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4 - Lolicon Manga
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 117-136
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Summary
Introduction
Let us begin by reconfirming that there are at least two perspectives or points of view when we confront creative works, including eromanga. The first perspective is that of the voyeur or god who sees all. As an observer outside the work, the reader knows things up to and encompassing what characters in the work have yet to notice. It is a privileged perspective. The second perspective is that of the characters, which the reader simulates through self-projection. Note that self-projection is not necessarily fixed or static. Given that self-projection can apply to characters beyond the protagonist, plural points of view are included in this second perspective. Importantly, the perspectives of voyeur god outside the text and self-projected as characters in the text exist simultaneously in the act of reading. One is not stuck in a perspective, and is not stuck with the point of view of one character; the reader's perspective wavers between characters, switches and occurs with multiple characters as the difference in concentration changes by the second. I state this here because critics of the lolicon manga we are about to discuss are typically stuck solely on “what is drawn on the page,” which completely overlooks “how is it read.”
What is Lolicon Manga?
Understood by the letter, lolicon manga is manga marked by the theme of the “Lolita complex.” “Lolita complex” is a phrase born from Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita (1955) and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation by the same name (1962). Roughly speaking, in those works, it is a man's desire for a coquettish girl. In Japan, the general sense is probably something along the lines of, “Not pedophilia as such, but rather a (primarily) male desire that entails feeling love and lust more strongly for underage girls than mature women.” The term lolicon is also used to refer to people associated with this desire. Of course there probably exist pedophiles among the devoted readers of lolicon manga, but there is not a significant difference between this ratio and that of pedophiles in the total population. If anything, when one defines “pedophile” as someone who feels sexual arousal for children, then I suspect the ratio is lower among lolicon manga readers than the total population.
7 - Disgrace and Training
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 169-186
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Summary
Introduction
There are probably more than a few people who assume that eromanga means first and foremost “disgrace” (ryōjoku), as in sexual disgrace, assault or rape. The precise details are unclear, because statistics remain unavailable, but, practically speaking, works that could be categorized this way certainly do stand out. However, compared to the old days, “pure disgrace material” (jun ryōjoku neta) narrowly focused on the theme is not particularly abundant. The abundance is in works with disgrace-like elements – in other words, works that include depictions of “sex acts coercively performed by one without the explicit consent of another.” If there are works that, when read to the end, reveal that the sex acts in question were consensual, then there are also cases where the character the reader thought was the victim actually ordered the “perpetrator” or “assailant” to do it. Stories complicate the acts immensely. Furthermore, from around 1990, works where women disgrace men – to put it in the jargon of adult videos, “reverse rape” (gyaku reipu) – have been on a rapid rise. The pattern of a horny and hot female teacher doing a reluctant male student is already a staple. These days, it is only the old geezers who stubbornly cling to the simple-minded notion that “men are stronger and more active than women.” Likewise, it is only out-of-touch haters who denounce all of eromanga as “rape manga.”
Be that as it may, whether referring to a theme, motif or just the visuals, why are there so many “disgrace works” in eromanga? As one possible answer, we can raise the issue of efficiency. By incorporating disgrace, artists can easily build a dramatic story with eye-catching scenes of intense sex in the basic format of 16 to 20 pages. Rather than depicting warm and peaceful sex in a bland everyday world, artists can throw a fastball straight at readers. This is a brutally honest way of explaining things, but often times that is just how it goes with reality. Everywhere one finds editors who, in meetings with manga artists, assign a quota: “Please insert erotic scenes in 15 of the 20 pages.” Although the numerical values in this example are entirely hypothetical, it does not change the fact that it is very common for editors to ask for many erotic pages in eromanga.
