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(, ), also known as Boys' Love (BL), is a Japanese genre of fictional media focusing on romantic or sexual relationships between male characters, typically aimed at a female audience and usually created by female authors. Although yaoi is typically aimed at a female audience, the genre also attracts some male readers; however, manga aimed at a gay male audience (''bara'') is considered a separate genre. The main characters in yaoi usually conform to the formula of the ''seme'' (the "top", or dominant figure) who pursues the ''uke'' (the "bottom", or passive figure). Material classified as ''yaoi'' typically depicts gay relationships between male characters and may include homoerotic content. Although the yaoi genre is also called ''Boys' Love'' (commonly abbreviated as ''BL''), the characters may be of any age above puberty, including adults. Works featuring prepubescent boys are labelled ''shotacon'' and seen as a distinct genre. Yaoi derives from two sources; in the early 1970s, ''shōjo manga'' magazines published ''tanbi'' (aesthetic) stories, also known as ''shōnen ai'' (boy love), featuring platonic relationships between young boys. The other influence began in the ''dōjinshi'' (fan fiction) markets of Japan in the late 1970s as yaoi, a sexualized parody of popular shōnen manga and anime stories. In the late 1970s, shōjo magazines devoted to the new genre began to appear; and, in the 1990s, the wasei-eigo term ''Boys' Love'' or ''BL'' was invented for the genre, which replaced earlier terms such as ''tanbi'', ''shōnen ai'' and ''Juné'' in Japanese usage. In Japan, the term ''yaoi'' continues to refer mainly to parody ''dōjinshi''; among Western fans, however, ''yaoi'' is used as a generic term for female-oriented manga, anime, dating sims, novels and fan fiction works featuring idealized gay male relationships. The genre has spread beyond Japan, and both translated and original ''yaoi'' works are now available in many countries and languages. ==History and general terminology== The genre currently known as ''Boy's Love'', ''BL'', or ''yaoi'' derives from two sources. Female authors writing for shōjo (girl's) manga magazines in the early 1970s published stories featuring platonic relationships between young boys, which were known as ''tanbi'' (aesthetic) or ''shōnen ai'' (boy love). In the late 1970s going in to the 1980s, women and girls in the dōjinshi (fan fiction) markets of Japan started to produce sexualized parodies of popular shōnen (boy's) anime and manga stories in which the male characters were recast as gay lovers. By the end of the 1970s, magazines devoted to the nascent genre started to appear, and in the 1990s the wasei-eigo term ''Boys' Love'' or ''BL'' was invented and eventually became the dominant term used for the genre in Japan. Although ''yaoi'' derives from girl's and women's manga and still targets the shōjo and josei demographics, it is currently considered a separate category.〔〔Thorn, Matt (What Shôjo Manga Are and Are Not – A Quick Guide for the Confused )〕 Author Keiko Takemiya's manga serial ''Kaze to Ki no Uta'', first published in 1976, was groundbreaking in its depictions of "openly sexual relationships" between men, spurring the development of the Boys' Love genre in shōjo manga,〔Toku, Masami (2007) "(Shojo Manga! Girls’ Comics! A Mirror of Girls’ Dreams )" ''Mechademia 2'' p. 27〕 as well as the development of sexually explicit amateur comics.〔Matsui, Midori. (1993) "Little girls were little boys: Displaced Femininity in the representation of homosexuality in Japanese girls' comics," in Gunew, S. and Yeatman, A. (eds.) Feminism and The Politics of Difference, pp. 177–196. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.〕 Another noted female manga author, Kaoru Kurimoto, wrote ''shōnen ai mono'' stories in the late 1970s that have been described as "the precursors of ''yaoi''".〔Kotani Mari, foreword to Saitō Tamaki (2007) "Otaku Sexuality" in Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi ed., page 223 ''(Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams )'' University of Minnesota Press ISBN 978-0-8166-4974-7〕 The term ''yaoi'' is an acronym created in the late 1970s〔 by Yasuko Sakata and Akiko Hatsu〔 from the words . This phrase was first used as a "euphemism for the content"〔 and refers to how ''yaoi'', as opposed to the "difficult to understand" ''shōnen-ai'' being produced by the Year 24 Group female manga authors,〔Suzuki, Kazuko. 1999. "Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon". In Sherrie Inness, ed., ''Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World''. London: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 252 ISBN 0-8476-9136-5, ISBN 0-8476-9137-3.