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Abstract
Butlers, ‘the chief manservant[s] of a house’, remain one of the essential icons in Japanese ACGN (animation, comics, gaming, novels) culture, including Boys’ Love (BL), a genre featuring erotic or romantic relationships between men. In mainstream BL works, butlers are very often portrayed by writers and artists as capable, handsome and even sexy. Interestingly, even though they have to take their masters’ orders, they tend to be the ones who dominate the master–servant relationships. Based on Pamela Regis’s model of romance elements and Dru Pagliassotti’s study of BL writing formula, this paper examines the entangled relationship of love, lust and power between the master and his butler in Shoko Hidaka’s well-received BL manga Blue Morning. The progressive development of bond and tension between these two protagonists indicates an emerging domestic partnership. Such a partnership, it is argued, fulfils BL readers’ expectation for ‘equal love’ by subverting and testing the limits of social conventions.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan under the grant of Aim for the Top University Plan. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Fifth International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference at the British Library, London, UK, on 19 July 2014. I am grateful to the delegates for their useful questions and remarks. Finally, I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments.
Notes
1. An archetypical personality trait in Japanese ACGN, referring to ‘alternatingly hostile and loving’ (Bowman Citation2011, 15).
2. For a more detailed definition and discussion on shujuu-moe, see: https://bangin.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/.
3. According to Nobuko Anan’s definition, ‘The Year 24 Group’(24 nen gumi) is ‘a group of women manga artists born around the 24th year of the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, or A.D. 1949) [which] became a site for women to collectively and critically explore their bodies, gender, and sexuality’ (Citation2014, 41).
4. Japanese original: ‘この「リバ一シブル」は腐女子業界では一番嫌おれます。’
5. The above observation is based on my personal e-mail correspondence with a Taiwanese editor of BL novels (February 25, 2015, 9.21 a.m.).
6. Brenner and Wildsmith (Citation2011, 97) provide a list of creators of such works: Shinri Fuwa (A Gentleman’s Kiss, Juné), Makoto Tateno (Yellow, Juné), Fumi Yoshinaga (Ichgenme, 801 Media), Taishi Zaou (Living for Tomorrow, Doki Doki), and Yugi Yamada (Close the Last Door, Juné).
7. ‘Shoko Hidaka’ is the pseudonym of manga artist Shoko Hidaka and script writer Takie. Source (in Chinese): http://tinyurl.com/82yvxnr.
8. Issued overseas in French only. http://www.taifu-comics.com/index.php/manga/Restart.
9. Issued overseas in French only. http://www.taifu-comics.com/index.php/serie/Apres-lorage.
11. See the Encyclopedia Britannica Online entries http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/373305/Meiji-Restoration (accessed November 1, 2014) and http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/580889/Taisho-period (access October 24, 2014) for the Meiji restoration and Taishō period respectively.
14. For images of the two protagonists, see the US publisher’s webpage: https://www.sublimemanga.com/search?search=Shoko+Hidaka.
17. Available in Japanese and Chinese only. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9025035-shitsuji-wa-oose-no-mama-ni.
19. In the Chinese version (Hidaka [Citation2010] 2013, 188), the line goes like this: ‘至少已故老爺，不會做出抱了我這樣無聊的舉動。’ The verb ‘抱’ in this sentence is actually a euphemism for ‘having sex with’ in both Chinese (particularly in the BL context) and Japanese (抱く; だく; daku).
20. Original Japanese source: http://www.shinshokan.co.jp/mag/nw074/; 三浦しをん (with Hidaka Shoko as guests), ‘BL作家インタビューエッセイ☆: 愛が生まれてくるところ’ [interview with BL authors], 小説ウィングス [Fiction WINGS], Winter 2012 (74). Translated into English by the author of this article from the Chinese source (http://tinyurl.com/82yvxnr). In the quotations from the interview, H stands for Hidaka Shoko; T stands for Taki; S stands for the interviewer Miura Shion).
21. Original Japanese title: 執事は沈黙に恋をする. The English title is my own translation.
22. The age gap also fits BL conventional pairing of ‘younger seme/older uke’, popular among BL readers and fans.
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Tien-yi Chao
Tien-yi Chao is Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at National Taiwan University. Her recent publications include ‘Transmutation of Worlds’ in Studies in Comics (2013) and ‘Features of hybridization in In These Words’ in Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (2013). She is currently conducting a government-funded research project on the icon of ‘English butler’ in Western media and Japanese ACG (animations, comics, games), and holding a visiting fellowship on the comparative study of ‘hermaphrodite/androgyny’ in Western alchemy and Chinese Daoism. She is the English editor of the journal Humanitas Taiwanica.