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[Zebedeo Konig]

YuriJapanese: 百合, lit. "lily"), also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu), is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbian relationships are a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and literature.

Themes associated with yuri originate from Japanese lesbian fiction of the early twentieth century, notably the writings of Nobuko Yoshiya and literature in the Class S genre. Manga depicting female homoeroticism began to appear in the 1970s in the works of artists associated with the Year 24 Group, notably Ryoko Yamagishi and Riyoko Ikeda. The genre gained wider popularity beginning in the 1990s; the founding of Yuri Shimai in 2003 as the first manga magazine devoted exclusively to yuri, followed by its successor Comic Yuri Hime in 2005, led to the establishment of yuri as a discrete publishing genre and the creation of a yuri fan culture.

The word yuri (百合) translates literally to "lily", and is a relatively common Japanese feminine name.[1] White lilies have been used since the Romantic era of Japanese literature to symbolize beauty and purity in women, and are a de facto symbol of the yuri genre.[2]

The wasei-eigo construction "girls' love" (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu) and its abbreviation "GL" were adopted by Japanese publishers in the 2000s, likely as an antonym of the male-male romance genre boys' love (BL).[4][11] While the term is generally considered synonymous with yuri, in rare cases it is used to denote yuri media that is sexually explicit, following the publication of the erotic yuri manga anthology Girls Love by Ichijinsha in 2011. However, this distinction is infrequently made, and yuri and "girls' love" are almost always used interchangeably.[12]

In the 1990s, western fans began to use the term shōjo-ai (少女愛, lit. "girl love") to describe yuri works that do not depict explicit sex. Its usage was modeled after the western appropriation of the term shōnen-ai (少年愛, lit. "boy love") to describe yaoi works that do not feature sexually explicit content.[4] In Japan, the term shōjo-ai is not used with this meaning,[4] and instead denotes pedophilic relationships between adult men and girls.[13][14]

Among the first Japanese authors to produce works about love between women was Nobuko Yoshiya,[15] a novelist active in the Taishō and Shōwa periods.[16] Yoshiya was a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, including the early twentieth century Class S genre.[17] Her works popularized many of the ideas and tropes which drove the yuri genre for years to come.[18] Class S stories depict lesbian attachments as emotionally intense yet platonic relationships, destined to be curtailed by graduation from school, marriage, or death.[16] The root of this genre is in part the contemporary belief that same-sex love was a transitory and normal part of female development leading into heterosexuality and motherhood.[19] 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.[20] Though homosociality between girls would re-emerge as a common theme in post-war shōjo manga (comics for girls), Class S gradually declined in popularity in favor of works focused on male-female romances.[21]

Traditionally, Class S stories focus on strong emotional bonds between an upperclassman and an underclassman,[17] or in rare cases, between a student and her teacher.[22] Private all-girls schools are a common setting for Class S stories, which are 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.[23] Critics have alternately considered Class S as a distinct genre from yuri,[24] as a "proto-yuri",[25] and a component of yuri.[24]

Faced with a proliferation of stories focused on homosociality, homoeroticism, and female homosexuality, some publishers sought to exploit the yuri market by creating manga magazines dedicated to the genre, coalescing around yuri as the preferred name for this genre in response to its popularity in dōjinshi culture.[6] In 2003, Yuri Tengoku and Yuri Shimai launched as the first manga magazines devoted exclusively to yuri.[50] This was followed by the female reader-oriented Comic Yuri Hime in 2005 and the male reader-oriented Comic Yuri Hime S in 2007; the two magazines merged under the title Comic Yuri Hime in 2010.[51]

Yuri as a genre depicts intimate relationships between women, a scope that is broadly defined to include romantic love, intense friendships, spiritual love, and rivalry.[62] While lesbianism is a theme commonly associated with yuri, not all characters in yuri media are necessarily non-heterosexual; Welker states that the question whether yuri characters are lesbians is a "very complicated issue."[63] Characters in yuri works frequently do not define their sexual orientation in explicit terms, and the matter is instead left to reader interpretation.[64]

