Archive for the Classic Yuri Category


Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan

February 6th, 2014

passionateDeborah Shamoon’s Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan traces the development of girls’ literature and, eventually, Shoujo manga from the end of the 19th century through the 1970’s, with particular attention to the girls’ magazines of the 1930’s, the Magnificent 49-ers and the birth of Shoujo, Josei and BL manga. Shamoon addresses Yoshiya Nobuko’s writing, but does not talk about “Yuri” as a genre. Nonetheless, anyone interested in the formative years of Yuri and its literary precedents may want to read this book. There is some definite value in here, and I promise to spend time on the good points, but before we get there, there are several major negatives with this text that I want to address, in ascending order of importance.

The first serious problem I encountered with Shamoon’s work is her tendency to dismiss all theories but her own, particularly if she can hold up a shield of a Japanese scholar’s work to support her theories. You might not see this as a problem, unless, like me, you have an issue with absoluteist thought.

At no point in time does Shamoon ever imagine that another interpretation – especially that of the audience which reads the work –  might be as valid as her own. Any suggestion, any filter other than her own is immediately dismissed, something that strikes me as…kind of ridiculous. When I am repeatedly cautioned to stop interpreting what I read through the filters that make up my life experience well, there’s really no polite response for that. Instead of acknowledging that other scholars have other interpretations, she brings them up only to wholly, completely, utterly dismiss them.

Whether I actually agree that girls’ literature revolves around a “culture of sameness” as Shamoon does, I would not here suggest that this is a terrible idea. Tween and teen girls culture is, largely, defined by the pressure to fit in. In that sense, I agree with her, but in the sense that Shamoon proposes her theory to define the illustrative style for early 20th century Japanese girls’ lit, I would say that she’s missing a major factor here. Which brings me to my second point.

It’s not until well past the first half of the book, into the chapter about Takahashi Makoto’s (Sakura Namiki) influence on Shoujo manga, that Shamoon acknowledges the literary and artistic constraint of commercial art. As a friend so succinctly put it, “Commercial art must sell.” Well yes, and Shamoon acknowledges this has an effect on Takahashi’s art. But she completely fails to acknowledge what every commercial artist knows…deadlines are brutal. There is not enough time in the world to get things done, so we create macros, templates, stencils, tones and other shortcuts. Some of the illustrations she chooses to make her “culture of sameness”  point could far more simply be explained as artistic stylings made sensible by deadlines. Anyone who reads manga knows that manga artists often begin with the same face or one of a few body types, then elaborates on instantly identifiable characteristics. Change hair and skin tone slightly and you have a new character (or the same character pretending to be differrent, as Sailor Moon fans all know.)

Which brings me to my third and most important point.

This is what my copy of the book looks like:

Thoughts

What you can’t really see is that I began making notes on these cute little sticky strips, then graduated to the small sticky pads, then the 3″x4″ size, then, in a moment of crisis switched to a 7″ note pad, entire pages of which were filled. I eventually moved back to the small stickies, but *a lot* of them.  And here’s why:

In Shamoon’s chapter on Yoshiya Nobuko’s work, she begins by “cautioning” us to not use the obvious filter of reality and allow Yoshiya’s actual life with an actual female partner to cause us to mistakenly interpret her work as in any way lesbian.  She then follows that eye-roller up with the conclusion that because Yoshiya does not write about a separatist vision of society, or exhort her readers (tween Japanese girls of the 1920s and 30’s,) to adopt a separatist vision of society, her works cannot be seen as feminist.

Let me refer back to my second point – commercial art must sell. Yoshiya was a female writer, living on her writing, in early 20th century Japan. Her work was subject to male editorial supervision and had to be approved by government censors. And even within the restrictions of writing stories that would sell to their target audience, on deadline, that would be approved of by male censors and editors, she wrote a novel in which two women chose to step away from society and make a life together (Yaneura no Nishojo), one in which a woman creates an alternative adoptive family for herself, after redeeming her reputation which has been smeared (Ban-sensei) and told tale after tale of young women growing up, some marrying, some not, but all finding their way into adult life (Hana Monogatari Volume 1, Volume 2.) Creating one’s own family outside the constraints of society is, IMHO, the very essence of feminism…the right for every woman to choose for herself what her love, her family…her life….will be. If we take off the incredibly narrow blinders Shamoon would have us wear, Yoshiya’s work is unremittingly feminist in nature.