Index of Artists and Individuals
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
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- 08 February 2021, pp 285-289
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Conclusion: Permeation, Diffusion and What Comes After
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 267-276
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Summary
Pornography Without Sex
Standing on the bishōjo-style eromanga side and surveying the whole of manga, anime, games, light novels and other expressive forms targeting the younger generation and otaku, one notices something. Things that were once an attraction of bishōjo-style eromanga – cuteness and beauty, the ridiculous and repulsive – have also become abundant in other categories of content since the mid-1990s. One can say that the object is that which stimulates those subtle feelings lumped together as “moe.” My intention is not to stir up trouble, but many of the memes contained in works associated with moe originate in bishōjo-style eromanga. Here I would like to trace some of this transfer from bishōjo-style eromanga.
Permeation and diffusion of course occur in every category of content. Works in various clusters cross borders, exchange genes and come to resemble one another. Take for example Strawberry Marshmallow (Ichigo mashimaro, published by Media Wākusu from 2003). One of the stars of moe content, it comically depicts the leisurely everyday of a 16-year-old girl in highschool and a group of four gradeschool girls who hang around her. That is all there is to the manga. According to the afterword to the first volume, the artist behind Strawberry Marshmallow, Barasui, started out as a “postcard artisan” (hagaki shokunin) submitting lolicon illustrations to Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh. Scouted by an editor, he became a professional manga artist. It is not an uncommon story for the submission of illustrations of cute girls to lead to a debut as a manga artist. In eromanga, this was the case for Rie-chan 14-sai (aka Rie-chan Jūyonsai), who is one of the forerunners of moe. Like Rie-chan 14-sai, Barasui also had almost no experience drawing manga before his debut. Obviously, his technique as a manga artist is still developing, and if there are places where the paneling looks wonky, then the pacing can also be off at times.
Judging from its framework, Strawberry Marshmallow belongs to the tradition of comedy manga about everyday life, or slice-of-life comedy manga. One might describe it as sharing traits with Sakura Momoko's Chibi Maruko-chan (Little Maruko, published by Shūeisha from 1987) and Haruki Etsumi's Chie the Brat. It is also possible to see it as the successor to Azuma Kiyohiko's Azumanga Daioh (Azumanga daiō, published by Media Wākusu from 2000), which was a hit series in the same magazine, Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh.
2 - The Rise and Fall of Third-Rate Gekiga and the Eve of Bishōjo-Style Eromanga
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 63-84
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Summary
The Mid-1970s: The Third-Rate Gekiga Boom
In the mid-1970s, medium, small and micro publishers seeing the gekiga magazine boom out the corner of their eyes estimated that they could make bank and all at once jumped on the bandwagon. Gekiga and manga magazines produced on low budgets had proven to turn a profit, and these publishers were sure the same would be true for them. Of course, from the perspective of large publishers, the profits were modest, but, as the saying goes, small profits and quick returns. The situation was not unlike selling caramels, where even if the package changes, the content is basically the same, but a single company producing a number of gekiga magazines would definitely make money. As a way of distributing risk and avoiding getting locked into an investment, they spun off separate companies or placed orders to subcontracting editorial production companies.
One after another, new magazines were established. In 1975 alone, a year that would later be dubbed the surge, Manga Dynamite (Manga dainamaito, published by Tatsumi Shuppan), Manga Idol (Manga aidoru, published by Tatsumi Shuppan), Manga Popo (Manga popo, published by Meibunsha), Manga Great Pleasure (Manga daikairaku, published by Remonsha), Manga Banban (Manga banban, published by Remonsha), another Manga Great Pleasure (Manga daietsurakugō, published by Kasakura Shuppansha), Manga Utopia (Manga yūtopia, published by Kasakura Shuppansha), Manga Erogenica (Manga erojenika, published by Kaichōsha), Gekiga Jack (Gekiga jakku, published by Taiyō Shobō), Gekiga Erotic Humor (Gekiga enshōgō, published by Sebunsha), Manga Giant (Manga jaianto, published by Tōen Shobō), Manga Refresh (Manga sukatto, published by Tōkyō Sanseisha), Manga Bump (Manga banpu, published by Tōkyō Sanseisha), Gekiga Pleasure (Gekiga etsurakugō, published by San Shuppan) and Manga Love & Love (Manga rabu ando rabu, published by Sebun Shinsha) appeared.
