BL workshop program (Web version)

Glocal Polemics of ‘BL’ (Boys Love): Production, Circulation, and Censorship
Place: Oita University (Japan, Oita city near Fukuoka)
Date: 22nd & 23rd January 2011
Boys Love
Program
Saturday, January 22, 2011
9:30-10:00
Opening Address
10:00-12:00 Session 1
 “Fujoshi: Young Women Exploring Visual Potential and Transgressive Intimacy in
Contemporary Japan”
Patrick W. Galbraith, University of Tokyo
 “The Fujoshi Character: ‘Rotten Girls’ Tracing Women’s Consumption of Images,
Narratives, and Men”
Jeffry Hester, Kansai Gaidai University
 “Uses & Gratification of Boys’ Love Manga: Fujoshi or Rotten Girls in Japan and
Germany”
Bjőrn-Ole Kamm, Leipzig University
(Discussant: James Welker, University of British Columbia)
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-15:00 Session 2
 “Do Heterosexual Men Dream of Homosexual Men?: BL Fudanshi (‘rotten men’)
and the Discourse of Male Feminization”
Kazumi Nagaike, Oita University
 “Hidden in Straight Sight: Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL”
Uli Meyer, Independent scholar/artist
 “Transgressing Duality and Normativity: Gender and Sex(uality) Manipulation in
Japanese Yaoi Discourse”
Kazuko Suzuki, Texas A & M University
(Discussants: Ulrike Woehr, Hiroshima City University: Taimatsu Yoshimoto, Seikei
University)
15:30-17:30 Session 3
 “Boys Love, Restraint and Death in the Images of Takabatake Kashō: the Naked
Male Body and the Reading Girl in Pre-war Japan”
Barbara Hartley, University of Tasmania
 “An Essay on Pornography: Readers and Their Multiple Realities”
Rio Otomo, University of Melbourne
 “Creative Misreadings of Christianity in BL Manga: the Bishōnenisation of
Amakusa Shirō”
Rebecca Suter, University of Sydney
(Discussants: Paul McCarthy, Surugadai University: Kazumi Nagaike, Oita University)
Sunday, January 23, 2011
10:30-12:30 Session 4
 “Australia’s Child-Abuse Materials Legislation, Internet Regulation and the
Juridification of the Imagination”
Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong
 “Transplanted BL Conventions and Anti-Shota Polemics in a German Manga: Fahr
Sindram’s Losing Neverland”
Paul M. Malone, University of Waterloo
 “Two Texts of Liuli-Glass Earrings: Representations and Discourses of Sexuality
(from the1920s to 2010)”
Kenko Kawasaki, Waseda University
(Discussant: Vera Mackie, University of Wollongong)
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15:00 Session 5
 “Revisiting Occidentalism in Japan via Axis Powers Hetalia: Nation
Anthropomorphism and Sexualized Parody in Youth Subcultures”
Toshio Miyake, Ca' Foscari University of Venice/University of Kyoto
 “The World of Grand Union: Engendering Trans/nationalism with BL in Chinese
Hetalia Fandom”
Ling Yang, Beijing Normal University
(Discussants: Sharalyn Orbaugh, University of British Columbia: Katsuhiko Suganuma,
Oita University)
15:30-17:30 Session 6
 “Ethics and Aesthetics of Yoshinaga Fumi’s BL Manga”
Tomoko Aoyama, University of Queensland
 “Reading Boys’ Love Dōjinshi in the West: Challenging the ‘Mukokuseki’ of Video
Games”
Lucy Glasspool, University of London/University of Nagoya
 “Girls who are boys who like girls to be boys…: BL and the Australian Cosplay
Community”
Emerald King, University of Tasmania
(Discussant: Romit Dasgupt, University of Western Australia)
17:30 – 18:00 Closing Discussion
(Facilitator: Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong)
Registration: Registration at the event is free. If you would like to participate in the workshop,
please send your name and e-mail address to nagaike@cc.oita-u.ac.jp. The registration deadline is:
November 30th (Tuesday), 2010.