I did say that there was value in this book. And there is. Shamoon’s more factual passages, historical discussions of girls’ literature, magazines and manga are exceptionally useful to a student of Yuri or BL. As a result of reading this book, I have recently concluded reading Otome no Minato, by Yasunari Kawabata (for which I have a posted a 2-part special review.) And I’ve added Ban-sensei to my to-read pile, because I can already see some great analogies with manga and anime series you’ll know in what appears to be a very Dickensian tale. So, yes, definitely worth the time it took me to read it. But I would have loved it, had Shammoon not been so intent on refuting all other scholars and insisting that Yoshiya could not be read as feminist (much less lesbian) because none of her books follow Straw Feminist doctrine.

Ratings:

Value as a Chronology – 8

Overall – 6





Love on the Edge of Admiration and Desire – Proto-Yuri Manga: Sakura Namiki (さくら並木)

January 17th, 2013

Everyone who pays attention to the historical context of manga and anime has at least some knowledge of the better-known periods of Japanese history. We know the Heian period for being the background to ever so many ghost/magic/supernatural tales. Of course the Edo period plays host to any number of samurai epics. The Meiji period was a time of intense upheaval and saw a rather abrupt “westernization” of Japan. The Taisho period was a time of economic growth and nationalism. Post-WWII Showa Japan is shown in a million fragmented ways, from emotional tales of war life to the most idealized (and deeply fetishized) backgrounds possible.

In the early 20th century, magazines for young women created a whole new feminine ideal. How to dress, act, what accomplishments were expected, all of these melded into a culture half focused on physical perfection and half on emotional well-being. Take a look at any rack of “women’s magazines” in America or Japan (and most other countries) you’ll still see the same pressure expressed through whatever is the fashion of the day.

In pre-war Japan, readers were introduced to idealized romance between girls in Yoshiya Nobuko’s works (Wasurenagusa, Yaneura no Nishojo, Hana Monogatari). Sakura Namiki (さくら並木) is a post-war look at the same themes. The book begins with art and design familiar to readers from the magazines they consumed. These artistic stills accompanied by narration were a direct descendant from Edo-period Ukiyo-e prints, especially those of the popular Utagawa artists. These prints, the pop culture of their time (which were, you might be interested to know, so popular that they were copied and sold illegally) often had a portrait image with accompanying text.

A child of  the post-war boom, Sakura Namiki is balanced deliciously between Ukiyo-e prints and modern manga, with both narrated stills and panels with dialogue.

We are told by the author, Takahashi Makoto, of the emotional trials and joys girls encounter at this particular private school. We are then introduced to our protagonists, Yukiko, first-year, her beloved onee-sama Chikage, a third-year and the conniving second-year Ayako, who gets between them. For a very excellent summary and discussion of the story, I’ll refer you to Katherine H’s post Marimite in the 50s. ^_^

I would like instead to talk about something else, as I so often do. ^_^ Today I am talking about the human ability to notice connections between things. (A habit that leads us to create connections where there are none. This is why conspiracy theories exist and remain powerful long after anyone who was affected is gone.)

Sakura Namiki is a tale instantly recognizable to any fan of Yuri. The hothouse environment of Akiko’s YWCA, Nagisa’s St. Miator, Yumi’s Lillian, Rie’s St. Azaria is once again explored in the guise of Sakuragaoka Girl’s Academy in, we are told, Osaka.

I’ve seen this setup so many times that it frankly had no effect on me at all this time. I remained wholly  unmoved until page 18 when we learn that Yukiko is currently in the middle of a sports match with Ayako. What a modern girl!