This was the beginning of the so-called third-rate gekiga boom. Reflecting on the moment in 1979, one critic writes:
In terms of monthly publications, there are about 50 to 60 so-called third-rate gekiga, or erotic gekiga, magazines. We should not be surprised by that number, which refers only to primary magazines. There are cases of special editions of primary magazines, supplementary issues, special editions of supplementary issues and more. Altogether, the number is probably 80 to 100 magazines a month. Given that each magazine is said to move between 50,000 and 200,000 copies, this means that at least five million of them are circulating in the city. (Unknown 1979)
Erotic Comics in Japan
- An Introduction to Eromanga
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021
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Comics and cartoons from Japan, or manga and anime, are an increasingly common feature of visual and popular culture around the world. While it is often observed that these media forms appeal to broad and diverse demographics, including many adults, eroticism continues to unsettle critics and has even triggered legal action in some jurisdictions. It is more urgent than ever to engage in productive discussion, which begins with being informed about content that is still scarcely understood outside small industry and fan circles.
Erotic Comics in Japan: An Introduction to Eromanga is the most comprehensive introduction in English to erotic comics in Japan, or eromanga. Divided into three parts, it provides a history of eroticism in Japanese comics and cartoons generally leading to the emergence of eromanga specifically, an overview of seven themes running across works with close analysis of outstanding examples and a window onto ongoing debates surrounding regulation and freedom of expression in Japan.
3 - Bishōjo-Style Eromanga Takes the Stage
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 85-112
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Summary
The First Half of the 1980s: The Revolutionary Outbreak of Lolicon
Heralded as the first lolicon manga magazine, Comic Lemon People (Komikku remon piipuru, published by Amatoriasha) marked a major turning point. The date indicated on the first issue is February 1982, which is much later than it actually hit store shelves at the end of 1981, but in any case this was the beginning of what is commonly called the “lolicon manga boom” (rorikon manga būmu). From gekiga style to manga/anime style, third-rate gekiga to lolicon manga. The paradigm shift progressed at a speed faster than anyone had anticipated. In the background one can see the larger flow of time, or the heave of cultural history.
Particularly characteristic is the restoration of fragility, or its revaluation (Matsuoka 1995). Fragility refers to something easily breakable, delicate, small, immature, weak, incomplete, fragmentary, lovely, misshapen, sick, short-lived and so on. In many cultures, it is something cherished and held in contrast to the masculine ideal, or machismo. Even if the culture of fragility was comparatively minor, it was certainly not particular, or particularly fragile itself. Even under the militaristic and repressive culture of prewar and wartime Japan, fragility lived on in amusement for “women and children.” Following the defeat of the Empire of Japan in the Second World War, macho values began to crumble. With the weakening of the prewar and wartime regime, as if it was already historically inevitable, fragility began to proliferate. Before anyone knew it, “fancy goods” represented by Sanrio's Hello Kitty had saturated the culture of “women and children;” the word “cute” (kawaii) swallowed up “beautiful,” “appealing,” “great” and “excellent;” and all of this started to overflow from the domain of “women and children” (Shimamura 1991).
The upper age limit for readers and viewers of manga and anime, ostensibly forms of culture for children, was pushed higher and higher. With a cynical, bitter laugh, the baby-boomer generation's protest fighters, who suffered crushing defeat in 1970, became gung-ho company men – corporate warriors – worked like draft animals and made Japan richer and richer. The editors and artists who led third-rate gekiga were also baby-boomer warriors. Machismo suppressed fragility. However, that pressure gradually eased. Following the baby-boomer generation came “the interstitial generation” (hazama no sedai) or “apathetic generation” (shirake no sedai), which did not make it to the protests of the late 1960s that ended in 1970.