参 加 申 し 込 み ：ワークショップへの一般参加を希望される方は、氏名とメールアドレスを
nagaike@cc.oita-u.ac.jp までお送りください。申し込み締め切りは、2010 年 11 月 30 日(火)
です。
This event is sponsored by the Center for International Education and Research (CIER) at Oita University
http://www.isc.oita-u.ac.jp/
and
Institute
for
Social
Transformation
Research
(ISTR)
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/istr/index.html at the University of Wollongong.
Abstracts (In order of the proposed program)
“Fujoshi: Young Women Exploring Visual Potential and Transgressive Intimacy in Contemporary
Japan”
Patrick W. Galbraith, University of Tokyo
This paper is a theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into intimate communication and friendship
among young women in contemporary Japan. The group I am considering consumes, produces and
reproduces mainstream manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation), similar to the
phenomenon of "fan fiction" and "fan art" in the United States and Europe. Fans not only produce works
of homage and parody to re-enchant commodities for personal pleasure, but they also publicize their
works to facilitate interaction, or to bridge a "shared imagined." In Japan, as elsewhere, women account
for the majority of this activity, but unique to Japan is the relative autonomy this group has achieved and
the high visibility of their activities. The existence of overlapping spheres of virtual and physical fan
activity on the present scale in Japan provides a unique opportunity to analyze emergent patterns of
intimacy at a time when interactions with media and technology are playing an increasingly important
role in shaping communication and friendship. My case study is a group of women who identify as
fujoshi, or "rotten girls." They are enthusiasts of a genre of fan-production called yaoi, stories focusing on
male-male romance that exist as text and images in both published and digital forms. This paper will
examine how fujoshi produce, consume and share yaoi and the sets of discussions and relationships that
make possible across physical and virtual space. Specifically, the focus is on “moe communication,” or
the playful and performative aspects of expressing and sharing desire.
“The Fujoshi Character: ‘Rotten Girls’ Tracing Women’s Consumption of Images, Narratives, and
Men”
Jeffry Hester, Kansai Gaidai University
Fujoshi or “rotten girls” is a self-deprecating appellation for producers and consumers of derivative
amateur manga (dôjinshi) works in which the characters are predominantly males poached from
mainstream genres of commercial boys’ comics, anime, or the entertainment world and placed in
male-male homoerotic situations, as well as fans of a wide range of commercial “boys’ love” genres of
manga, novels, games and other narrative and graphic forms. To the extent that this diverse set of
fandoms is centered on queer readings and, more often than not, consumption/production of pornographic
imagery, fujoshi occupy a space defined by transgression.
Alongside the practices of real girls and women, the fujoshi character has recently emerged as a new
model of “bad girl,” a gender-specific social type discursively created through a variety of media
constructions, including journalistic accounts, commercial manga, live action feature films, TV segments,
and internet debate. Examining in particular some mass-mediated versions of these representations, this
paper will investigate the contours of the dominant images of the fujoshi as social type, and attempt to
shed light on what this character suggests about the shifting discourses on gender and heterosexual
relations in Japan. Within this framework, questions will be addressed regarding how mass media
representations of fujoshi build upon the transgressive acts of reading queer and reading graphic sexual
images, and how they work to regulate and contain potentially subversive aspects of fujoshi practice.
“Uses & Gratification of Boys’ Love Manga: Fujoshi or Rotten Girls in Japan and Germany”
Bjőrn-Ole Kamm, Leipzig University
Analogous to sociological research on ‘deviant’ behavior and media preferences in general, layman
questions like “Why do they do it?” and their essentializing or pathologizing answers still make up a
prominent part of the discourse on Boys’ Love (BL) and fujoshi. The ‘common sense’ logic behind these
questions tends to ignore individual modes of consumption, experiences and ascriptions of meaning.
Following the gradually more differentiated view on the tayōsei (diversity) of BL content and
answering the critique on the discourse’s narrowness, I propose a theoretical framework for the research
on BL use and appropriation that simultaneously offers openness and integration.
