Boys' love

Multiple terms exist to describe Japanese and Japanese-influenced male–male romance fiction as a genre. In a 2015 survey of professional Japanese male–male romance fiction writers by Kazuko Suzuki, five primary subgenres were identified: ; :While the term shōnen-ai historically connoted ephebophilia or pederasty, beginning in the 1970s it was used to describe a new genre of shōjo manga (girls' manga) featuring romance between bishōnen ( "beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous or effeminate male characters. Early shōnen-ai works were inspired by European literature, the writings of Taruho Inagaki, Shōnen-ai often features references to literature, history, science, and philosophy; Suzuki describes the genre as being "pedantic" and "difficult to understand", with "philosophical and abstract musings" that challenged young readers who were often only able to understand the references and deeper themes as they grew older. ; : as a term and concept predates male–male romance manga that emerged in the 1970s, having originated to describe erotic highbrow literary fiction by authors such as Yukio Mishima, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and Yasunari Kawabata. By the 1980s, magazines aimed at fans were using the term to describe fiction by both amateur and professional writers published in those magazines, as well as to designate literature with themes of homoeroticism and implied homosexuality by authors such as Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, and Mishima. in this context is primarily used to describe prose fiction, but has also been used for manga and visual art. ; :Derived from the eponymous male–male romance manga magazine first published in 1978, the term was originally used to describe works that resembled the art style of manga published in that magazine. By the 1990s, the term had largely fallen out of use in favor of "'''boys' love'"; it has been suggested that publishers wishing to get a foothold in the June'' market coined "boys' love" to disassociate the genre from the publisher of June. The Japanese use of yaoi to denote only works with explicit scenes sometimes clashes with the Western use of the word to describe the genre as a whole, creating confusion between Japanese and Western audiences. ==History==

Before 1970: The origins of shōnen-ai , whose tanbi novels laid the foundation for many of the common genre tropes of Homosexuality and androgyny have a history in Japan dating to ancient times, as seen in practices such as and . The country shifted away from a tolerance of homosexuality amid Westernization during the Meiji Era (1868–1912), and moved towards hostile social attitudes towards homosexuality and the implementation of anti-sodomy laws. In the face of this legal and cultural shift, artists who depicted male homosexuality in their work typically did so through subtext. Illustrations by in the shōnen manga (boys' comics) magazine Nihon Shōnen formed the foundation of what would become the aesthetic of bishōnen: boys and young men, often in homosocial or homoerotic contexts, who are defined by their "ambivalent passivity, fragility, ephemerality, and softness." The 1961 novel ''A Lovers' Forest by tanbi writer Mari Mori, which follows the relationship between a professor and his younger male lover, is regarded as an influential precursor to the shōnen-ai genre. Works by these artists typically featured tragic romances between androgynous bishōnen in historic European settings. Early yaoi produced for Comiket were typically derivative works, with glam rock artists such as David Bowie and Queen as popular subjects as a result of the influence of Fire!; yaoi were also more sexually explicit than shōnen-ai''. In reaction to the success of shōnen-ai and early yaoi, publishers sought to exploit the market by creating magazines devoted to the genre. Young female illustrators cemented themselves in the manga industry by publishing yaoi works, with this genre later becoming "a transnational subculture." Publishing house , which published the gay manga magazine , launched the magazine June in 1978, while launched Allan in 1980. Both magazines initially specialized in shōnen-ai, which Magazine Magazine described as "halfway between tanbi literature and pornography," and also published articles on homosexuality, literary fiction, illustrations, and amateur yaoi works. The success of June was such that the term June-mono or more simply June began to compete with the term shōnen-ai to describe works depicting male homosexuality. By the late 1980s, the popularity of professionally published shōnen-ai was declining, and yaoi published as dōjinshi was becoming more popular. Mainstream shōnen manga with Japanese settings, such as Captain Tsubasa became popular source material for derivative works by yaoi creators, and the genre increasingly