100+ Years of Yuri

June 7, 2023 3:36 PM

Okazu is the internet's longest-running blog devoted to the study and review of yuri, a genre of manga and anime featuring romances between women and girls. Run by noted yuri expert and historian Erica Friedman, Okazu features loads of reviews ranging from recent series to untranslated classics. There are also essays galore. And if you're new to yuri, you can also find recommendations on where to start.
posted by May Kasahara (9 comments total)

That's (romances between women) and (romances between girls), not (romances between women and girls)!
posted by praemunire at 5:41 PM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

praemunire: Yes! Sorry if that wasn't the best phrasing ^^;
posted by May Kasahara at 5:44 PM on June 7, 2023

So, I know nothing of this culture, and I appreciate the un-pedo-fying of the language of the FPP. I'm left to wonder, how actually present are queer relationships within Japanese culture? Are these manga fantasy wish fulfillment for a culture that doesn't allow these relationships openly in real life? Are these female-centric romances for women or are they male gaze centric?

I'm really not being glib. I could ask ChatGPT but I'd rather have human responses for this really naive gringo.
posted by hippybear at 6:00 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

hippybear: I'm an anime and manga fan but also something of an outsider (being both a Westerner and someone who only occasionally dips their toes into yuri*), but I'll try my best to answer your questions based on my observations over the years:

I'm left to wonder, how actually present are queer relationships within Japanese culture?

I'm not entirely sure. Some popular media with queer characters are widely beloved in Japan, such as The Rose of Versailles (for which Friedman edited the English release and is a superfan), which has been adapted into stage plays and other media. There have been live-action TV adaptations of manga with queer characters, like What Did You Eat Yesterday? and My Brother's Husband**. Yuri themes are particularly popular in anime at the moment, including in Gundam, Japan's biggest and most important sci-fi franchise. So, there seems to be growing acceptance of queerness in media, but I don't know how big of an impact this is all having. The Gundam thing is a pretty big deal, though.

There has long been an idea in Japan that a girl crushing on another girl is a phase that is a normal part of growing up, something that girls will eventually grow out of. It makes the current crop of adult woman yuri and essay manga like My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness all the more important.

Are these manga fantasy wish fulfillment for a culture that doesn't allow these relationships openly in real life?

Oftentimes, yes, though many modern yuri series seem to be a bit more grounded in reality (though there's probably some wish fulfillment in those, too!).

Are these female-centric romances for women or are they male gaze centric?

Both. Many stories with yuri/queer elements, such as The Rose of Versailles and Cardcaptor Sakura, first ran in girls' comics magazines. Other stories are aimed at boys/men; Ghost in the Shell's Major Kusanagi is the most famous lesbian character I can think of from a men's manga, and then there are your typical raunchy stories, especially in the doujinshi (fan comics) space. It seems like the term "yuri" can be applied with a much broader brush compared to yaoi/boys love, which tends to be very clearly aimed at women, and bara/geikomi, which are comics by and for gay men.

Again, I am by no means an expert, but I hope this helped somewhat.

* - I have read a bit more boys love, but haven't yet found a blogger covering BL as good as Friedman does for yuri.

** - I met the mangaka, Gengoroh Tagame, at a signing event for this series. He was a delight.
posted by May Kasahara at 7:01 PM on June 7, 2023 [10 favorites]

Thank you May Kasahara for your explanation. That's generous and kind of you. I won't pretend to actually understand, but maybe you opened the door a crack for me. Thanks!
posted by hippybear at 7:56 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

hippybear, if you're interested I would suggest listening to the podcast Mangasplaining, which is structured as three hosts with extensive backgrounds in manga and American comics discussing manga works with Marvel/DC comics creator Chip Zdarsky, an ostensible manga newbie (though at 94 episodes and counting the premise doesn't really hold anymore). I recommend it because it's explicitly designed to introduce non-readers to manga and its history and culture.

One of the three experts is a gay man and the show makes a point of highlighting queer manga, with episodes on My Brother's Husband (and Our Colors also by Gengoroh Tagame), The Rose of Versailles, and Even Though We’re Adults mentioned by May Kasahara above, as well as others.

Are these manga fantasy wish fulfillment for a culture that doesn't allow these relationships openly in real life? Are these female-centric romances for women or are they male gaze centric?