Based on an interactionist perspective that builds on theories of media gratification, entertainment
and emotions, as well as escapism (as a mode of reception) and happiness, my research is less concerned
with the “why”. Focusing on the “how” instead, I understand media preferences (including BL) as arising
from historical, biographical and situational contexts.
Qualitative interviews I conducted in Japan and Germany as part of my M.A. thesis showed that BL
or BL use cannot be understood if one limits the analysis to content. The gratifications users gained and
sought/expected are quite diverse, ranging from the physiological (arousal) and the social (exchange,
belonging), the cognitive (parasocial interaction) and the aesthetic (immersion) to self-actualization, to
name a few. Based on my sample, compromised of mostly students, I constructed four categories of
fujoshi/fudanshi that are not comprehensive, but highlight the BL users’ diversity: the connoisseuse, the
con-girl, the net-girl, and the sporadic.
“Do Heterosexual Men Dream of Homosexual Men?: BL Fudanshi (‘rotten men’) and the
Discourse of Male Feminization”
Kazumi Nagaike, Oita University
Previous BL research has often concluded that BL works are mostly produced by and for women;
thus, the BL genre is assumed to represent an unbroken continuum with what Alice Jarden calls
“gynesis.” However, the dialectical relationship between women and gay men can be seen as early as
1992, in the so-called Yaoi Ronsō (Yaoi Dispute). In this controversy, women were critically accused of
“plundering” gay images. Nevertheless, an analysis of Yaoi Ronsō shows that it constructed and
reinforced a simplistic opposition between women and “gay” men; consequently, it typified heterosexual
men as “invisible” participants in BL. In this paper, I will suggest that there may also have been many
heterosexual male BL readers (fudanshi, “rotten men”). If so, this would entail a discursive queerness of
heterosexual male readings of male homosexual narratives such as BL. Considering the specific Japanese
socio/cultural context surrounding the BL genre, I will attempt to unveil the specific motifs, narratives
and aesthetics in BL which may attract some heterosexual male readers and enable them to consume BL
stories. This paper will thus illustrate a psychological (subconscious) male desire for self-feminization,
aligned with a temptation felt by many men to negate the construction of a strong, “masculine” ego.
Specifically, fudanshi readers’ strong attachment to BL shōnen (boys) may be associated with the
idealization of shōnen identity which is promoted by certain Japanese modernist male writers. In the form
shōnen images, these writers wish to project their resistance against national attempts to Westernize and
“masculinize” modern Japan. Similarly, fudanshi may project their inclination to feminize the self onto
BL shōnen characters, in order to speak against the contemporary social situation, in which a Japanese
man is only valued in terms of his socially constructed male identity.
“Hidden in Straight Sight: Trans*gressing Gender and Sexuality via BL”
Uli Meyer, Independent scholar/artist
BL and its more explicit sub-genre yaoi are usually defined as same-sex male romances or erotica
written “by women for women.” Moreover, since the protagonists are male, it is generally assumed that
BL fans are straight women. By adapting methods of queer and transgender theory, I have problematised
the terms “straight” and “women”, and argued that BL involves a transgression of sexuality and gender
(Sedgwick 1986, 1993). I have “question[ed] the cultural demarcations between the queer and the
straight... by pointing out the queerness of and in straights and straight cultures” (Doty 1993 in: Thorn
2004), and connected BL fan practises to the practises of girlfag and transfag subcultures, that is of
female born persons who eroticise and identify with gay men (Bagemihl 1997).
By calling BL fans, girlfags and transfags “straight women”, their transgressions of sexuality and
gender are rendered invisible. Drawing on the methods of critical rhetoric, I am analysing “[…] the
multiple ways in which transgression is persistently contained” (Sloop 2004:20). With that ongoing
containment in mind, I have asked if there is something like a “hidden body” of female-to-gay-male
identified art and text production, and if so, how it communicates with male-produced gay male images
and texts. I have compared BL manga on a visual and textual level with images and texts by
female-to-gay-male identified artists like the painter Carrington (1893-1932) or with female-to-gay-male
transvestite content like the novella “The Tenor and the Boy” by Sarah Grand (1893). To describe the
process that allows BL artists and fans alike to transgress gender and sexuality by artistic means, I have
coined the term “creative transvestism”.