depicted Japanese settings over Western settings. Works influenced by shōnen-ai in the 1980s began to depict older protagonists and adopted a realist style in both plot and artwork, as typified by manga such as Banana Fish (1985–1994) by Akimi Yoshida and Tomoi (1986) by . The 1980s also saw the proliferation of yaoi into anime, drama CDs, and light novels; the 1982 anime adaptation of Patalliro! was the first television anime to depict shōnen-ai themes, while Kaze to Ki no Uta and Earthian were adapted into anime in the original video animation (home video) format in 1987 and 1989, respectively. The mid-1990s saw the so-called "yaoi debate" or yaoi ronsō (や お い 論争), a debate held primarily in a series of essays published in the feminist magazine Choisir from 1992 to 1997. In an open letter, Japanese gay writer Masaki Satō criticized the genre as homophobic for not depicting gay men accurately, Thai Series Y explicitly adapts the content of Japanese BL to the Thai local context and in recent years has become increasingly popular with fans around the world who often view Thai BL as separate to its Japanese antecedents. Thai BL also deliberately borrows from K-pop celebrity culture in the development of its own style of idols known as khu jin (imaginary couples) who are designed to be paired together by Thai BL's predominantly female fans. For cultural anthropologist Thomas Baudinette, BL series produced in Thailand represent the next stage in the historic development of BL, which is increasingly becoming "dislocated" from Japan among international fans' understanding of the genre. While BL fandom in China traces back to the late 1990s as danmei (the Mandarin reading of the Japanese term tanbi), state regulations in China made it difficult for danmei writers to publish their works online, with a 2009 ordinance by the National Publishing Administration of China banning most danmei online fiction. In 2015, laws prohibiting depictions of same-sex relationships in television and film were implemented in China. The growth in streaming service providers in the 2010s is regarded as a driving force behind the production of BL dramas across Asia, as online distribution provides a platform for media containing non-heterosexual material, which is frequently not permitted on broadcast television. ==Concepts and themes==

Bishōnen The protagonists of BL are often , "highly idealised" boys and young men who blend both masculine and feminine qualities. Though bishōnen are not exclusive to BL, the androgyny of bishōnen is often exploited to explore notions of sexuality and gender in BL works. The late 2010s saw the increasing popularity of masculine men in BL that are reminiscent of the body types typical in gay manga, with growing emphasis on stories featuring muscular bodies and older characters. Seme and uke The two participants in a BL relationship (and to a lesser extent in yuri) are often referred to as and . Aleardo Zanghellini suggests that the martial arts terms have special significance to a Japanese audience, as an archetype of the gay male relationship in Japan includes same-sex love between samurai and their companions. Anal sex is ubiquitous in BL, Zanghellini notes that illustrations of anal sex almost always position the characters to face each other rather than "doggy style", and that the uke rarely fellates the seme, but instead receives the sexual and romantic attentions of the seme. indicating an interest among many genre authors in exploring the performative nature of the roles. , a shorthand for "reversible" (リバーシブル), is used to describe couples where the seme and uke roles are not strictly defined. Occasionally, authors will forego the stylisations of the seme and uke to portray both lovers as "equally attractive handsome men", or will subvert expectations of dominance by depicting the active pursuer in the relationship as taking the passive role during sex. In other cases, the uke is presented as more sexually aggressive than the seme; in these instances, the roles are sometimes referred to as and . Diminished female characters Historically, female characters had minor roles in BL, or were absent altogether. Yukari Fujimoto noted that in these parodies, "it seems that yaoi readings and likeable female characters are mutually exclusive." Nariko Enomoto, a BL author, suggests that women are typically not depicted in BL as their presence adds an element of realism that distracts from a fantasy narrative. Since the late 2000s, women have appeared more frequently in BL works as supporting characters. Lunsing notes that early shōnen-ai and yaoi were often regarded as misogynistic, with the diminished role of female characters cited as evidence of the internalized misogyny of the genre's largely female readership. Some longer-form stories such as Fake and Kizuna: Bonds of Love have the couple form a family