8 - Love Stories
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 187-202
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Summary
Introduction
Eromanga are not all about loveless sex and disgrace. In fact, romantic love is as much a pillar as disgrace in eromanga. According to the classic mind-body dualism, “Romantic stories are concerned with matters of the heart, and sexual stories the body.” Certainly, many stories focus on one and not the other. People can have sex without love, and love each other without sex. If there are sexless love stories, then there are also eromanga that are only about physical sex.
However, the line between mind and body is quite ambiguous. Hormones come into play. We communicate with others by nonverbal means, for example through chemical reactions that take a different route. The concentration of substances in our brain fluctuates. Do our feelings switch on subconsciously? Or, if our body is the hardware, does it drag along the heart as software? The more love we feel, the more sexual desire increases, and feelings of love can intensify when we have sex. The heart, invisible from the outside, expresses itself through the body in sex.
Can there be any material better suited to manga expression? Indeed, after Ishii Takashi, romantic love was getting more and more attention in the era of third-rate gekiga. It assumed an even more prominent place in bishōjo-style eromanga. That said, this does not mean that there is a defined category for “romance.” There is the love comedy format, and there is a group of works that can be classified as love stories or stories about romantic love, but romance is overflowing in other eromanga as well.
For example, in a previous chapter I introduced Tanuma Yūichirō's Season, which is a powerful work that follows the unfolding and fate of an innocent (in both the sense of ignorant and pure) romance that starts during puberty. I also introduced Tsukino Jōgi's ♭38℃: Loveberry Twins, which boldly explores the borderless connection between love and possession. Eromanga have spoken of many different kinds of love. If there is pure and tragic love, there are also reflections on love itself. If there are cases where opportunistic fantasies take priority, then there are also stories where the characters go through a painful journey of self-discovery.
Bibliography
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
-
- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
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- 08 February 2021, pp 277-284
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Part 2 - The Various Forms of Love and Sex
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
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- 08 February 2021, pp 113-114
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9 - Sadomasochism and Sexual Minorities
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 203-214
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Summary
Introduction
Eroticism and sexuality are like magma, fluid and multi-layered, polysemous and full of energy. These are things that cannot be fully grasped in narrow discussions of pornography. Trying to channel and curtail the flow of magma, the modern paradigm makes the family system and marriage the base of the nation-state and establishes male-dominant heterosexuality as the standard. Looked at structurally, pornography complements this system, because it serves as a device to release built-up pressure from the magma and cool the surface layer. While the paradigm is effective, few notice the system in which they live; alternative expressions exist in niches. Once the paradigm begins to waver, however, the limits dissolve; the magma is no longer under control. Monstrous apparitions and spirits of the mountains and rivers burst into general areas and disseminate far and wide.
While bishōjo-style eromanga carries an expectation of being pornographic, it can betray that expectation. In other words, it transcends the limits of the pornographic framework, deviates from it, interbreeds, integrates, imports, forges linkages, segments and becomes chaotic. In so doing, it widens the bandwidth. As if responding to changes in the paradigm, radical forms appear at the fringes of eromanga, or are introduced there; they invite diverse reading, and permeate and diffuse throughout eromanga as a whole. Given that their borders overlap, there are more than a few instances of this permeation and diffusion in eromanga extending to manga in its entirety. The reverse is also true. Numerous memes from any and everywhere come into eromanga. In the expressive world of manga generally and eromanga specifically, countless memes appear, or hide themselves, are passed on atavistically, mutate and transition.
That things are born from the edges or begin to enter from there is not unique to eromanga, but it is quite visible in this content. Keep in mind that the golden rule in the historically loose world of eromanga is that “Anything goes as long as it's erotic.” Precisely because of this relaxed atmosphere, the fringes of bishōjo-style eromanga have become a site for experiments with expressions of eroticism and sexuality. From there have come subcategories and tropes such as “sadomasochism,” “shemales” and “shota,” which permeate and disseminate throughout the whole of eromanga. This side of eromanga also makes it a platform for creators with strong voices and identities such as Kago Shintarō and Machino Henmaru.
