Yuri (genre)

• 1. Etymology And Symbolism

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  The word yuri translates literally to lily, a common Japanese feminine name. White lilies have been used since the Romantic era of Japanese literature to symbolize beauty and purity in women. This floral image became the de facto symbol of the genre itself. In 1976, Ito Bungaku, editor of the gay men's magazine Allan, used the term yuri in reference to female readers of the magazine. He featured them in a column of letters titled Yurizoku no Heya. While not all women whose letters appeared were lesbians, an association with lesbianism subsequently developed. The male, male romance magazine Allan began publishing personal ad columns for lesbiennes in July 1983. The term came to be associated with lesbian pornographic manga beginning in the 1990s. Notably, the manga magazine Lady's Comic Misuto ran from 1996 to 1999 and heavily featured symbolic lily flowers. When the term yuri began being used in the West during 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. It became broadly recognized as a genre name for works depicting same-sex female intimacy in the mid-2000s following the founding of specialized yuri manga magazines Yuri Shimai and Comic Yurihime. 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.

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• 2. Class S Literary Roots

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  Among the first Japanese authors to produce works about love between women was Nobuko Yoshiya, a novelist active in the Taishō and Shōwa periods. 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 lies partly in 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. Traditionally, Class S stories focus on strong emotional bonds between an upperclassman and an underclassman. Private all-girls schools are a common setting for Class S stories, 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.

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• 3. The Dark Age Of Tragedy

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  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, it is regarded by some scholars as the first work in the yuri genre. Most critics identify Shiroi Heya no Futari by Ryōko Yamagishi, published in 1971, as the first yuri manga instead. 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. 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 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.

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• 4. Mainstream Breakthrough Era

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  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 an unnamed author, which began to move the genre away from tragic outcomes and stereotyped dynamics. The anime adaptation of Sailor Moon ran from 1991 to 1997 and was created by Naoko Takeuchi. It became 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 films and exported internationally. Uranus and Neptune became popular subjects of dōjinshi self-published manga and contributed to the development of yuri dōjinshi culture. 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 from 1997 to 1999, 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 running from 1998 to 2004. By 2010 that series had 5.4 million copies in print.

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• 5. Magazine Publishing Revolution

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  Faced with a proliferation of stories focused on homosociality, homoeroticism, and female homosexuality, some publishers sought to exploit the yuri market. In 2003, Yuri Tengoku and Yuri Shimai launched as the first manga magazines devoted exclusively to yuri. This was followed by the female-oriented Comic Yuri Hime in 2005 and the male-oriented Comic Yuri Hime S in 2007. The two magazines merged under the title Comic Yuri Hime in 2010. Stories in these magazines dealt with a range of themes from intense emotional connections such as those depicted in Voiceful running from 2004 to 2006, to sexually explicit schoolgirl romances like those portrayed in First Love Sisters running from 2003 to 2008. The publication of yuri magazines had the effect of nurturing a yuri culture that influenced artists to create works depicting female same-sex relationships. Articles in these magazines contributed to the history of the genre by retroactively labeling certain works as yuri. Verena Maser notes in her analysis of issues published from 2003 to 2012 that eight of the ten most-referenced series predate the 2003 formalization of yuri as a publishing genre.

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• 6. Demographic And Fandom Analysis

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  The first magazine to study the demographics of its readers was Yuri Shimai which ran from 2003 to 2004. It estimated the proportion of women at almost 70% and found that the majority were either teenagers or women in their thirties who were already interested in shōjo and BL manga. In 2008, Ichijinsha made a demographic study for its two magazines Comic Yuri Hime and Comic Yuri Hime S. The study revealed that women accounted for 73% of Comic Yuri Hime readership while men accounted for 62% in Comic Yuri Hime S. Regarding the age of women for Comic Yuri Hime, 27% were under 20 years old and another 27% were between 20 and 24 years old. Verena Maser conducted a study of Japanese yuri fandom demographics between September and October 2011. This study received a total of 1,352 valid responses and found that 52.4% of respondents were women and 46.1% were men. Regarding age, 69% of respondents were between 16 and 25 years old. As of 2017, the ratio of men to women is said to have shifted to about 6:4 thanks in part to the Comic Yuri Hime S merge.

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• 7. Cultural Identity Debates

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  The relationship between yuri and lesbianism is tenuous in Japan. While yuri was strongly associated with lesbianism in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s, the correlation between the terms has weakened over time. Comic Yurihime editor Seitarō Nakamura stated that in general yuri is not about lesbians with a carnal relationship. Erin Subramian of Yuricon explains that most Japanese people see the term lesbian as describing either abnormal people in pornography or strange people in other countries. Nagaike notes in her analysis of letters published in Comic Yuri Hime that many female readers of the magazine identify as heterosexual. She thus argues yuri is more closely aligned with homosociality than it is with homosexuality. Maser analyzes contradictory sources and concludes that the line between yuri and lesbianism is blurry. She notes that in her sources the term rezubian is used in many instances but that it is almost never made clear what exactly it is referring to. Nagaike asserts that yuri does not conform to the political vision of lesbianism espoused by philosophers like Monique Wittig that sees lesbianism as overthrowing the political and sociological interpretation of women's identity.

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