unit, depicting them cohabiting and adopting children. It is also possible that they marry and have children, as in Omegaverse publications. Fujimoto cites ''Ossan's Love'' (2016–2018) and other BL television dramas that emerged in the 2010s as a "'missing link' to bridge the gap between BL fiction and gay people," arguing that when BL narratives are presented using human actors, it produces a "subconscious change in the perception of viewers" towards acceptance of homosexuality. Homophobia, when it is presented as an issue at all, Alan Williams argues that the lack of a gay identity in BL is due to BL being postmodern, stating that "a common utterance in the genre—when a character claims that he is 'not gay, but just in love with a man'—has both homophobic (or modern) temporal undertones but also non-identitarian (postmodern) ones." In 2019, BL manga magazine editors stated that stories where a man is concerned about coming out as gay have become uncommon and the trope can be seen as outdated if used as a source of conflict between the characters. Where the uke is raped by a third party, the relationship is shown to be emotionally supportive. Conversely, some stories such as Under Grand Hotel subvert the rape fantasy trope entirely by presenting rape as a negative and traumatic act. A 2012 survey of English-language BL fans found that just 15% of respondents reported that the presence of rape in BL media made them uncomfortable, as the majority of respondents could distinguish between the "fantasy, genre-driven rape" of BL and rape as a crime in reality. Tragedy Tragic narratives that focused on the suffering of the protagonists were popular early June stories, particularly stories that ended in one or both members of the central couple dying from suicide. By the mid-1990s, happy endings were more common; is a genre that depicts prepubescent or pubescent boys in a romantic or pornographic context. Originating as an offshoot of in the early 1980s, the subgenre was later adopted by male readers and became influenced by lolicon (works depicting prepubescent or pubescent girls); and in the 2010s became a subgenre of both commercial and non-commercial BL. Stories in the genre are premised on societies wherein humans are divided into a dominance hierarchy of dominant "alphas", neutral "betas", and submissive "omegas". These terms are derived from those used in ethology to describe social hierarchies in animals. The "dom/sub universe" subgenre emerged in 2017 and gained popularity in 2021. The subgenre uses BDSM elements and also draws influences from Omegaverse, particularly the use of a caste system. ==Media==

In 2003, 3.8% of weekly Japanese manga magazines were dedicated exclusively to BL. Notable ongoing and defunct magazines include Magazine Be × Boy, June, Craft, Chara, Dear+, Opera, '', and Gush. A 2008 assessment estimated that the Japanese commercial BL market grossed approximately annually, with novel sales generating per month, manga generating per month, CDs generating per month, and video games generating per month. A 2010 report estimated that the Japanese BL market was worth approximately in both 2009 and 2010. In 2019, editors from Lynx, Magazine Be × Boy, and On BLUE'' stated that, with the growth of BL artists in Taiwan and South Korea, they have recruited and published several of their works in Japan with expectations that the BL manga industry will diversify. Fan works () based on existing media, as in this fan art of Harry Potter and Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series. The (self-published fan works) subculture emerged in the 1970s contemporaneously with BL subculture and Western fan fiction culture. Several legitimate manga artists produce or produced dōjinshi: the manga artist group Clamp began as an amateur dōjinshi circle creating works based on Saint Seiya, while Kodaka Kazuma and Fumi Yoshinaga have produced dōjinshi concurrently with professionally published works. Many publishing companies review BL dōjinshi to recruit talented amateurs; this practice has led to careers in mainstream manga for Youka Nitta, Shungiku Nakamura, and others. publishers of shōnen manga may create "homoerotic-themed" merchandise as fan service to their BL fans. BL fans may "ship" any male–male pairing, sometimes pairing off a favourite character, or create a story about two original male characters and incorporate established characters into the story. video games such as Final Fantasy, or real people such as actors and politicians. Amateur authors may also create characters out of personifications of abstract concepts (as in the personification of countries in Hetalia: Axis Powers) or complementary objects like salt and pepper. In Japan, the labelling of BL dōjinshi is typically composed of the two lead characters' names, separated by a multiplication sign, with the seme being first and the uke