〕 focused on "the yummy parts".〔Thorn, Matthew. (2004) ("Girls And Women Getting Out Of Hand: The Pleasure And Politics Of Japan's Amateur Comics Community." ) pp. 169–186, In ''Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan'', William W. Kelly, ed., State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-6032-0. Retrieved 12 August 2008.〕 The phrase also parodies a classical style of plot structure.〔Wilson, Brent; Toku, Masami. ("Boys' Love", Yaoi, and Art Education: Issues of Power and Pedagogy ) 2003〕 Kubota Mitsuyoshi says that Osamu Tezuka used ''yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi'' to dismiss poor quality manga, and this was appropriated by the early yaoi authors.〔 As of 1998, the term ''yaoi'' was considered "common knowledge to manga fans".〔Kinsella, Sharon (Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement ) Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 289–316〕 A joking alternative yaoi acronym among ''fujoshi'' (female yaoi fans) is .〔Lunsing, Wim. (Yaoi Ronsō: Discussing Depictions of Male Homosexuality in Japanese Girls' Comics, Gay Comics and Gay Pornography ) ''Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context'' Issue 12, January 2006 Accessed 12 August 2008.〕〔Fujimoto, Yukari (1991) "Shōjo manga ni okeru 'shōnen ai' no imi" ("The Meaning of 'Boys' Love' in Shōjo Manga"). In N. Mizuta, ed. ''New Feminism Review, Vol. 2: Onna to hyōgen'' ("Women and Expression"). Tokyo: Gakuyō Shobō, ISBN 4-313-84042-7. http://matt-thorn.com/shoujo_manga/fujimoto.php (in Japanese). Accessed 12 August 2008. "やめ て、お尻が、いたいから" – "Stop, because my butt hurts"〕 In the 1980s, the genre was presented in an anime format for the first time, including the works ''Patalliro!'' (1982) which showed a romance between two supporting characters, an adaptation of ''Kaze to Ki no Uta'' (1987) and ''Earthian'' (1989), released in the original video animation (home video) format.〔Bollmann, T. (2010). (He-romance for her – yaoi, BL and shounen-ai. ) In E. Niskanen (Ed.), Imaginary Japan: Japanese Fantasy in Contemporary Popular Culture (pp.42-46). Turku: International Institute〕 Prior to the popularization of the term ''yaoi'', material in the nascent genre was called (pronounced ), a name derived from ''June'', a magazine that published male/male romances which took its name from the homoerotic stories of the French writer Jean Genet.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=ICv2 - Digital Manga Names New Yaoi Imprint )〕 In China, the term ''danmei'' is used, which is derived from ''tanbi''. The term ''bishōnen manga'' was used in the 1970s, but fell from favour in the 1990s when manga in this genre began to feature a broader range of protagonists beyond the traditional adolescent boys.〔 In Japan, the term ''June'' eventually died out in favour of ''Boys' Love'', which remains the most common name in Japan.〔 Mizoguchi suggests that publishers wishing to get a foothold in the ''June'' market coined "Boys' Love" to disassociate the genre from the publisher of ''June''.〔 While ''yaoi'' has become an umbrella term in the West for women's manga or Japanese-influenced comics with male-male relationships,〔 and it is the term preferentially used by American manga publishers for works of this kind,〔 Japan uses the term ''yaoi'' to denote ''dōjinshi'' and works that focus on sex scenes.〔 In both usages, ''yaoi'' / ''Boy's Love'' excludes ''gei comi (bara)'', a genre which also depicts gay male sexual relationships but is written for and mostly by gay men.〔〔 In the West, the term ''hentai yaoi'' is sometimes used to denote the most explicit titles. The use of ''yaoi'' to denote those works with explicit scenes sometimes clashes with use of the word to describe the genre as a whole, creating confusion between Japanese and Western writers or between Western fans who insist on proper usage of the Japanese terms and those who use the Westernized versions. ''Yaoi'' can also be used by Western fans as a label for anime or manga-based slash fiction.〔Aquila, Meredith (2007) "(Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story? )" ''Mechademia 2'' p.39〕 In Japan, the term yaoi is occasionally written as ''801'', which can be read as yaoi through Japanese wordplay: the short reading of the number eight is "ya", zero can be read as "o" (a western influence), while the short reading for one is "i". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yaoi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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