Yuri (genre)
Yuri, also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love, is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbian relationships are a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and other forms of literature.
Themes associated with yuri originate from Japanese lesbian fiction of the early twentieth century, notably the writings of Nobuko Yoshiya and literature in the Class S genre. Manga depicting female homoeroticism began to appear in the 1970s in the works of artists associated with the Year 24 Group, notably Ryoko Yamagishi and Riyoko Ikeda. The genre gained wider popularity beginning in the 1990s. The founding of Yuri Shimai in 2003 as the first manga magazine devoted exclusively to yuri, followed by its successor Comic Yuri Hime in 2005, led to the establishment of yuri as a discrete publishing genre and the creation of a yuri fan culture.
As a genre, yuri does not inherently target a single gender demographic, unlike its male homoerotic counterparts boys' love and gay manga. Although yuri originated as a genre targeted towards a female audience, yuri works have been produced that target a male audience, as in manga from Comic Yuri Himes male-targeted sister magazine Comic Yuri Hime S.
Terminology and etymology
''Yuri''
The word yuri translates literally to "lily", and is a relatively common Japanese feminine name. White lilies have been used since the Romantic era of Japanese literature to symbolize beauty and purity in women, and are a de facto symbol of the yuri genre.In 1976, Ito Bungaku, editor of the gay men's magazine Barazoku, used the term yurizoku in reference to female readers of the magazine in a column of letters titled Yurizoku no Heya. While not all women whose letters appeared in Yurizoku no Heya were lesbians, and it is unclear whether the column was the first instance of the term yuri in this context, an association of yuri with lesbianism subsequently developed. For example, the male–male romance magazine Allan began publishing in July 1983 as a personal ad column for "lesbiennes" to communicate.
The term came to be associated with lesbian pornographic manga beginning in the 1990s, notably through the manga magazine Lady's Comic Misuto, which heavily featured symbolic lily flowers. When the term yuri began being used in the West in the 1990s, it was similarly used almost exclusively to describe pornographic manga aimed at male readers featuring lesbian couples. Over time, the term drifted from this pornographic connotation to describe the portrayal of intimate love, sex, or emotional connections between women, and became broadly recognized as a genre name for works depicting same-sex female intimacy in the mid-2000s following the founding of the specialized yuri manga magazines Yuri Shimai and Comic Yurihime. The Western use of yuri subsequently broadened beginning in the 2000s, picking up connotations from the Japanese use. American publishing companies such as ALC Publishing and Seven Seas Entertainment have also adopted the Japanese usage of the term to classify their yuri manga publications.
In Korea and China, "lily" is used as a semantic loan from the Japanese usage to describe female–female romance media, where each use the direct translation of the term: baekhap in Korea, and bǎihé in China.
Girls' love
The wasei-eigo construction "girls' love" and its abbreviation "GL" were adopted by Japanese publishers in the 2000s, likely as an antonym of the male–male romance genre boys' love. While the term is generally considered synonymous with yuri, in rare cases it is used to denote yuri media that is sexually explicit, following the publication of the erotic yuri manga anthology Girls Love by Ichijinsha in 2011. However, this distinction is infrequently made, and yuri and "girls' love" are almost always used interchangeably.''Shōjo-ai''
In the 1990s, Western fans began to use the term shōjo-ai to describe yuri works that do not depict explicit sex. Its usage was modeled after the Western appropriation of the term shōnen-ai to describe BL works that do not feature sexually explicit content. In Japan, the term shōjo-ai is not used with this meaning, and instead denotes pedophilic relationships between adult men and girls.History
Before 1970: Class S literature
Among the first Japanese authors to produce works about love between women was Nobuko Yoshiya, a novelist active in the Taishō and Shōwa periods. Yoshiya was a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, including the early twentieth century Class S genre. Her works popularized many of the ideas and tropes which drove the yuri genre for years to come. Class S stories depict lesbian attachments as emotionally intense yet platonic relationships, destined to be curtailed by graduation from school, marriage, or death. The root of this genre is in part the contemporary belief that same-sex love was a transitory and normal part of female development leading into heterosexuality and motherhood. Class S developed in the 1930s through Japanese girls' magazines, but declined as a result of state censorship brought about by the Second Sino–Japanese War in 1937. Though homosociality between girls would re-emerge as a common theme in post-war shōjo manga, Class S gradually declined in popularity in favor of works focused on male–female romances.Traditionally, Class S stories focus on strong emotional bonds between an upperclassman and an underclassman, or in rare cases, between a student and her teacher. Private all-girls schools are a common setting for Class S stories, which are depicted as an idyllic homosocial world reserved for women. Works in the genre focus heavily on the beauty and innocence of their protagonists, a theme that would recur in yuri. Critics have alternately considered Class S as a distinct genre from yuri, as a "proto-yuri", and a component of yuri.