being second. Outside of Japan, the 2000 broadcast of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing in North America on Cartoon Network is noted as crucial to the development of Western BL fan works, particularly fan fiction. As BL fan fiction is often compared to the Western fan practice of slash, it is important to understand the subtle differences between them. Levi notes that "the youthful teen look that so easily translates into androgyny in boys' love manga, and allows for so many layered interpretations of sex and gender, is much harder for slash writers to achieve." English-language publishing in San Francisco in 2009 The first officially licensed English-language translations of manga were published in the North American market in 2003. By 2006, there were roughly 130 English-translated works commercially available, Notable English-language publishers of BL include Viz Media under their SuBLime imprint, Digital Manga Publishing under their 801 Media and Juné imprints, Media Blasters under their Kitty Media imprint, Seven Seas Entertainment, and Tokyopop. Notable defunct English-language publishers of BL include Central Park Media under their Be Beautiful imprint, Broccoli under their Boysenberry imprint, and Aurora Publishing under their Deux Press imprint. Restrictions among American booksellers often led publishers to label books conservatively, often rating books originally intended for a mid-teen readership as 18+ and distributing them in shrinkwrap. Marketing was significant in the transnational travel of BL from Japan to the United States, and led to BL to attract a following of LGBTQ fans in the United States. The 1994 original video animation adaptation of Kizuna: Bonds of Love was distributed by Ariztical Entertainment, which specializes in LGBT cinema and marketed the title as "the first gay male anime to be released on DVD in the US." The film was reviewed in the American LGBT magazine The Advocate, which compared the film to gay art house cinema. A large portion of Western fans choose to pirate BL material because they are unable or unwilling to obtain it through sanctioned methods. Scanlations and other fan translation efforts of both commercially published Japanese works and amateur dojinshi are common. Original English-language When initially gained popularity in the United States in the early 2000s, several American artists began creating original English-language manga for female readers featuring male–male couples referred to as "American ". The first known commercially published original English-language comic is Sexual Espionage #1 by Daria McGrain, published by Sin Factory in May 2002. As international artists began creating works, the term "American " fell out of use and was replaced by terms like "original English language ", "global ", and "global BL". The majority of publishers creating original English-language manga are now defunct, including Yaoi Press, DramaQueen, and Iris Print. Digital Manga Publishing last published original English-language manga in 2012; outside of the United States, German publisher Carlsen Manga also published original works. Audio dramas BL audio dramas, occasionally referred to as "drama CDs", "sound dramas", or "BLCDs", are recorded voice performances of male–male romance scenarios performed by primarily male voice actors. They are typically adaptations of original BL manga and novels. The first BL audio dramas were released in the 1980s, beginning with Tsuzumigafuchi in 1988, which was published as a "June cassette". BL audio dramas proliferated beginning in the 1990s with the rise in popularity of compact discs, peaking at 289 total CDs released in 2008, which dropped to 108 CDs in 2013. In 2020, the BL market was worth in Japan. In 2022, Kadokawa Corporation employee Kaoru Azuma established Tunku, Kadokawa's label for publishing live-action BL drama series, partnering with MBS TV to create the programming block Drama Shower. The label was created to promote Japanese BL dramas based on existing BL novels and manga due to the growing popularity of BL caused by ''Ossan's Love. This was followed by Love Sick (2014–2015), the first Thai television series to feature two gay characters as the lead roles. the success of Love of Siam and Love Sick'' kickstarted the production of domestic BL dramas: between 2014 and 2020, 57 television series in the BL genre were produced and released in Thailand. Major producers of Thai BL include GMMTV, a subsidiary of GMM Grammy, which has produced 2gether: The Series (2020), A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021), SOTUS (2016–2017), Dark Blue Kiss (2019), and Theory of Love (2019); and Line Corporation, which produces BL dramas in Thailand for distribution on its Line TV platform. It has been suggested that BL dramas could become a source of Thai cultural soft power in Southeast Asia