You know I’m always pining over the lack of sports Yuri. But if you’re a regular reader here, you know there is one recent sports Yuri manga…can you guess what sport?

Here’s today’s lecture punchline:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

– John Donne, Meditation XVII

So there I am, with the one sports Yuri manga I know of sitting on top of the “to be reviewed” pile and I start to read Sakura Namiki. At which I realized that no Yuri manga is an island entire of itself, either. ^_^

Without Akiko, we would not have Yukiko. Without Yukiko we would not have Nagisa, or Yumi…or, well…click here  for the next chapter in this saga.

In the meantime, we can relax and be happy with the knowledge that Yukiko and Chikage move into the future together as so many young women have.

Sakura Namiki, by Takahashi Makoto is available as a deluxe edition, packaged with another shoujo manga from the 1950s by Takahashi. It’s currently available on  Amazon JP in limited quantities. If you can find it, it’s worth it for another island in the Yuri archipelago. ^_^

Overall – 8

Futher Reading: Prolegomena to the Study of Yuri, Part 1





Novel: Wasurenagusa (わすれなぐさ) Guest Review by Hafl

May 25th, 2011

It’s Guest Review Wednesday, thank heavens. Today, returning Guest Reviewer Hafl is going to talk about another of Yoshiya Nobuko’s novels. As you may remember, I consider Yoshiya to be the Grandmother of Yuri and certainly one of the driving forces in the creation of Japanese popular literature for girls, what we think of as the shoujo genre. Any chance to talk about her work – which is relatively unknown in the west – is a good thing. Take it away, Hafl!

On the first glance, Yoshiya Nobuko’s Wasurenagusa (わすれなぐさ) is a tale of three schoolgirls, who become friends and learn to deal with their family situations. On second glance, it is entirely possible to read it as a story of a love triangle, and it does not even require that much effort on part of the reader.

The three main characters are Makiko, who is the ordinary girl, Kazue, who is the quiet and responsible girl, and Youko, who is the spoiled rich girl. Each of them also has family issues they must resolve before the book ends. Youko does not see the value of having a full family. Kazue is the eldest child in a fatherless household and is overly self-sacrificing. Makiko has a terminally ill mother and an authoritarian father, who wants her to completely sacrifice herself for family’s sake and wants her brother to become a scientist like him, despite the boy’s apparent distaste.

In the beginning, Makiko borrows school notes from Kazue, an act which is witnessed by Youko, who immediately starts suffering from jealousy and decides to get Makiko as her special friend. To that end, she employs such various methods as forcing Makiko to crossdress, gift swapping, summer camps, tailor-made dresses and distracting her with many different amusements. However, in the end, her spell over Makiko is broken and Makiko becomes friends with Kazue, who also helps Makiko’s father see that he cannot rule his children with an iron hand.

These are only the bare bones of the plot, which can be read in several different ways. It can be read as a simple tale of three girls becoming friends. It can be read as a veiled attack against Western decadence (It must be significant that Youko, always associated with Western clothing, wears kimono in the last scene of the book). And finally, it can be also read as a story of girl used to always getting her way, who decided to claim one girl for herself – that is the way I chose to read the book, since for me, it is the most fun way.

Wasurenagusa was written in the thirties, some ten years after Hana Monogatari and Yaneura no Nishojo and it shows. The prose style is much easier to read and there are mentions of things that would be simply unacceptable before, like Kazue ‘s father being a soldier who died in China. Even though the book is mostly told from the point of view of the main characters, there is an interruption from Makiko’s brother’s point of view and it shows that if one were to read the book “properly,” the main theme is not the relationship between the girls, but in relationships in family…and that the book’s more or less explicitly told stance on those relationships is that children must be allowed to find their own way in the world without their parents’ interference.