1970s and 1980s: The "dark age"
In 1970, manga artist Masako Yashiro published the shōjo manga Shīkuretto Rabu, which focuses on a love triangle between two girls and a boy. Noted as the first non-Class S manga to depict an intimate relationship between women, Shīkuretto Rabu is regarded by some scholars as the first work in the yuri genre. As both Yashiro and Shīkuretto Rabu are relatively obscure and the work focuses in part on male–female romance, most critics identify Shiroi Heya no Futari by Ryōko Yamagishi, published in 1971, as the first yuri manga. The 1970s also saw shōjo manga that dealt with transgender characters and characters who blur gender distinctions through cross-dressing, which was inspired in part by the Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theater troupe where women play male roles. These traits are most prominent in Riyoko Ikeda's works, including The Rose of Versailles, Dear Brother, and Claudine. Some shōnen works of this period featured lesbian characters, though they were typically depicted as fanservice and comic relief.Roughly a dozen yuri manga were published from the 1970s to the early 1990s, with the majority being published in the 1970s. Most of these stories are tragedies, focused on doomed relationships that end in separation or death. Owing to the small number of works published during this period and their generally tragic focus, Yuri Shimai has referred to the 1970s and 1980s as the "dark age" of yuri. Several theories have emerged to explain the bias towards tragic narratives present in this period. Writer and translator Frederik L. Schodt notes that the majority of shōjo manga published during this period were tragic, regardless of whether or not they were yuri. James Welker of Kanagawa University argues that these narratives represent a form of "lesbian panic", where the character—and by extension, the author—refuses their own lesbian feelings and desires. Verena Maser suggests that the decline of Class S removed the only context in which intimate relationships between women were possible, while Yukari Fujimoto suggests that patriarchal forces were responsible for tragic endings in these stories.
1990s: Mainstream popularity
By the 1990s, tragic story formulas in manga had declined in popularity. 1992 saw the release of two major works for the development of yuri: Jukkai me no Jukkai by, which began to move the genre away from tragic outcomes and stereotyped dynamics; and the anime adaptation of Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi, the first mainstream manga and anime series to feature a "positive" portrayal of a lesbian relationship in the coupling of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. The immense popularity of Sailor Moon allowed the series to be adapted into anime, films, and to be exported internationally, significantly influencing the shōjo and yuri genres. Uranus and Neptune became popular subjects of dōjinshi and contributed to the development of yuri dōjinshi culture.The success of Sailor Moon significantly influenced the development of yuri, and by the mid-1990s, anime, and manga featuring intimate relationships between women enjoyed mainstream success and popularity. Sailor Moon director Kunihiko Ikuhara went on to create Revolutionary Girl Utena, a shōjo anime series with female same-sex relationships as a central focus. This period also saw a revival of the Class S genre through the bestselling light novel series Maria-sama ga Miteru by, which by 2010 had 5.4 million copies in print. Another prominent author of this period is Kaho Nakayama, active since the early 1990s, with works involving love stories among women. The first Japanese magazines specifically targeted towards lesbians, many of which contained sections featuring yuri manga, also emerged during this period. Stories in these magazines ranged from high school romance to lesbian life and love and featured varying degrees of sexual content.