and beyond. China There are no specific censorship policies in China concerning depictions of LGBT subject material in media; nevertheless, Variety reports that such material is "deemed sensitive and is inconsistently but regularly removed" from distribution. Addicted (2016), the first Chinese BL web series, accumulated 10 million views before being pulled from the streaming platform iQiyi. The 2015 BL xianxia novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation was adapted into an animated series in 2018 and a live-action series in 2019, both of which similarly revise the nature of the relationship between the lead male characters. Consequently, fans of both Guardian and The Untamed discussed the series' male homoerotic content under the hashtag "socialist brotherhood" or "socialist bromance" to avoid detection from state censors. Other countries In South Korea, the web series Where Your Eyes Linger launched as the first domestically produced BL series in 2020. The BL genre didn't receive much traction in the country until 2022, when the series Semantic Error achieved a major domestic success and became a social phenomenon in South Korea. The unexpected success of the series introduced the BL genre to the mainstream South Korean audience, which subsequently resulted in a rising production of South Korean BL dramas and films. In Taiwan, the BL anthology series HIStory premiered in 2017. In the Philippines, BL television dramas gained popularity through the broadcast of foreign BL dramas such as 2gether and Where Your Eyes Linger. Hello Stranger (2020), and Oh, Mando! (2020); the 2020 film The Boy Foretold by the Stars billed itself as "the first Filipino BL movie". The Canadian sports romance series Heated Rivalry has been considered as a western adaptation of BL. Video games BL video games typically consist of visual novels or eroge oriented around male–male couples. The first BL game to receive an officially licensed English-language release was Enzai: Falsely Accused, published by JAST USA in 2006. That same year, the company published Absolute Obedience, while Hirameki International licensed Animamundi; the later game, although already nonexplicit, was censored for US release to achieve a "mature" rather than "adults only" ESRB rating, removing some of both the sexual and the violent content. Compared to BL manga, fewer BL games have been officially translated into English; the lack of interest by publishers in licensing further titles has been attributed to widespread copyright infringement of both licensed and unlicensed games. ==Demography==

Suzuki notes that "demographic analyses of BL media are underdeveloped and thus much needed in yaoi/BL studies," but acknowledges that "the overwhelming majority of BL readers are women." 80% of the BL audience is female, while the membership of Yaoi-Con, a now-defunct American convention, was 85% female. It is usually assumed that all female fans are heterosexual, but in Japan there is a presence of lesbian manga authors A 2008 survey of English-speaking readers of BL indicated that 50%–60% of female readers self-identify as heterosexual. Although the genre is marketed to and consumed primarily by girls and women, there is a gay, readership as well. A 2007 survey of BL readers among patrons of a United States library found about one quarter of respondents were male; two online surveys found approximately 10% of the broader English-speaking BL readership were male. Some gay men, however, are put off by the feminine art style or unrealistic depictions of LGBT culture in Japan and instead prefer gay manga, Female fans of BL are often referred to as , a derogatory insult that was later reappropriated as a self-descriptive term. The male equivalent is or , both of which are puns of similar construction to fujoshi. ==Analysis==

Audience motivation Motivations for consuming BL media include liberation from heteropatriarchy, idealised portrayal of relationships, 'pure' genderless love and pro-homosexual attitudes, identification or self-analysis, melodramatic or emotional elements, aversion to standard romances aimed at women, pure escapism, art and aesthetics, pure entertainment, and sexual excitement or titillation. BL works, culture, and fandom have been studied and discussed by scholars and journalists worldwide, especially after translations of BL became commercially available outside Japan in the 21st century. In Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, the 1983 book by Frederik L. Schodt that was the first substantial English-language work on manga, Schodt observes that portrayals of gay male relationships had used and further developed bisexual themes already extant in manga to appeal to their female audience. Japanese critics have viewed BL as a genre that permits their audience to avoid adult female sexuality by distancing sex from their own