical girl genre incorporated a fantasised and fetishised heroine that appealed to the male gaze. During the late 1970s, toy company Sanrio Co. Ltd. introduced Hello Kitty, a commercialised child-like mascot that introduced the idea of things as everlastingly cute and innocent (Madge, 1998, p. 154). This resulted in a hyper-fanatic philosophy that quickly became deeply rooted in Japanese society and their audiences, as anime fans fantasised the characters and meaning of anime and manga texts, self-calling themselves “otaku,” a term that meant an obsessive fan and collector of pop culture (Sato, 2014, p. 151–154). Animation studios, seeing a market for this, created merchandise tied to their popular franchises and began producing their programs with a male-dominated audience in mind, introducing a fetishised fantasy heroine appealing to the male gaze. The societal expectations of women was no longer to marry and produce, but to maintain an eternally youthful innocence, as physical explorations of their bodies and sexuality at a young age were seen as kawaii (Madge, 1998, p. 162). The magical girls of this era were older than the preadolescent girls of the past and dressed in explicit and sexually provocative clothing (Sato, 2014, p. 153), or still preadolescent but allowed to explore avenues of sexuality and romance under the guise of it being endearingly kawaii (Madge, 1998, p. 162), visualised through chibi aesthetics and rorikon sparkly clothing that could be easily commercialised (Madge, 1998, p. 164) (Tamaki, 2000, p. 248) (Tamaki, 2011). The transformation sequences visualised a naked young female body changing costumes from her everyday clothing to a cutely made magical outfit, reappropriating the traditional shoujo girlhood to explore female sexuality (Saito, 2014, p. 154). Although these characters began to fall in love and express heartache, they also solved their problems often without the need of traditional magic, alluding to the idea that the magic of the classical magical girl was tied to the domesticity of Japanese women in the post-war Japan, and freeing themselves of that restraint allowed them to explore their sexuality and independence (Saito, 2014, p. 154), albeit for commercial gain. While Misato points out that during this period, “obedience and reserved [emotions] [were] no longer the only desirable qualities for a young woman,” (Madge, 1998, p. 158), ultimately this representation of femininity was still defined by the patriarchy and a commercialised female identity, incorporated by the male gaze and personification of a blended political image of kawaii culture and femininity.
Meanwhile, shoujo manga began telling epic adventures usually associated with boys manga, inspired by the heroic beginnings of the women’s liberation movement. Riyoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles is a shoujo manga retelling of the French Revolution following the lives of the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and the fictional Commander of her Royal Guard, Oscar Francois de Jarjayes, (Rose of Versailles, 1972–1973, 1979–1980). As Anan explains, the manga released during a period of leftist political instability and is a product of the beginnings of the “women’s liberation movement in Japan” (Anan, 2014). In 1972, five armed members of the United Red Army were on the run from police, hiding in a mountain lodge as their arrest was dramatically broadcasted to the public (Anan, 2014, p. 42). People began losing sympathy for the group as reports emerged that “members had murdered twelve of their comrades because of what they saw as their ideological weakness,” (Anan, 2014, p. 42) leaving women activists as the few continuously believing in a social revolution (Anan, 2014, p. 42). In this way, this political vacuum inspired the first women’s liberation movement in 1970, who were criticised by media and government officials as “hysterical and unattractive,” (Ito, 2015) influencing Ikeda to create a manga for women and young girls that empowered the desire for social revolution (Ikeda, as cited by, Anan, 2014, p. 46). Despite biologically female, Oscar is raised as the only male heir to the de Jarjayes family, wears masculine clothing and partakes in male-dominated activities like horse riding and sword-fighting, and is admired by both male and female characters for not being a proper lady (Rose of Versailles, 1972–1973, 1979–1980). Her foil, Marie Antoinette, is the prestige image of a lady, transitioning from a young girl destined to marry royalty and desiring pretty things to the Queen and Mother of France and two children (Rose of Versailles, 1972–1973, 1979–1980). After witnessing the harsh inequalities of the Parisian people and the royal family’s negligence, Oscar defects and joins the rebellion against the monarchy (Rose of Versailles, 1972–1973, 1979–1980), powerfully embodying the liberalist and anti-establishment attitudes of the French Revolution and United Red Army (Anan, 2014, p. 48). In this way, Antoinette’s character is resorted to the family drama, love affairs and political warfare of her familial and royal obligations and the traditional shoujo narrative of womanhood, while Oscar’s search for justice incites adventure and heroism, questions the constructs of gender, marriage, biological disposition and power, and values independence in one’s relationships (Rose of Versailles, 1972–1973, 1979–1980). As Shamoon explains, readers expected a fluffy romantic comedy and were introduced to a social and gender critique (Shamoon, 2007, p. 8), and as such, “Rose of Versailles helped transform shoujo manga into a genre that could encompass vast epics, complex psychological portraits, political commentary, and adult romance” (Shamoon, 2007, p. 14). While this meant that shoujo manga could now rival the stories typically associated with shounen manga, I argue that it further reflected the changing identities of femininity and taught female independence and ideas defying traditional constructs of power to young girls.