I tried to not spoil much of the plot, since Wasurenagusa is definitely worth reading. Personally, I would rate it to be about as difficult to read as the Maria-sama ga Miteru novels, so it is not as hard as Yaneura no Nishojo or Hana Monogatari. Or, perhaps, I have just became used to Yoshiya’s style, so I can read it more easily.

Story – 7, It is simple and without many surprise, but nicely told.
Characters – 7, Nothing special, but likable.
Yuri – Between 0 and 6, depending on how you decide to read the book.

Overall – 7, Not a must read, but still recommended.

However, this Wasurenagusa is not the only story titled Wasurenagusa that Yoshiya wrote. There is also an early story of the same name in Hana Monogatari, with the only difference being that the novel’s title is all in hiragana, while the story’s title uses kanji. Let’s take a short look at it:

Toyoko, a new girl at school, feels deeps admiration for an upperclassman, Mizushima-san, but she is unable to confess her feelings. In the end, she just leaves some forget-me-not flowers (wasurenagusa in Japanese) on Mizushima-san’s desk on her graduation day. While nobody dies of a flu epidemic out of nowhere or develops romantic tuberculosis, everybody is still sad. It is a pretty typical story in Hana Monogatari, where two girls separate without even having a proper chance to interact with each other.

Story – 6
Characters – 5
Yuri – About 3

Overall – 6

Thank you Hafl for your perspective – and for your prompt to remind me to read more of Yoshiya’s work.





Sakura no Sono (櫻の園) Manga – Guest Review by Katherine H.

May 20th, 2011

Today it is my very sincere pleasure to welcome back Guest Reviewer Katherine H. of Yuri no Boke. Katherine is an Okazu Superhero, a YNN Correspondent, a Yuricon supporter and a terrific lady. Thank you Katherine – the floor is all yours!

Yoshida Akimi, of Banana Fish fame, also made a short classic Yuri manga called Sakura no Sono, (櫻の園) which ran from 1985 to 1986 in Lala magazine and was adapted to film twice by the same director, Nakahara Shun, in 1990 and 2008. (The obi on the re-print being reviewed here advertises the 2008 movie.) While Sakura no Sono is noteworthy for when it came out, it isn’t especially groundbreaking or memorable in any other respect.

Sakura no Sono is the Japanese title for Anton Chekhov’s Вишневый сад (“The Cherry Orchard”). Sakura no Sono means “Garden of Cherry Blossoms”, which is apt given that SnS’s characters attend an all-girls’ school, Oka Academy, surrounded by cherry trees, and the idea of a girls’ school as a “garden of maidens” is well-established in Yuri. Additionally, sakura blossoms, which appear throughout this manga, represent ephemerality, as in the state of adolescence the characters are in.

SnS is divided into four chapters (followed by a bonus, unrelated story), each spotlighting a different student participating in the Oka Academy theater club’s annual production of “The Cherry Orchard” for the anniversary of their school’s founding.

The first chapter focuses on Nakano Atsuko, whose older sister is getting married soon. Natsuko’s boyfriend Shin-chan, who attends a nearby boys’ school, wants to have sex, but she isn’t ready yet. (To his credit, he’s good-natured and non-pushy about it, even after she slaps him after his initial overture.) One evening when Natsuko is alone with her sister, her sister talks about the guy she fell in love with in high school- and never stopped loving-, who she recently bumped into and caught up with. (Natsuko’s sister attended Oka Academy and the boy she liked attended Shin-chan’s school.) With her sister’s regrets haunting her, Natsuko decides to sleep with Shin-chan. Her two best friends tease her good-naturedly after she tells them about it, and life continues the same as always as they prepare for their school’s performance of “The Cherry Orchard.”