bodies, as well as to create fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality and rejects "socially mandated" gender roles as a "first step toward feminism". Kazuko Suzuki, for example, believes that the audience's aversion to or contempt for masculine heterosexism is something which has consciously emerged as a result of the genre's popularity. Mizoguchi, writing in 2003, feels that BL is a "female-gendered space", as the writers, readers, artists and most of the editors of BL are female. In 2004, Paul Gravett summarized the dominant theories for the popularity of BL with a female audience: that Japanese women were disillusioned or bored with classic male–female relationships in fiction, that the populating the genre were a backlash against male sex fantasies of a feminized ideal of adolescent girls, that the genre offered a safe space for sexual fantasies with the free choice of identification figure in the relationship, and that the male characters in BL are interpreted by female readers as girls, thus making the stories expressions of readers' same-sex fantasies. Other commentators have suggested that more radical gender-political issues underlie BL. Parallels have been noted in the popularity of lesbianism in pornography, While early approaches to the popularity of the genre often referred to the role of women in patriarchal Japanese society, to which the genre offers a resistance and escape, this approach has been rejected by others who note that BL and BL-like media became popular outside of Japan in other social circumstances, such as slash fiction in the West. Against this background, theories emphasizing pleasure gained support: BL could be compared to pornography or even considered a specifically female form of pornography, appealing to desires for eroticism, voyeurism, or a desire to push against established gender roles. Mariko Ōhara, a science fiction writer, has said that she wrote Kirk/Spock fiction as a teen because she could not enjoy "conventional pornography, which had been made for men", and that she had found a "limitless freedom" in BL, much like in science fiction. In 1998, Shihomi Sakakibara asserted that fans, including himself, were gay transgender men. Sandra Buckley believes that bishōnen narratives champion "the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations", while James Welker described the bishōnen character as "queer", commenting that manga critic Akiko Mizoguchi saw shōnen-ai as playing a role in how she herself had become a lesbian. Dru Pagliassotti sees this and the yaoi ronsō as indicating that for Japanese gay and lesbian readers, BL is not as far removed from reality as heterosexual female readers like to claim. Criticism of the stereotypically feminine behaviour of the uke has also been prominent. Rachel Thorn has suggested that BL and slash fiction fans are discontented with "the standards of femininity to which they are expected to adhere and a social environment that does not validate or sympathize with that discontent". Legal issues BL has been the subject of disputes on legal and moral grounds. Mark McLelland suggests that BL may become "a major battlefront for proponents and detractors of 'gender free' policies in employment, education and elsewhere", while BL artist Youka Nitta has said that "even in Japan, reading boys' love isn't something that parents encourage." In Thailand, the sale of unauthorized reproductions of shōnen-ai manga to teenagers in 2001 led to media coverage and a moral panic. In 2006, an email campaign pressuring the Sakai City Central Library to remove BL works from circulation attracted national media attention, and promoted a debate over whether removal of BL works constituted a form of discrimination. which resulted in several magazines prohibited from being sold to people under 18 years of age. In the People's Republic of China under the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, authors of danmei have been arrested and criminally prosecuted. Anhui TV reported that, at least 20 young female authors writing danmei novels on an online novel website were arrested in 2014. In 2018, the pseudonymous Chinese BL novel author Tianyi was sentenced to years in prison under laws prohibiting the production of "obscene material for profit". In August 2021, the BL-adapted show Word of Honor was banned. The National Radio Television Administration introduced further policies in January 2022 which resulted in the cancellation of all planned BL dramas. Zanghellini notes that due to the "characteristics of the /BL genre" of showing characters who are often underage engaging in romantic and sexual situations, child pornography laws in Australia and Canada "may lend themselves to targeting /BL work". He notes that in the UK, cartoons are exempt from child pornography laws unless they are used for child grooming. ==See also==