Thus, the new social order of contemporary Japan, created by the effects of the domination of kawaii culture in all roots of Japanese life and the popularity of feminism, gave birth to a social revolution of femininity in the fighting anime girl. In the 1990s, Japan was undergoing a severe period of social anxiety: the Japanese economy was in a disarray in what economist described as the lost decade leading to the great recession (McCurry, 2008); women were challenging the good wife and good mother educational system and seeked independence as the marriage and birth rate dropped to a level that had experts predicting that by 2055, over 40 percent of the population would be over 65 years old (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2010, as cited by Saito, 2014, p. 156); and, due to the popularity of kawaii characterisation, the conventional heroic narratives of children’s media, including Power Rangers, had seen a dramatic decline in audience share (Saito, 2014, p. 156). People began to lose faith in the traditional Japanese myths and values they had previously lived by (Saito, 2014, p. 156), and were taking inspired to western and contemporary approaches to fashion, politics, and most importantly, feminism. In this way, in the third wave of the magical girl genre, female creators were no longer enticed to write stories about women following social expectations of traditional values of femininity. Rather, they created queer-coded romantic battle narratives featuring ambiguously gendered heroines of cute aesthetics, female empowerment and rebellion, capturing the second wave iconography of girl power. In much the same way as characters like Sally the Witch taught young girls to aspire to be “good wives and wise mothers” (Anan, 2014, p. 46), the fighting anime girls of the 1990s, particularly the Sailor Scouts of Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon, taught young girls the importance of female friendship, confidence and independence (Sailor Moon, 1992). Additionally, in Revolutionary Girl Utena, the character of tomboy high school student Utena competes in a series of sword-fighting duels to save her friend and the Rose Bride, Anthy, who is passed around the male competitors of the tournament as a sexual trophy (Revolutionary Girl Utena, 1997) (Perper & Corneg, 2006, p. 186). From this, Saito sees that the magical girls of this period are “less a genre than a code that binds certain ideological values and advantages attributed to the shõjo identity in contemporary Japan;” one that has transcended into international mainstream pop culture with Sailor Moon being a mascot for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (Sherman, 2017). As she concludes, magical girls in the contemporary no longer need magic to “grow up” nor does their transformation physically age them, illustrating that young girls are already powerful as they are and can freely explore their sexuality (Saito, 2014, p. 157).
At the same time, a new identity of women as otaku emerged from a debate between queer theorists and feminists on the authenticity of queer manga. In the 1980s to mid 1990s, as sex and violence were introduced in shoujo and josei (adult women’s manga), a new category of male loving male romance appeared in underground comic marketplaces. Yaoi, an acronym of yama nashi, ochi nashi and imi nashi (no climax, no point, no meaning) (Toku, 2007, p. 28) was more pornographic and sexually violent than the romanticised stories of bishounen boys in love. As Sharalyn Orbaugh examines, rape and consent are intertwined with ideas of romance and passionate lovemaking, as the victim learns to accept romanticize and soon desire sexual violence (Orbaugh, 2010, p. 181). As a result, in a 1992 edition of feminist magazine Choisir, Japanese gay writer Sato Masaki argued that writers of BL were not authentically representing homosexuality; rather, they were appropriating and commodifying it for their own heterosexual agenda (Masaki, as cited by, Hitoshi, 2015, p. 214). Female writers denied the parallel, arguing that the same-sex relationships of Boys Love was not a reflection of homosexuality, nor was it intended to represent homosexual relations in Japan (Hitoshi, 2015, p. 215), resulting in Masaki describing those who loved yaoi as “disgusting women” (Masaki, as cited by, Hitoshi, 2015, p. 214). From this, female otakus, united against Masaki’s claims, began to self-identify as a fujoshi (rotten girl) and formed a community (Zhou, 2015) (Galbraith, 2011). While it originally referred to women with a “perverse interest in the sexual intercourse between men” (Masaki, as cited by, Hitoshi, 2015, p. 214), ultimately it evolved to refer to any obsessive female fan of anime and manga culture, thereby presenting and popularing a contemporary female identity that didn’t conform to either the patriarchal or kawaiisa attitudes of womanhood, although indeed was an audience reaction to the commercialised desire for cute things. Therefore, while I agree with Sato that the genre is a commodification of homosexual identities for heterosexual gain (Masaki, 1996, p. 166) (Hitoshi, 2015, p. 223–224), it was a necessary tool for women in Japan to engage in the gender debate.
Thus, anime and manga influenced gender in 20th century Japan by giving women a platform to explore themselves and the debate on the changing female identity. As seen in the history and representation of shoujo manga, the medium conformed to the dominant image of femininity at the time, and after the post-war period, served as a critique on gender and sexuality led by female writers and artists. In this way, the shoujo sub-genres of mahou shoujo and BL served as a means of escapism and social commentary, and reflected the politics of the post-war rebuilding of Japan, otaku fanaticism, kawaiisa and the economic depression and new social order of contemporary Japan into a commercialised sense of womanhood. As such, I argue that the changing female identity of Japan was shaped by the commodification of homosexual identities and fantasised adorable aesthetics and appropriation of the women’s liberation in pop culture, ultimately giving women a venue to explore their sexualities, gender and identity free from the limitations of patriarchal society.