Rica Takashima notes Western and Japanese fans often have differing expectations for the level of intimacy depicted in yuri, which she ascribes to cultural differences between the groups.[65] She notes that yuri works that enjoy international popularity tend to be explicit and focused on "cute girls making out with each other," while Japanese fans "have a propensity for reading between the lines, picking up on subtle cues, and using their own imaginations to weave rich tapestries of meaning from small threads."[65]

Often, works that are perceived and categorized as yuri in Japan are not regarded as such by international audiences. For example, while in the west Sailor Moon is regarded as a magical girl series with some yuri elements, in Japan the series is regarded by yuri magazines as a "monumental work" of the genre.[67] The Sailor Moon example further illustrates how fans, rather than publishers or creators, often determine whether a work is yuri; Sailor Moon was not conceived as a yuri manga or anime, but "became a yuri text"[68] based on how the work was interpreted and consumed by yuri fans.[62][66]

Yuri works generally do not depict graphic sex scenes. Unlike yaoi, where explicit depictions of sexual acts are commonplace and stories typically climax with the central couple engaging in anal intercourse, sexual acts in yuri are rarely more explicit than kissing and the caressing of breasts.[29] Kazumi Nagaike of Oita University argues that this general avoidance of sex "does not mean that female sexual desire is effaced" in yuri, but rather that the absence of sex "clearly derives from the importance which is placed on the spiritual female-female bond."[29]

The majority of yuri stories published in the 1970s and 1980s were tragedies, focused on doomed relationships that end in separation or death (see History above).[36] Yukari Fujimoto, a manga scholar at Meiji University, notes that the tragic plot of Shiroi Heya no Futari became a common yuri story archetype that she dubs "Crimson Rose and Candy Girl". These stories depict "Candy", a physically smaller character with lighter hair and a naive personality, who admires "Rose", who is generally taller, with long dark hair and a serious demeanor.[36] The characters bond over a common unhappiness, usually originating from their respective home lives.[69] The attachment between Candy and Rose becomes the subject of rumors or even blackmail, even while Candy and Rose grow to acknowledge that their relationship has become romantic. The story concludes with Rose dying in order to protect Candy from scandal.[36] While tragic story formulas in yuri declined in popularity by the 1990s,[39] the Rose and Candy archetypes continue to influence contemporary yuri stories, particularly those that depict senpai and kōhai relationships such as Bloom Into You.[69]

In Japanese lesbian culture, the participants in a lesbian relationship are occasionally referred to as tachi (タチ, lit. "top", as derived from tachiyaku, the male role in kabuki), which designates the active participant, and neko (ネコ, lit. "cat"), which designates the submissive participant.[70] This distinction is comparable to that of the seme and uke distinction in yaoi, or to the butch and femme distinction in broader lesbian culture.[71] Characters in contemporary yuri rarely conform to these dichotomies,[29] though the dynamic of an active partner and a passive partner that the tachi and neko distinction represents does recur in the genre.[71]

The first publication marketed exclusively as yuri was Sun Magazine's manga anthology magazine Yuri Shimai, which was released between June 2003 and November 2004 in quarterly installments, ending with only five issues.[73] After the magazine's discontinuation, Comic Yuri Hime was launched by Ichijinsha in July 2005 as a revival of the magazine,[74] containing manga by many of the authors who had had work serialized in Yuri Shimai.[75] Like its predecessor, Comic Yuri Hime was also published quarterly but went on to release bi-monthly on odd months from January 2011 to December 2016, after which it became monthly.[75][76][77] A sister magazine to Comic Yuri Hime, named Comic Yuri Hime S, was launched as a quarterly publication by Ichijinsha in June 2007.[78] Unlike either Yuri Shimai or Comic Yuri Hime, Comic Yuri Hime S was targeted towards a male audience.[58] However, in 2010 it was merged with Comic Yuri Hime.[79] Ichijinsha published light novel adaptations from Comic Yuri Hime works and original yuri novels under their shōjo light novel line Ichijinsha Bunko Iris starting in July 2008.[80]

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