Gender Bending and Exoticism in Japanese Girls’ Comics

Abstract

Gender bending has been a staple of the medium of shōjo manga, Japanese girls’ comics, as best exemplified by cross-dressing “girl knight” characters and “Boys Love” stories, whose plots focus on romance between effeminate beautiful young men. The imaginary space created through the representation of these figures shares many traits in common with another typical feature of shōjo comics, namely their exoticisation of Europe. Both have been used as simultaneously escapist and subversive strategies, as a refuge from contemporary social norms and a platform for critical reflection. In this article, I aim to problematise our understanding of the connection between gender bending and exoticism in shōjo manga through an analysis of the representation of one specific aspect of European culture – namely, the Christian religion – in the genre of Boys Love manga.

Keywords:

• Japan
• shōjo manga
• gender
• exoticism
• Boys Love
• Christianity

Notes

1. A preliminary version of this article was presented as a conference paper at the first Gender and Modernity in the Asia-Pacific Symposium, hosted by the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at The University of Sydney in December 2010. I am grateful to the organisers, Meaghan Morris and Catherine Driscoll, for the opportunity to present at the conference as well as for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of the article. I would also like to thank my two anonymous readers for their observations and criticisms, which helped me to refine my argument.

2. Hagio and Takemiya, whose work I discuss in greater detail in the next section, are best known as the creators of the genre of shōnen ai and for their work in the genre of science fiction, as seen in works such as Takemiya’s best-selling series Tera e… (Toward Terra, 1977–80). Ikeda is the celebrated author of Berusayu no bara (The rose of Versailles, 1972–73), which instituted the trope of the cross-dressing girl as a staple of shōjo comics and of girls’ culture more broadly. Yamagishi is most renowned as the author of Hi izuru tokoro no tenshi (The Emperor of the Land of the Rising Sun, 1980–84), a fictionalised biography of Prince Shōtoku, which contributed to establishing historical fiction as a productive subgenre of girls’ manga.

3. The essay, published in 1998, was a debate between the three authors on the representation of male homosexuality in fan fiction by female authors, that included a large number of quotes from fan websites, in an attempt to do justice to the diversity of fan positions, and to acknowledge the high level of critical self-reflection among producers and consumers of fan fiction on issues such as misogyny and homophobia.

4. The term refers to parodies of famous works of popular culture, often television series, written by fans and circulated in magazines and more recently on the web.

5. It is also worthy of note that the male gay romantic and sexual relationships portrayed in the Boys Love of the 1970s were far from equal or respectful; they were in fact represented as troubled, hurtful, and generally based on power imbalance.

6. On Orientalism and representations of Japan see also Iriye (1975), Hammond (1997) and Miyake (2010).

7. Toba, who died prematurely in 2008 at the age of 41, is famous for illustrating the NHK manga version of the Heian classic The tale of Genji and as an author of soft-core Boys Love.

8. For a discussion of the notion of male gaze as a site of production and reproduction of heteropatriarchal norms, see Mulvey (1975).