The second chapter follows Sugiyama Noriko, who is apathetic towards her classmates, her school, her parents, and her role in the school play. She enjoys going on dates with her boyfriend Shun-chan, but won’t kiss him because she’s afraid of going any farther. She and her friends get caught playing hooky and smoking, and after getting in trouble for it at home, she cries while thinking about when she got her first period, when the sakura were in bloom, of course. She invites Shun-chan to her house when her parents are out, and he warns her about how she shouldn’t go out at night because she might encounter guys, who only think about one thing. She doesn’t take his warning seriously until he jumps her. He backs off after she screams “No!”, but then yells at her that she’s a jerk who doesn’t think about other people’s feelings. At school, she finds out that people are spreading a rumor that she and her friends prostitute themselves, but she waves it off and decides to be more considerate of other people’s feelings by letting her boyfriend make out with her and becoming more like a “normal” girl. This was my least favorite chapter.

The third chapter stars the theater club’s president, Shimizu Yuuko. Her mature, put-together demeanor causes the other students to respect her, but prevents any of them from getting close to her. When she hears some girls gossiping about Noriko, she sticks up for her, and they become good friends. Noriko quickly pegs Yuuko as having a crush on Kurata Chiyoko, the reluctant prince of the theater club who draws the akogare of the other students and is playing a female role in this year’s performance of “The Cherry Orchard.” Yuuko and Noriko talk about the advantages of being in a girls’ school (that there aren’t any boys around to tease them for wearing bras or bringing pads to school), before Noriko kind of bizarrely points out that all of the cherry trees at Oka are male. It turns out that Yuuko partly has a crush on Chiyoko because she wants to be more boyish, like Chiyoko, but mostly because Chiyoko reminds her of her first love, an older guy named Akira. Before leaving school one afternoon with Noriko, Yuuko quickly writes a poem on Chiyoko’s desk, comparing her to sakura petals.

At the beginning of the fourth chapter, Chiyoko sees the poem and wonders who might have written it, not getting that it was meant for her. One day Yuuko gets in trouble for coming to school with a perm, and tells Chiyoko that she plans to quit the drama club. Just as Yuuko wants to be more boyish like Chiyoko, Chiyoko wants to be more girly like Yuuko, so she can get the attention of the guy she likes. Yuuko tells Chiyoko that she likes her (“Suki yo”, “Daisuki yo”), and even though Yuuko doesn’t return her feelings, she’s happy that someone cares that much about her when she’s so boyish. Yuuko’s just happy that she was able to tell Chiyoko how she felt. This was the high point of SnS- how Chiyoko responded to Yuuko’s feelings as nicely and non-homophobically as she could have, given that she didn’t return them. The theater club performs “The Cherry Orchard”, which Atsuko’s older sister has come to watch with her fiancé. She reminisces among the blooming cherry trees about how she performed “The Cherry Orchard” in the theater club when she was in high school.

Even though I really didn’t like how the situation with Shun-chan was resolved and having the “horny boyfriend x reluctant girlfriend” dynamic for two chapters in a row was overkill, this was mostly an okay manga. As a title from the 80’s, it doesn’t have the over-the-top melodrama and “Yay, we’re breaking new ground!” energy that the 70’s wave of Yuri has but, while it isn’t tragic (unlike Yuri from the 70’s), not much actually happens. (I would rather read a well-written story about two girls who are actually interested in each other and have chemistry, but have a tragic end – like Maya no Souretsu- than a bland one-sided crush that’s largely explained away as having nothing to do with being interested in women.) Sakura no Sono came out when Yuri was shifting towards happier endings in the 80’s, before unambiguous happily-ever-after endings emerged in the 90’s, a generalization that Yuuko’s story supports.

As a whole, SnS feels like a four-part after school special on “things teen girls need to deal with“, brushed over with a heavy coat of nostalgia for “days gone by.” For Atsuko’s sister, the one significant adult character, it’s the good old days of high school; for the teenaged characters, it’s their prepubescent years; nobody really seems to be looking forward to the future.

Sakura no Sono isn’t bad, just too tepid and wistfully nostalgic for my taste. It was worth reading to make the “early Yuri” catalogue in my head more complete, but the impression it leaves is as light and fleeting as the clouds of sakura petals fluttering across its pages.