Introduction: The Invisible Realm
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 39-42
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Summary
Many facts about eromanga, or erotic manga, are surprisingly not well known. For example, the fact that over 80 magazines a month were massproduced during the boom of so-called “third-rate gekiga,” or erotic gekiga, in the 1970s. Or that over 100 new trade paperbacks were released onto the market each month during the boom of bishōjo-style eromanga in the 1980s. That since the mid-1990s the number of female artists has increased, and over half the contributors to some eromanga magazines are women. That eromanga encompasses endless genres and subgenres. That countless art styles are competing for supremacy. That many popular manga artists have experience producing eromanga. That eromanga magazines have been a platform for publishing avant-garde and experimental work. That it is one of the epicenters of “moe.” That it vividly reflects disruptions of machismo and heterosexism. That it expresses any kind of eroticism and sexuality that one can think of. That eromanga is connected by open pipelines to zines, boys love manga and general manga magazines. In short, that the content categorized as eromanga is broader, deeper and far more intriguing than readers who have never encountered it might anticipate. I do not intend to push readers with absolutely no interest, but to those who identify as manga enthusiasts, those who had the curiosity to pick up this book and of course those whose inquisitiveness extends to eroticism in all its diversity, to those readers I declare that you are missing out by not knowing eromanga.
Why has this content been overlooked until now? A number of reasons come to mind. For starters, in the massive manga industry, which accounts for nearly half the printed publications in Japan, eromanga is of modest scale. Mid- and small-sized publishers are the majority, and the average print run for a trade paperback, while still large, is only 10,000 copies. Popular artists might get a print run of 50,000. Eromanga titles cannot be sold at every bookstore in the country, as are mainstream manga. If they do make it in, their place on the shelf is limited, and the cycle of receiving new books and returning them to publishers as unsold is short. To be sure to get a copy, one must follow information about new releases and order them online or go to a manga specialty store in a large city. Further, historical developments have systematically made eromanga difficult to see.
The Various Forms of Love and Sex: Subdividing Desire
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 115-116
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Summary
To boil water, one needs a heat source, water and a container. Simple enough. Nevertheless, even if limited to just containers, countless commodities surround us. A two-liter, aluminum kettle is probably sufficient for the majority of one's needs, but there are also big kettles to make large quantities of barley tea and Nambu ironware that might be used over an open hearth. There are kettles with copper coils wrapped around their base to improve thermal efficiency, and kettles with bird miniatures attached to their spouts that chirp when the water is boiling. Such is the diversity that material quality, capacity and design all differ in any type of kettle.
One could probably say this about almost all commodities, too. They branch out from an original form, become segmented, deviate, revert, try various permeations and combinations, become multi-functional or, the other way around, narrow and focus their functions. Before you know it, we are surrounded by endless variation. Desire generates commodities and commodities generate desire, and the circular dance goes on and on indefinitely.
Eromanga has also given birth to commodities or works corresponding to just about every conceivable desire. This begins with third-rate gekiga and expands explosively in bishōjo-style eromanga, or what was in the early days called lolicon manga. Such is the range and diversity of eromanga that it appears almost a mirror reflecting our polymorphous desires. Here I divide the various forms of desire seen in eromanga into a total of seven chapters, which cover lolicon, big breasts, little sisters and incest, disgrace and training, love stories, sadomasochism and sexual minorities and gender mayhem.