“Transgressing Duality and Normativity: Gender and Sex(uality) Manipulation in Japanese Yaoi
Discourse”
Kazuko Suzuki, Texas A & M University
The past decade has seen the emergence of studies of Yaoi/BL that have focused on gender and sex
as analytical categories. Such scholarship is important in understanding fan-based cultures, production
and consumption. However, a conflation of gender, sex, and sexuality at the analytical level in Yaoi/BL
impedes further theoretical development. By making a clear conceptual distinction between these
intertwined notions as distinctive analytical categories, this paper attempts to clarify Yaoi’s achievement
in the (un)conscious feminist agenda among Japanese women. The study examines more than 300 BL
commercial novels written in Japanese as samples. Through descriptive statistics based on and textual
analysis of the samples, the paper first identifies some important features in the contemporary Yaoi texts
such as transgression of sexual norms, subversion against gender fixity, renewed definitions of
masculinity and femininity, and highly context-dependent sexual orientation of protagonists.
By doing so, I argue that Yaoi/BL has made it possible for Japanese heterosexual women 1) to
transgress normative gender dualism, sexual acts and sexuality at least at the level of discourse; 2) to use
men’s images not only for their empowerment but also for their own gratification. This is a significant
step forward from early Yaoi works that focused upon getting affirmation from others (by projecting
oneself into uke protagonists) and fleeing from patriarchy. As a final point, the paper discusses the
relative indifference to (and lack of knowledge about) the early works of Yaoi in the current global circuit
of Yaoi/BL consumption, in particular in the United States.
“Boys Love, Restraint and Death in the Images of Takabatake Kashō: the Naked Male Body and
the Reading Girl in Pre-war Japan”
Barbara Hartley, University of Tasmania
Taishô/earlyShôwa artist Takebatake Kashô (1888-1966) was one of the most prolific commercial
artists of pre-war Japan. While he produced large numbers of images of girls and women, he also
maintained a constant output of illustrations of boys and young men. Kashô was in great demand as
illustrator for “boys own” type action novels and also as a cover artist for high circulation boys’ journals.
While the mainstream publication industry context in which he worked prevented the overt sexualisation
of Kashô’s images, these genres provided great scope for representations of the naked adolescent male
body in covertly eroticised situations of danger and near death. A 1929 Nippon shônen cover featuring a
boy in fundoshi (loincloth) grappling with a ferocious shark is an example of this style of illustration.
Since he is a male artist, Kashô’s work does not fit neatly into the definition of boys love.
Nevertheless, I would argue that his work contributes to the genealogy of contemporary BL material. I
have noted that Kashô produced material for girls’ magazines and was well known to girl and young
women readers of the time. My interest in this presentation is to try to gauge the extent to which Kashô’s
male images appealed to girl readers. Honda Masuko has noted the affinity of girl readers with death. I
will suggest that surely Taishô/early Shôwa girls, anticipating their contemporary BL reading sisters,
were drawn to the straining torsos and taut male bodies – often confined by coils of rope and smeared
with the subject’s own blood – featured in Kashô’s Thanotos inspired images.
“An Essay on Pornography: Readers and Their Multiple Realities”
Rio Otomo, University of Melbourne
Pornographic narratives of both texts and images are by nature caught in a dilemma, a choice
between sameness and difference, or familiarity and otherness. Typecast characters and the typecast
relations they bring with them are necessary parts of pornography, since they lead the reader to her
urgently needed sexual arousal more efficiently than otherwise. In a familiar story where typecasting
prevails, the reader quickly associates the web of relations presented in the text with those she has already
known outside the text in her own reality. While sameness thus enables a quick fix, as it were, it controls
the process of association and crucially precludes the possibility of her transformation, or at least of her
finding a new form of pleasure.
