Hentai
is a style of Japanese pornographic anime and manga. In addition to anime and manga, hentai works exist in a variety of media, including artwork and video games.
The development of hentai has been influenced by Japanese cultural and historical attitudes toward sexuality. Hentai works, which are often self-published, form a significant portion of the market for doujin works, including doujinshi. Numerous subgenres exist depicting a variety of sexual acts and relationships, as well as novel fetishes.
Terminology
In sexual contexts, hentai carries additional meanings of "perversion" or "abnormality", especially when used as an adjective; in these uses, it is the shortened form of the phrase which means "sexual perversion". The character hen is a catch-all for queerness as a peculiarity—it does not carry an explicit sexual reference. While the term has expanded in use to cover a range of publications including homosexual publications, it remains primarily a heterosexual term, as terms indicating homosexuality entered Japan as foreign words. Japanese pornographic works are often simply tagged as, meaning "prohibited to those not yet 18 years old", and. Less official terms also in use include erotic, ero manga, and the English initialism AV. Usage of the term hentai does not define a genre in Japan.Hentai is defined differently in English. The Oxford Dictionary Online defines it as "a subgenre of the Japanese genres of manga and anime, characterized by overtly sexualized characters and sexually explicit images and plots." The origin of the word in English is unknown, but AnimeNation's John Oppliger points to the early 1990s, when a Dirty Pair erotic doujinshi titled H-Bomb was released, and when many websites sold access to images culled from Japanese erotic visual novels and games. The earliest English use of the term traces back to the rec.arts.anime boards, with a 1990 post concerning Happosai of Ranma ½ and the first discussion of the meaning in 1991. A 1995 glossary on the rec.arts.anime boards contained reference to the Japanese usage and the evolving definition of hentai as "pervert" or "perverted sex". The Anime Movie Guide, published in 1997, defines "ecchi" as the initial sound of hentai ; it included that ecchi was "milder than hentai". A year later it was defined as a genre in Good Vibrations Guide to Sex. At the beginning of 2000, "hentai" was listed as the 41st most-popular search term of the internet, while "anime" ranked 99th. The attribution has been applied retroactively to works such as Urotsukidōji, La Blue Girl, and Cool Devices. Urotsukidōji had previously been described with terms such as "Japornimation", and "erotic grotesque", prior to being identified as hentai.
| Development of the term "Hentai" | |
| Meiji period | Hysteria |
| 1917s | Abnormal sexual desire. |
| 1920s–1930s | Perverted sexuality. Topics related to homosexual relationships. |
| 1940s–1950s | Hentai seiyoku or "perverted desires". Homosexual relationships are still a major theme. |
| 1960s | The term becomes increasingly heterosexualised. The word "ecchi/etchi" appears for the first time. |
| 1970s and afterwards | Development into a loanword in English with its own meaning, referring to a specific pornographic genre. |
| 2000s | In Japan, refers to male heterosexual perversion rather than a wide range of sexual practices and identities. Also refers to the cartoon genre. |
Etymology
変態 derives from 變態, which is attested in classical Chinese texts. It functioned as a verbal phrase, from its two component morphemes, 變 meaning "to change" and 態 meaning "state" or "condition," hence "to change from one state to another." Literal one-to-one English translations for this would be transform and metamorph, wherein trans- and meta- correspond to 變, while form and morph to 態. This meaning is attested in early Middle Japanese and later texts.In Chinese, 變 is primarily a verb meaning to "change," and secondarily a noun meaning "troublesome event," but in Japanese, it was extended to an adjectival noun meaning "different," "unusual" or "strange". This led 變態 to become a noun phrase meaning "strange state," thus "abnormality," instead of the original "to change to another state," in modern Japanese and Chinese publications, particularly in psychology and physiology. A psychological application of this meaning is found in the phrase 変態性欲, which has been cited as being shortened back to just 変態.
Yet another meaning, metamorphosis, which resembles the original one, was first adopted by the Entomological Society of Japan and reintroduced into Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. This meaning is used in the English translation of the light novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, although it is not directly entomological, and it may also reference the semi-sexual portions of the work.
It is worth noting that 変態 is further shortened to H, the first letter of its romanization. Both hentai and etchi are used to refer to sexual perversion/deviance, or people therewith, as well as smut. A person accused of sexual perversion may be derogatorily called hentai, while a sex scene in a film, TV show or erotic game is called Hシーン. The distinction outside of Japanese contexts between "hardcore" hentai and "softcore" etchi is entirely artificial.
The history of the word hentai has its origins in science and psychology. By the middle of the Meiji era, the term appeared in publications to describe unusual or abnormal traits, including paranormal abilities and psychological disorders. A translation of German sexologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing's text Psychopathia Sexualis originated the concept of hentai seiyoku, as a "perverse or abnormal sexual desire", though it was popularized outside psychology, as in the case of Mori Ōgai's 1909 novel Vita Sexualis. Continued interest in hentai seiyoku resulted in numerous journals and publications on sexual advice which circulated in the public, served to establish the sexual connotation of hentai as perverse. Any perverse or abnormal act could be hentai, such as committing shinjū. It was Nakamura Kokyo's journal Abnormal Psychology which started the popular sexology boom in Japan which would see the rise of other popular journals like Sexuality and Human Nature, Sex Research and Sex. Originally, Tanaka Kogai wrote articles for Abnormal Psychology, but it would be Tanaka's own journal Modern Sexuality which would become one of the most popular sources of information about erotic and neurotic expression. Modern Sexuality was created to promote fetishism, S&M, and necrophilia as a facet of modern life. The ero guro movement and depiction of perverse, abnormal and often erotic undertones were a response to interest in hentai seiyoku.
