Interestingly, this behavior is also starting to occur in Japan.Ĭompared to the use of yaoi and shounen-ai, which underwent changes to their meaning and usage in Japan, the word BL has emerged as the more popular and synchronized term. Therefore, we still find fans who use BL when referring to self-published work. Although, for some people, BL is simply the replacement word for any other term they have known before like yaoi, shounen-ai, or even slash. However, in the past decade, there has been a significant emergence of the word BL in markets around the world, even in the non-English ones. In the past, we might have seen “yaoi” as a more known term in the international community. It is believed that magazine Image was the first to use the word BL routinely, and since then, BL finally became the official term used to describe original commercial male/male fiction work. At that time, there were so many terms to define male/male romantic fiction, and many titles were still categorized under shoujo manga instead of having their own category. Such a thing is not a problem in Japan because they have been strictly using “BL” as the official category for commercial work.īoys’ Love or BL is a term coined during the male/male fiction bubble of the 1990s in Japan. Although the word yaoi was probably one of the most conveniently used terms, it still strongly connotes something that is erotic, which puts other titles that have few sexual scenes in an awkward position.
In the 2000s, “yaoi” could easily be found in English publishers and licensor’s websites, something that is uncommon in Japan. In the English-speaking communityīoth fan spaces and the commercial industry have used the word yaoi for decades after it was exported to the English speaking community. It should also be noted that in Japan, yaoi is not the term used for original commercial work, unlike its foreign counterpart. This term basically means that there is no actual plot in the work and usually has two men getting together, mostly in an erotic manner. Yaoi is an abbreviation of yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (no climax, no anti-climax, no meaning). In 1979, a doujinka group released an amateur anthology Rapori which used the “yaoi” term for the first time. Yaoi came from a slightly different environment as compared to shounen-ai and later, BL. Initially, it was not even limited to male/male relationships as we commonly see “yaoi” being used among English-speaking fans now. However, that does not mean shounen-ai was initially used as the term for milder male/male fiction. Therefore, it is not surprising that many shounen-ai manga ended up not including erotic scenes like “yaoi” works. Shounen-ai is heavily based on shoujo manga and was developed in the time where explicit sexual scenes were not the norm in girl-targeted work. It was never really specified what kind of love it was, but it certainly was not limited to the mainstream heteronormative relationship at that time. Shounen-ai’s narration revolved around a shounen (in this context, a bishounen, a beautiful adolescent boy) protagonist and his struggles with ai (love). Shounen-ai literally means “the love of young boy.” The term was mainly used to refer to some works by 24-Nen-Gumi shoujo mangaka such as Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya in the 1970-80s Japan. This time, we are going to briefly go through the differences between shounen-ai, yaoi, and boys’ love, and how they are perceived both in Japan and in the English-speaking community. However, it is always better to understand the historical context and relationship between these words. What we should understand first is that language is always evolving, and, understandably, people from different times and regions might have different perceptions of the same word. Even the researchers still have varied opinions.
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It is not unusual to encounter debates on how to use these terms correctly. They might be words such as Boys’ Love (hereafter BL), yaoi, shounen-ai, and many other terms emerging from different languages. Nowadays, you might have heard a lot of different terms used to explain male/male romantic fiction.