In contrast, when a pornographer pursues her artistic end and attempts to focus on difference,
transference on the part of the reader becomes onerous and devious. As usual, the reader tries to associate
two sets of relations and creates the third one in her mind. By then, however, she will have had to
deconstruct her knowledge of existing relations, and the experience as such will affect and possibly
transform her, though at the cost of erotic achievement.
I discuss a cause to re-articulate the seemingly ordinary statement that pornography, including BL,
does not exist outside readers’ reality. I draw on theoretical insights from performance studies and
psychoanalysis, and texts by Angela Carter, Minakata Kumakusu, Inagaki Taruho and Mishima Yukio.
“Creative Misreadings of Christianity in BL Manga: the Bishōnenisation of Amakusa Shirō”
Rebecca Suter, University of Sydney
The romanticization of the West has been a staple of the genre of Boys’ Love from its inception.
Foundational works such as Hagio Moto’s Jûichigatsu no jimunajiumu (1971), and Takemiya Keiko’s
Kaze to ki no uta (1976), with their use of fictionalized European settings, set the standard for a
deployment of Occidentalist tropes in the genre. The connection between these Western fantasyscapes
and the partly subversive, partly escapist nature of BL is a fascinating topic and has been the object of a
number of thought-provoking essays in recent years.
One particularly intriguing instance of this phenomenon is the recent rise to fame of a historical
character, Amakusa Shirô, as a bishônen, or “beautiful boy” figure. Masuda Shirô Tokisada, also known
as Amakusa Shirô, was the fifteen year-old Christian leader of Shimabara rebellion of 1638-39. An
intriguing figure, whose real life is shrouded in mystery, Shirô has been the protagonist of a number of
works of fiction throughout the centuries. Starting in the mid-1990s, he has been portrayed as an iconic
bishônen in the realm of popular culture. The phenomenon reached its climax in 1999, when the
renowned drag queen Miwa Akihiro (once praised by Yukio Mishima as “the most famous bishônen after
Emperor Jimmu”) declared that a Shingon-shû spiritualist had revealed to him that he was the
reincarnation of Shirô. Since then, Shirô has been inevitably associated with gender ambiguity in the
collective imaginary.
In my paper, I will analyse the bishônenization of Shirô as it is articulated in two BL manga, preand post-Miwa’s declaration, namely Toba Shôko’s Makai tenshô yume no ato (1997) and Kugo Naoko’s
Makai tenshô beato no kôshin (2003). Both comics present us with a yaoi parody of the history of the
Christian rebellion, imagining romantic subplots between the Christian leader and other renowned
samurai of the period, such as Yagyû Jûbei and Miyamoto Musashi. By examining these two manga’s
combination of rewriting of history, Christianity, and BL themes, I aim to investigate the way in which
they foreground both the arbitrary nature and the pervasiveness of gender and cultural conventions,
exposing identity’s constructed and performative nature and questioning its ideological foundations.
“Australia’s Child-Abuse Materials Legislation, Internet Regulation and the Juridification of the
Imagination”
Mark McLelland, University of Wollongong
This paper investigates the implications of Australia’s blanket prohibition of ‘child-abuse material’
(including cartoons, animation, drawings, digitally manipulated photographs, and text) for Australian fan
communities of animation, comics and gaming (ACG) and slash fiction. ACG/slash fan groups in
Australia and elsewhere routinely consume, produce and disseminate material that contains content that
would be ‘refused classification’ (i.e. featuring fictitious ‘under-age’ characters in violent and sexual
scenarios).
Two lines of argument are advanced in the paper to show that current legislation is seriously out of
synch with the new communicative environment brought about by the Internet. Firstly, Henry Jenkins’s
analysis of participatory fan culture is engaged to demonstrate that (i) a large portion of the fans
producing and trading in these images are themselves minors and young people and (ii) legislators have
failed to comprehend the manner in which the Internet is facilitating the development of new literacies,
including sexual literacies. Habermas’s analysis of the conflict between instrumental and communicative
rationality is then deployed to demonstrate that legislators have misrecognised the nature of the
communicative practices that takes place within the ‘lifeworlds’ of these fan communities resulting in an
unjust ‘juridification’ of their creative works.