Following World War II, Japan took a new interest in sexualization and public sexuality. Mark McLelland puts forth the observation that the term hentai found itself shortened to "H" and that the English pronunciation was "etchi", referring to lewdness and which did not carry the stronger connotation of abnormality or perversion. By the 1950s, the "hentai seiyoku" publications became their own genre and included fetish and homosexual topics. By the 1960s, the homosexual content was dropped in favor of subjects like sadomasochism and stories of lesbianism targeted to male readers. The late 1960s brought a sexual revolution which expanded and solidified the normalizing of the term's identity in Japan that continues to exist today through publications such as Bessatsu Takarajimas Hentai-san ga iku series.
History
With the usage of hentai as any erotic depiction, the history of these depictions is split into their media. Japanese artwork and comics serve as the first example of hentai material, coming to represent the iconic style after the publication of Azuma Hideo's in 1979. Hentai first appeared in animation in the 1932 film by, which was seized by police when it was half complete. The remnants of the film were donated to the National Film Center in the early 21st century. The film has never been viewed by the public. However, the 1984 release of Wonderkid's Lolita Anime was the first hentai to get a general release, overlooking the erotic and sexual depictions in 1969's A Thousand and One Nights and the bare-breasted Cleopatra in 1970's Cleopatra film. Erotic games, another area of contention, has its first case of the art style depicting sexual acts in 1985's Tenshitachi no Gogo. In each of these mediums, the broad definition and usage of the term complicates its historic examination.Origin of erotic manga
Depictions of sex and abnormal sex can be traced back through the ages, predating the term "hentai". Shunga, a Japanese term for erotic art, is thought to have existed in some form since the Heian period. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, shunga works were suppressed by the shogunate. A well-known example is The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Hokusai, which depicts a woman being stimulated by two octopuses. Shunga production fell with the introduction of pornographic photographs in the late 19th century.To define erotic manga, a definition for manga is needed. While the Hokusai Manga uses the term "manga" in its title, it does not depict the storytelling aspect common to modern manga, as the images are unrelated. Due to the influence of pornographic photographs in the 19th and 20th centuries, the manga artwork was depicted by realistic characters. Osamu Tezuka helped define the modern look and form of manga, and was later proclaimed as the "God of Manga". His debut work New Treasure Island was released in 1947 as a comic book through Ikuei Publishing and sold over 400,000 copies, though it was the popularity of Tezuka's Astro Boy, Metropolis, and Jungle Emperor manga that came to define the media. This story-driven manga style is distinctly unique from comic strips like Sazae-san, and story-driven works came to dominate shōjo and shōnen magazines.
Adult themes in manga have existed since the 1940s, but some of these depictions were more realistic than the cartoon-cute characters popularized by Tezuka. In 1973, Manga Bestseller, which is considered to be the first hentai manga magazine published in Japan, was responsible for creating a new genre known as ero-gekiga, where gekiga was taken, and the sexual and violent content was intensified. Other well-known "ero-gekiga" magazines were Erogenica, and Alice. The circulation of ero-gekiga magazines peaked in 1978, and it is believed that somewhere between eighty and one hundred different ero-gekiga magazines were being published annually.
The 1980s saw the decline of ero-gekiga in favor of the rising popularity of lolicon and bishōjo magazines, which grew from otaku fan culture. It has been theorized that the decline of ero-gekiga was due to the baby boomer readership beginning to start their own families, as well as migrating to seinen magazines such as Weekly Young Magazine, and when it came to sexual material, the readership was stolen by gravure and pornographic magazines. The distinct shift in the style of Japanese pornographic comics from realistic to cartoon-cute characters is accredited to Hideo Azuma, "The Father of Lolicon". In 1979, he penned , which offered the first depictions of sexual acts between cute, unrealistic Tezuka-style characters. This started a pornographic manga movement. The lolicon boom of the 1980s saw the rise of magazines such as the anthologies Lemon People and Petit Apple Pie. As the lolicon boom waned in the mid-1980s, the dominant form of representation for female characters became "baby faced and big chested" women. The shift in popularity from lolicon to bishōjo has been credited to Naoki Yamamoto. Moriyama's manga had a style that had not been seen before at the time, and was different from the ero-gekiga and lolicon styles, and used bishōjo designs as a base to build upon. Moriyama's books sold well upon publication, creating even more fans for the genre. These new artists then wrote for magazines such as Monthly Penguin Club Magazine and Manga Hot Milk which became popular with their readership, drawing in new fans.
The publication of erotic materials in the United States can be traced back to at least 1990, when IANVS Publications printed its first Anime Shower Special. In March 1994, Antarctic Press released Bondage Fairies, an English translation of Insect Hunter, an "insect rape" manga which became popular in the American market, while it apparently had a poor showing in Japan. During this time, the one American publisher translating and publishing hentai was Fantagraphics on their adult comic imprint, Eros Comix, which was established around 1990.