1 - The Gene Pool of Manga and Gekiga
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 49-62
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Summary
The 1940s to the 1950s: The Genome King, Tezuka Osamu
Setting an extremely loose definition of eromanga as sequential art including erotic expression, one can probably trace its history back to the old generation of racy manga for adults represented by Shimizu Kon, Kojima Koo and Sugiura Yukio. From the bottom of the eromanga gene pool, one might be able to dredge up the meme of the amorous female water imp from Shimizu Kon's Kappa Paradise (Kappa tengoku, 1953-1958). Personally, I want to talk about Shimizu Kon's water imp manga as erotic, which I found it to be early in life, but this work is entirely unrelated to contemporary eromanga. If I searched, I think I could find an eromanga artist who started drawing after being impacted by Shimizu Kon's water imps – but, then again, there is probably no such person. Even granted the long shot that they do exist, their work would have basically no relation to contemporary eromanga.
In terms of influence on future generations of bishōjo-style eromanga, the name that cannot be ignored is after all Tezuka Osamu. Now, I am wary of contributing to the deification of this man, the legend of the so-called “God of Manga,” which has it that Tezuka was the first at anything and everything. I know that the origin of contemporary eromanga is not one man, and focusing too much on him can be misleading. However, when it comes to eroticism, what Tezuka did is just too massive to overlook. There can be no mistake that, even now, this is an enormous legacy.
While he had produced work already, Tezuka's real national debut was New Treasure Island (Shin takarajima, story by Sakai Shichima) in 1947. Given the state of Japan following the Second World War, it is shocking that this manga sold 400,000 copies, which made it a smash hit. Interestingly, that same year, Yamakawa Sōji's Boy King (Shōnen ōja), a made-in-Japan Tarzan picture book, is recorded as being a bestseller at 500,000 copies. On the one hand is a new style of manga that announced the arrival of a new era, and on the other a tale of adventure in unexplored regions, which reflects the last rays of light of prewar boys culture, as well as illusions of empire and the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
Addition to the Expanded Edition (2014): Eromanga in the Twenty-First Century
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 237-266
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Summary
Eromanga in the Twenty-First Century
In the eight years since the original publication of this book, eromanga has continued to be drawn, published and read. For this expanded edition, I considered adding to each of the original chapters, but the situation had changed too drastically between 2006 and 2014. Things had changed on social, systematic, economic and industrial levels. I came to the decision to keep additions and corrections to the original chapters to the bare minimum, while presenting this new chapter as an update on those drastic changes. In the original publication, to preserve the balance between the history and content of eromanga, I did not devote significant space to the regulation of expression, but this cannot be overlooked in the new environment. In discussing things after 2006, I will also need to fill in some information about what happened before. The issues are complex and dynamic, involving much political and emotional speculation, and to top it all off I was personally involved in some of the events relayed here. Presenting a full picture of the situation in the new millennium could fill another book, but I will try to be concise.
Deterioration of the Market and Restructuring of the Industry
There was a time when people said that, because erotic entertainment is a market rooted in basic human desire, a cheap and easy pleasure, “Eroticism can weather bad economic conditions.” This has by now been revealed to be a myth. Since the peak of the eromanga bubble in the 1990s, the market has been in a long-term decline that continues to this day. The decline is not unrelated to the general slump in the publishing world as a whole, and one could probably see it as a small episode in the broader economic malaise that plagued the Heisei Period (1989-2019), punctuated by the Lehman Shock. The slump in the eromanga industry cannot, however, be explained based on these factors alone. The special position occupied by eromanga has made the impact of the economic recession more severe.
Let us begin with a look at the current state of the eromanga industry. These are not exact figures, but, in terms of trade paperbacks, about 50 distinct titles are published every month. This amounts to about 600 a year, or roughly half of the number published annually during the eromanga bubble in the 1990s.