Drawing on Japanese research into the overwhelmingly female fandom surrounding ‘Boys Love’
(BL) manga, it is argued that current Australian legislation not only forecloses the fantasy lives of young
Australian fans but also harms them by mistakenly aligning them with paedophile networks and
threatening them with arrest, prosecution, and a lifetime on the sex offenders’ list. Finally, drawing upon
Jean Cohen’s paradigm of ‘reflexive law’ the paper considers a possible way forward that opens up
channels of communication between regulators, fans, domain host administrators and media studies
professionals that would encourage a more nuanced approach to legislation as well as a greater awareness
of the need for self-regulation among fan communities.
“Transplanted BL Conventions and Anti-Shota Polemics in a German Manga: Fahr Sindram’s
Losing Neverland”
Paul M. Malone, University of Waterloo
Although manga came late to Germany, German publishers rapidly capitalized on its appeal to
young female readers and began aggressively fostering local manga artists. The majority of these are
young women producing shōjo manga, many of whom also integrate popular “boys’ love” elements into
their work.
One such work is Fahr Sindram’s continuing “Gothic drama” Losing Neverland, which concerns a
teenager in Victorian London whose widowed father prostitutes him to middle-class men. The ethereal
“Laurie,” dressed in drag, leads a life of exploitation relieved only by the camaraderie of his fellow
hustlers, including his would-be lover Maurice. Though not sexually explicit, this mixture of Gothic
Lolita and Midnight Cowboy would likely be risky under German and European Union laws against child
and youth pornography—if both Sindram and her publisher did not continually remind the reader that
Neverland is intended to raise awareness of child abuse and protest the dissemination of shota materials.
As Sindram has put it, while she avidly reads BL and has nothing against yaoi and hentai, child
pornography is different: “There are boundaries being transgressed, and they’re sacred.”
On this basis, paradoxically, Sindram draws attention to her work by polemicizing it to mobilize the
censorship of works seemingly very similar to her own (her particular target of criticism is Kōga Yun’s
popular Loveless [Raburesu]); and as a result, though Sindram’s own work might itself be considered
transgressive in other contexts, it has not only been socially accepted, but even praised, earning an
honorable citation from Germany’s Council for Sustainable Development that figures largely in
advertising for Losing Neverland. Sindram’s work thus accepts and capitalizes upon the globalizing
aesthetic influence of manga, while at the same time adopting a defensive, even protectionist stance
against the spread of certain social or sexual attitudes associated with manga—and is visibly socially
rewarded for doing so.
“Two Texts of Liuli-Glass Earrings: Representations and Discourses of Sexuality (from the1920s to
2010)”
Kenko Kawasaki, Waseda University
Liuli-Glass Earrings (circa 1927), a movie script Osaki Midori (1896-1971) wrote for a prize
competition run by Bandô Tsumasaburô Production, is one of the handwritten manuscripts unpublished
during her lifetime. This script reveals her cutting-edge representation of queer sexuality such as hentai
seiyoku, hentai shinri and ero-gro, topics peculiar to the early twentieth century. We find in her stories
sadism and masochism, gay and lesbianism, and a range of characters that include a woman private eye
flourishing in male attire; an advocate of Pan-Asianism criss-crossing China and India; and a Japanese
woman disguised as a Westerner living in a clandestine opium den in Nankin Town, Yokohama.
Tsuhara Yasumi (1964b) novelized this work in 2010 and published it under the same title. Tsuhara
integrated the cultural weave of Showa modernism and his own interpretation into an ingenious pastiche;
queer (hentai) fantasies, as well as its psychology and biology, are elaborated without destroying Osaki’s
original conception. Between1989 and 1996, when Tsuhara was writing novels for young girls, his
publisher insisted, against his will, that he would use a female pen name. It is interesting that this incident
occurred in a period when shôjo novels and BL motifs were intersecting in the Japanese publishing scene.
Since 1996 Tsuhara has expanded his inter-genre writing – horror, mystery, science fiction, fantasy
novels – using his original (male) name.