Art – 7 (Good, but not especially eye-catching. I appreciate the “realistic” character designs, complete with hairstyles that girls were actually wore in the 80’s.)
Story – 6 (Aside from chapter 2, which is a 4.)
Character – 6 (5 for chapter 2.)
Yuri -3
Fanboy – 0 (It does take place at a girls’ school, but it doesn’t frame the experience in a manner that I can imagine appealing to Fanboys.)
Fangirl – Sadly, 0

Overall: 5

Erica here: Along with the translated and reasonably well-known Banana Fish, Yoshida is probably known best in Japan for her classic BL and GL collection, Lover’s Kiss  – click the link to read my 2006 review of that classic. 

Thank you again Katherine for the great review!





Yukan Club (有閑倶楽部) Manga, Volume 14

May 17th, 2011

Ichijou Yukari is probably one of the most famous Japanese mangaka that westerners have never heard of. Around these parts, she’s best known for Maya no Souretsu but, outside the Yuri Network, her two most popular series are Yukan Club, (有閑倶楽部) which has been turned into a live action movie – and Pride, an on-going opera series. Yukan Club ran 19 volumes, ending in 2002, but the website for the series remains live and kinda fun.

Yukan Club‘s premise seems well-suited for a live-action series. A bunch of high school misfits create a club to solve mysteries. The trailer on the website says the series is full of thrills and suspense, action, emotion, laughter…and even from this one glimpse, I’d say that’s pretty much spot on. It looks like a delightful series that, due to the fact that the art is dated, will probably never be seen in English. But it’s worth a look in Japanese.

In Volume 14, Ichijou-sensei veers slightly away from goofball fun of the Yukan Club proper, into a slightly Yuri story. No real surprise to anyone who is familiar with Maya no Souretsu or Pride, Ichijou-sensei has that early shoujo look to her art, and an accompanying fondness for gender- and sexuality-bending stories.

In the final chapter, we follow Kyou, a high school student who has an older woman as a lover. He’s had many lovers, but has never been in love. His friend is crushing on a girl he sees on the train, but when he points them out to Kyou, she’s with a very boyish woman and  they seem very close. The friend is certain that they are lovers.When his lover takes him to an okama club, Kyou sees Mako-chan, the boyish woman from the train.

Kyou learns that Mako-chan hates men and, while she and Reina are not lovers, Mako-chan definitely has feelings for Reina. Kyou speaks sympathetically to Mako-chan about it, saying, look, it doesn’t matter who you love. Mako-chan reacts with tearful appreciation, thanking Kyou for his understanding and acceptance. Kyou, moved to distraction by Mako-chan’s thanks, comes to realize that he’s fallen for her. She won’t let him touch her, but she begins to open up to him. In a final crisis, it turns out that Reina has become pregnant by her Ballet teacher. Mako-chan tries to keep them apart, but they both swear they love each other and eventually, Mako-chan has to let them be together. They promise her that they are happy together and she lets Reina go. Mako-chan runs to Kyou for emotional comfort.

But, Kyou points out at the end of the story, as a nicely put-together woman walks by them and Mako-chan watches her pass, just because Mako-chan no longer hates men, doesn’t means she’s stopped liking women.

This story has a lot of elements that are similar to stories you’ve already read and/or seen. So many so, that at some point it feels like you must surely have read this story before. It almost got to the point that I was reciting stories that had those same elements. On the downside – hatred of men because of sexual abuse.  On the positive side, disliking men is not actually related to liking women. The end – and the moral of the story therein – were better than I would have expected from a early 90’s manga.

Ratings:

Art – 8 I like the old school look, except for Mako-chan’s hair, which was criminal throughout.
Story – 8 – Has some issues, but works overall
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4 yes, Mako-chan likes Reina, and yes she continues to be attracted to women, but she ends up mostly with Kyou
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Today’s review is due to the kindness and generosity of YNN Correspondent and Okazu Superhero Katherine H. Thanks for this classic find, Katherine and thank you for allowing me to review it. ^_^