Part 1 - A History of Eromanga
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 43-44
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Part 3 - Addition to the Expanded Edition (2014)
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
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- 08 February 2021, pp 235-236
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Translators’ Introduction : Eromanga in the Global Now
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 13-38
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Summary
Eromanga, Japan and Translation
In the summer of 2014, a swarm of international journalists descended on Akihabara, a neighborhood in Tokyo known for its concentration of stores selling manga (comics), anime (cartoons) and related media and material. For over a decade, they and others had filed breathless reports about the global spread and influence of Japanese popular culture, especially manga and anime, which fueled hype about “Cool Japan.” In the process, Akihabara, where manga/anime stores are more densely clustered and visible than anywhere else in the world, had become a symbolic site for Cool Japan and tourist destination (Galbraith 2019). The journalists, however, were not in Akihabara to talk about Cool Japan. On the contrary, they came to report on manga and anime as something that Japan ought to be ashamed of. In Akihabara, which metonymically stood for Japan, they found examples of comics and cartoons featuring youthful-looking characters engaged in explicit sex, or what appeared to them to be “child pornography” (Adelstein and Kubo 2014; Ripley et al 2014; Fawcett 2014). The keyword was “lolicon,” or work associated with the “Lolita complex.” There was nothing new in responding to manga and anime this way, which reflects a relatively stable international discourse about “the Japanese Lolita complex” (Saitō 2011: 6) and Japan as a “dangerous (potentially pedophilic) ‘other’” (Hinton 2014: 65), but this coverage was notable for the intensity of its collective moral outrage.
The journalists were reporting on the Japanese government's decision to revise child pornography laws, namely to ban possession (production and distribution were already illegal). This seemed to align Japan with international standards, but lawmakers notably did not include fictional forms in their definition of child pornography. If increased concern about the safety of children led to stances against pornography and abuse from the late 1970s on (Rubin 2011: 168, 218), then this had taken the form of an ongoing and open-ended campaign by the 2010s. In hopes of stamping out the scourge of child pornography and abuse, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have all moved to make illegal both real and fictional forms (McLelland 2016: 11).
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- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
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- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 8-10
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10 - Gender Mayhem
- Translated by Patrick Galbraith, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto
- Kaoru Nagayama
-
- Book:
- Erotic Comics in Japan
- Published by:
- Amsterdam University Press
- Published online:
- 22 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 08 February 2021, pp 215-234
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Summary
Introduction
Starting from the fringes, there was another cluster of subcategories that like sadomasochism made remarkable strides in eromanga. These subcategories, which often overlap, focus on the figures and themes of the “shemale” (shiimēru) and hermaphrodite (futanari), transvestism (iseisō) and drag (josō), shota and sex change (sei tenkan). While following the same basic pattern of moving from the periphery to permeate and spread throughout eromanga more generally, this cluster differs from other subcategories in that it makes “male characters” into objects of desire.
It is of course not the case that comics incorporating desire for men had been absent to this point. An older example is Tomi Shinzō's Life of a Beautiful Boy (Bidōki, published by Mitsunobu Shobō in 1967). Artists such as Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Kamimura Kazuo and Miyaya Kazuhiko also drew works with homosexual and drag themes. In gekiga treading into the erotic, there was a young gay man in a supporting role in Ishii Takashi's Angel Guts (Tenshi no harawata, 1972), and in third-rate gekiga, Miyanishi Keizō and Hisauchi Michio created works with a rich concentration of gay themes. However, in contrast to shōjo manga – which experienced a boys love boom centering on the works of the Magnificent 49ers in the 1970s and grew into a massive market with June magazine, yaoi zines and finally its own commercial subcategory of content in the 1990s – works for men tended to stand in isolation and never led to a boom. Sex other than the heterosexual kind, including but not limited to homosexuality, was mostly relegated to a very limited market “for a specific kind of reader.”
It is simple enough to grasp that operating in the background of this is male homophobia. Homosexuals and transvestites have been ridiculed as “queers” (homo) and “faggots” (okama) and turned into a punch line for jokes. Fear and laughter are two sides of the same coin, and the more male-dominated a community, the more homosexuality is discriminated against and marginalized. Destabilization of the discriminatory structure and its central tenet of machismo made possible the phenomenon of male characters becoming objects of desire in eromanga, as well as change in the treatment of homosexuals, drag queens and feminine men on television shows.