I will analyze the two texts of Liuli-Glass Earrings and attempt to relativize their representations
with discourses of sexuality. I will discuss the complimentarily and the difference between the present
day and the 1920s; a shifting milieu in which queer sexuality, yaoi, BL gained citizenship after the
periods of the wartime censorship, the promotion of heterosexuality by the GHQ, ‘chastity education’
during the high-growth economy, and later the spread of ‘love and marriage’ fantasy. In addition I
consider the relevance of the writer’s gender; to write as a woman or a man reflects values of each
historical period.
“Revisiting Occidentalism in Japan via Axis Powers Hetalia: Nation Anthropomorphism and
Sexualized Parody in Youth Subcultures”
Toshio Miyake, Ca' Foscari University of Venice/University of Kyoto
Axis Powers Hetalia (2006-) is a Japanese gag comic and animation series depicting relations
between nations, anthropomorphized as cute boys on the background of World War I and II. The
stereotypical rendering of national characteristics as well as the reduction of historically charged issues
into funny and sexualized quarrels between nice-looking boys, has led to an immense popularity,
especially among female audiences in Japan and in Euro-American manga/cosplay fandom, but it has met
also with vehement criticism. Netizens from South Korea considered the Korean character insulting and
mounted a protest campaign in early 2009 being taken to discussion in the Korean National Assembly.
Hetalia’s controversial success relies to a great extent to the inventive intermingling of
male-oriented otaku fantasies about nations, weapons, operating systems designed as cute little girls, and
of female-oriented yaoi parodies about boys’ love between powerful Caucasian characters and more
passive Japanese ones. This paper will explore how conflicting representations of the hegemonic “West”,
the orientalized “Rest of the World”, and “Japan” are re-negotiated in the cross-gendered and
transnational mediascape of Japanese subcultures.
“The World of Grand Union: Engendering Trans/nationalism with BL in Chinese Hetalia Fandom”
Ling Yang, Beijing Normal University
In The Book of Rites, Confucius envisions a utopian world of ‘grand union’大同 where people live
in permanent peace, justice, and harmony. Enthusiastic Chinese fans of BL genre, so-called ‘doujinonna’
同人女, have jokingly borrowed the Confucian idea to articulate their own fantasyland where the whole
world is conceptualized and interpreted through sexual relationship between seme and uke. The recent
popular manga/anime series Axis Power Hetalia (2008), with its BL style allegory of world history, as
well as the motto of ‘love and peace’, seems to be a perfect embodiment of both the original Confucian
spirit and the current homoerotic extension.
Largely circulated on the Internet via fan translation, Hetalia has provoked considerable interest
among Chinese manga fans and inspired a large amount of doujin 同人 activity, including fan fiction, fan
manga, fan video, and cosplay. However, the reception of Hetalia in Mainland China is not without
problems, as evident in fans’ self-imposed restrictions on the dissemination of the series, their insistence
on separating fantasy from reality, and their debates with non-fans concerning the cultural and political
role of Japanese manga, whether it is an upgraded tool for Japan’s cultural invasion. Chinese fans’
appropriation and re-creation of Hetalia is also deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, fans have utilized the
Japanese series to open up an alternative space to engage in domestic politics, to express their national
pride, and to refashion images of China. On the other hand, the ‘shipping’ principle of the BL genre and
the transnational theme of Hetalia prompt fans to not only revisit China’s complicated history with its
surrounding neighbors but show an interest in other less-known and faraway countries in Europe, thus
making any form of parochial nationalism difficult to sustain. Through a critical examination of a variety
of fan practices in Chinese Hetalia fandom, this paper explores the intersections between gender politics
and geopolitics, between nationalism and transnationalism, and between localization and globalization.
“Ethics and Aesthetics of Yoshinaga Fumi’s BL Manga”
Tomoko Aoyama, University of Queensland
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
That is all. (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Many would agree that Yoshinaga Fumi’s manga are well written (and drawn), with complex
narrative structure, attractive characters, lively dialogues, skilful depictions of relationships, well
researched historical and cultural background information and so on.