References:
- Anan, Nobuko, 2014, “The Rose of Versailles: Women and Revolution in Girls’ Manga and the Socialist Movement in Japan,” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 41–63.
- Hitoshi, Ishida, 2015, “Representational appropriation and the autonomy of desire in Yaoi/BL,” Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture and Community in Japan, University Press of Mississippi.
- Ikeda, Riyoko, 1972–1973, Rose of Versailles, Margaret.
- Ito, Masami, 2015, “Women of Japan unite: Examining the contemporary state of feminism,” The Japan Times, 3 October 2015, accessed on 26 October 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/10/03/lifestyle/women-japan-unite-examining-contemporary-state-feminism/#.W9JzdhMzaLI
- Iwabuchi, Koichi, edited by Kishan Thussu, Daya, 2007, “Contra-flows or the cultural logic of uneven globalization? Japanese media in the global algora,” Media on the Move, London.
- Galbraith, Patrick, 2011, “Fujoshi: Fantasy play and transgressive intimacy among “rotten girls” in contemporary Japan,” SIGNS, Autumn.
- Lamarre, Thomas, 2006, “Platonic Sex: Perversion Anime and Shojo Anime (Part One),” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 45–59.
- Madge, Leila 1998, “Capitalizing on “Cuteness”: The Aesthetics of Social Relations in a New Postwar Japanese Society,” Japanstudien, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 155–174.
- Masaki, Sato, 1996, “Shojo manga and homophobia,” Queer Studies ’96, Tokyo, p. 166)
- Minako, Saito, 1998, “One woman among men: Heroines in anime, tokusatsu, and biographies,” Birrejji Senta Shuppankyou, Tokyo.
- McCurry, Justin, 2008, “Japan’s lost decade,” The Guardian, 1 October 2008, accessed on 13 October 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/30/japan.japan
- McLelland, Mark J., 2000, “The Love Between ‘Beautiful Boys’ in Japanese Women’s Comics,” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 13–25.
- Napier, Susanne Jolliffe, 2005, Anime from Akira to Howl’s moving castle: experiencing contemporary Japanese animation, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY.
- National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 2010, Japan.
- Perper, Timothy & Cornog, Martha, 2006, “In the Sound of Bells: Freedom and Revolution in Revolutionary Girl Utena,” Mechademia, vol. 1, p. 183–186.
- Ristola, Jacqueline, 2017, “Embodying the Future: Akira and the Technological Science Fiction,” Animation Studies, 22 May, accessed on 8 April 2018.
- Rizzo-Smith, Julian, 2018, “How Japanese pop culture represents a fantasy image of homosexuality,” Medium, 24 July 2018, accessed on 10 October 2018, https://medium.com/@retawes_79944/how-japanese-pop-culture-represents-a-fantasy-image-of-homosexuality-e595f79a8cd8
- Rose of Versailles, 1979–1980, animation series, Nagahama Tadao & Dezaki Osamu, Japan.
- Saito, Kumiko, 2014, “Magic, “Shojo”, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 73, no. 1, p. 143–164
- Sally the Witch, 1966, animation series, Toshio Katsuta & Hiroshi Ikeda, Japan.
- Shamoon, Deborah, 2007, “Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga,” Mechademia, vol. 2, p. 3–17.
- Sherman, Jennifer, 2017, “Tokyo Olympics Committee President Proposes Manga Parade at 2020 Olympics,” AnimeNewsNetwork, 26 July 2017, accessed on 12 October 2018, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2017-07-25/tokyo-olympics-committee-president-proposes-manga-parade-at-2020-games/.119263
- Tamaki, Saito, 2000, Sento bishojo no seishen bunseki [Beautiful Fighting Girl], Ota Shuppan, Tokyo, p. 248.
- Tamaki, Saito, translated by Vincent, Keith J., 2011, “A Genealogy of the Beautiful Fighting Girl, Beautiful Fighting Girl, University of Minnesota Press, p. 83–135.
- Tezuka, Osamu, 1963–1966, Ribbon Knight, Nakayoshi.
- Thorn, Matt, 2001, “Shoujo manga — Something for girls,” Japan Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 3, p. 43–50.
- Toku, Masami, 2007, “Shojo Manga! Girls’ Comics! A Mirror of Girls’ Comics,” Mechademia, vol. 2, p. 19–32.
- Wedgwood, Nikki, 2009, “Connell’s theory of masculinity — its origins and influences on the study of gender,” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, p. 329–339.
- Zhou, Coco, 2015, “Girl as Sign: Epistemology of the Shojo,” Flow Journal, accessed on 22 October 2018, https://www.flowjournal.org/2015/11/girl-as-sign/?print=print