An episode that may be of particular interest to you given your questions above is on the anthology book MASSIVE: Gay Erotic Manga, which is a collection of manga written by and for gay men. It's interesting because it gets into the culture of yaoi/boys' love manga, and the problematic issues of that genre largely being written by women for women, vs manga by actual gay men for gay men, which are still relatively rare in Japan.
posted by star gentle uterus at 3:56 AM on June 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Warning (or recommendation?) for My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness: it was marketed as a cute coming-out story about sexual shyness, but the series isn't so much about romance and human connection as it is about extreme alienation, mental illness, eating disorders, alcoholism, and abuse and how it's difficult to even form a self-concept when burdened under all these experiences. I generally don't mind and even enjoy heavy topics, but I remember having an exchange with a fellow reader about how we felt really distressed and uncertain about reading these diary comics--and this was on the corner of Twitter for psychosexual horror comic artists. Maybe it's that most stories like this are only published in the West when they've come to a happy conclusion?

Really fascinating stuff, but again, if you're looking for "I Married My Female Mob Boss" this ain't it.
posted by kingdead at 4:43 AM on June 8, 2023

I'm left to wonder, how actually present are queer relationships within Japanese culture? Are these manga fantasy wish fulfillment for a culture that doesn't allow these relationships openly in real life? Are these female-centric romances for women or are they male gaze centric?

Yes.

All of these flavours can be found within yuri and even (romances between women and girls). Yuri is not so much a genre with rigid definitions, more like a mood to be honest that encompasses everything from cute girls doing cute things slice of moe series, to something like the above mentioned My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness.

Erica Friedman has a Youtube channel, where her Yuri studio, (S2, S3, S4), is an introductionary series about yuri and its history.

Good, recent and translated into English yuri series I'd recommend are Bloom into You and the Kase-san series. Both start as romances between high school girls, but the latter moves beyond that and follows their relationship as they enter college. I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up is a one shot that does what it says in the title.

Otherside Picnic is a good example of a sfnal yuri series, two college girls exploring a strange alien world they enter through following up urban legends, with one of them doing so to find her ex-girlfriend. The interview with the author on what yuri actually is will however not clear things up for you.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu and Bocchi the Rock are excellent examples of the slice of moe/cute girls doing cute things type of yuri series, where it is mostly subtext, but the subtext can very loud. The first is about a loner ("bocchi") girl suffering from extreme shyness trying to make friends of all her class, the second is about another loner suffering from crippling social anxiety who joins a rock band.

Sakura Trick is often accused of being just a straight blokes fetish series, but it is one of the few that goes beyond hand holding and has the two girls kissing each other. Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels! is much better than you'd might expect from the title.

A lot of what is available as yuri or "girls' love" in English is fairly conventional, mostly retelling the same story of two girls falling in love, the end. If you're looking for things that are less wish fulfilment and more realistic, check sites like Mangadex or Dynasty Reader, the latter specialising as a repository of not quite legally translated yuri manga.
posted by MartinWisse at 8:47 AM on June 9, 2023

I was inspired by this post to dig up my issues of Ohana Holoholo, which I loved but didn't end up finishing when it was first coming out because I didn't want to be sad about the ending.

The plot is that Michiru is a young widow who moves back in with her ex-girlfriend Maya after her husband's death because she is struggling as a single parent to a toddler. Maya and Michiru have to negotiate their past and current feelings for each other, whether they are friends or whether they want to be something else, and also their worries about Michiru's son facing homophobia if Michiru is in a relationship with a woman.

Meanwhile, the downstairs neighbor Niko was in love with Michiru's bisexual dead husband, and is struggling with his feelings about the husband's death and how he wants to stay in the lives of Michiru and her kid.

So it's a little soapy, but...sweet, and very human in the complicated ways the characters feel about each other, and it's not male-gazey or wish-fulfilment or even really a romance manga. It's about trying to figure out how to be good to each other as friends and parents and family just as much as it is about Maya and Michiru deciding whether they want to get back together.

(Am I sad about the ending? Well, mostly a little annoyed that the manga repeats that pattern where the male character's angst is always more important than whatever's going on with the women characters, EVEN WHEN IT'S A MANGA ABOUT LESBIANS, but it's still pretty great. 9.5/10)
posted by Jeanne at 12:51 PM on June 10, 2023 [1 favorite]