Many would also regard her
creation as distinctly moral rather than immoral or amoral; Yoshinaga’s work, including her BL manga,
never advocates simple autonomy of beauty or romantic or sexual love, but tends to present subtle moral
teachings or at the very least pose ethical questions. This is despite the fact her work often deals with
controversial issues and relationships that might be regarded as unacceptable and even illegal in some
cultures. A teacher having a sexual relationship with his or her underage student is certainly a criminal act
in many societies. A story with a male protagonist reminiscing about working as a prostitute when he was
thirteen in pre-revolutionary Paris would also cause a huge controversy if it was published in Australia.
And there is violence, too, be it domestic violence, rape, murder, or physical or psychological bullying.
How does Yoshinaga deal with such material, which is potentially dangerous in not only a legal
but also an artistic sense? Does her law degree help? Do her narrative and graphic skills and her sense of
comic irony undermine her exploration of moral issues? And does her aestheticism have any of the
discriminatory traits found in earlier writers such as Mori Mari, Kurahashi Yumiko, and Mishima Yukio?
These are some of the questions this paper attempts to answer.
“Reading Boys’ Love Dōjinshi in the West: Challenging the ‘Mukokuseki’ of Video Games”
Lucy Glasspool, University of London/University of Nagoya
Role Playing Games are one of the largest exports of Japanese popular culture to the West, often
regarded as at the forefront of development in terms of visuals and narrative. However, the ending
towards which gamers strive is almost invariably heteronormative: the victory of the main character and
his chosen heroine, and their implied future relationship. These games, in international distribution, are
translated and localised very freely in order to resound with the linguistic traits and cultural values of the
target country. As Iwabuchi (2000) states, this contributes to an “odorlessness,” or erasure of any sense of
“Japaneseness.” I will argue that BL dōjinshi based on such RPGs are used by female fans as an
alternative to the implied heterosexual imperative of official game narratives, and also as a challenge to
mukokuseki through consumption and fan practices.
Dōjinshi are available in two forms outside Japan: in their original print form through auction sites,
online stores, and conventions; and through online fan scanlations. These do not attempt cultural
translation but rather retain Japanese cultural references wherever possible. This privileging of
“Japaneseness” in translation and dissemination suggests there is cultural capital attached to it, some
notion of authenticity that fans believe official game translation erases.
BL dōjinshi offer an alternative to the heteronormative game ending; they also, through the aesthetic
tendencies of BL texts, present a different ideal of masculinity in their visual interpretations of male game
characters. This involves not only issues of gender but points to bishōnen and kawaii ideals which have
become more widespread outside Asia in the last ten years, again indicating the value attached to
“Japaneseness” among many fans.
“Girls who are boys who like girls to be boys … : BL and the Australian Cosplay Community”
Emerald King, University of Tasmania
Since the late 1990s the Australian cosplay1 community has been gaining in numbers to the point
where it now supports over eighteen different cosplay conventions and popular cultural expos in most
major cities every year including two nationwide competitions, the Madman Cosplay Competition and the
Australian World Cosplay Summit Competition, finalists of which travel to Japan to compete
internationally each August. Trends within the cosplay community mirror closely those in the anime,
manga and Japanese games from which characters are drawn for the purpose of cosplay.
Drawing on personal experience within the cosplay community and from several online cosplay
communities such as Deviant Art and Cosplay.Com, this paper will investigate attitudes towards BL, both
the consumption of BL narratives and the re-enactment of BL characters and storylines, within the
cosplay community. Furthermore, it will also investigate if there is an understanding within the fandom of
the differences between yaoi and BL and the ways in which the fandom has adopted both terms. Given
that, as in cosplay communities worldwide, most Australian cosplay practitioners are females who are
often members of all female duos and teams, it will also examine the practices of cross-play (cross
dressing whilst in cosplay) and the issues that arise when straight females take on the guise of BL
masculinity.
Note 1. Costume Play in which participants dress as characters from Japanese anime, manga and games.