#yurizoku

[gauntletqueen]

Whats the nonbinary term for yuri/yaoi?

There isn't one. But there could and should be!

I'm not nonbinary, so I think it'd be up to the enby's to decide on it, but I might be able to help! Let's look at where yuri and yaoi come from. Yaoi is a combination of "yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi", meaning "no climax, no point, no meaning." It was an ironic name relating to how many japanese gay romance manga works at the time focused only on the sex, rather than story and characters. Yuri, meaning "lily", comes from the term Yurizoku (Lily Tribe). It was a term coined in Barazuko, a magazine for gay men. Barazuko means Rose Tribe, and the term yurizoku was chosen by the editor to refer to the magazine's female audience. It became clear that a notable number of them were lesbians, leading to the word yuri, and the lily itself, becoming associated with intimate relationships between women.

If you want to make a nonbinary version of yuri/yaoi, there obviously aren't and don't have to be clear-cut rules, but if you wanted to, you could define them as such: - "have it start with a Y" - "it should have an origin in the Japanese language". - "Two syllables" maybe.

These parameters are the result of coincidence and circumstance more than anything, though, rather than deliberate choices, so I think you shouldn't limit yourself. (also, if you're not Japanese you probably shouldn't go around trying to make new Japanese words or change the meanings of existing ones, I think, probably) Starting the new word with Y might be a good idea, as it retains the sense of connection between yaoi and yuri. Yeah they're different terms but they're both queer :>

One last thing, the Japanese term for nonbinary is "X gender". Found that out during the research and thought it was interesting to know

[shuihuzhuan]

A lot of the discourse around yaoifujoBLetc stuff would make a lot more sense if ppl remembered the origins of the genre.

Cuz a lot of ppl think yaoi is like the "gay" version of Yuri ... but Yuri (YuriZoku, meaning Lily Tribe) was coined in the 70s in self-published vintage gay magazines (Japan had a late 1900s era of LGBT indie publications too. Gays loved their indie mags). More specifically, YuriZoku was coined in tandem with Bara (BaraZoku, meaning Rose Tribe), and the term Yurizoku Corner was even used in a magazine called Barazoku, and they hosted a column where fans of the gay magazine sent letters with questions for Lesbians&Sapphics writers, sort of like a life-advice column. The larger point being that Yuri & Bara were terms (that later became genres) used in indie underground media exclusively by & for LGBT people. It wasn't for the larger cishetero gaze.

Yaoi, on the other hand, was a genre created by g for straight women characterized by little plot and a lot of smut. And despite claims that yaoi has evolved beyond it's origins, that largely still holds true today. The main difference today is that yaoi (& its related terminology) has gotten a lot PR and predominance (in comparison to the other aforementioned genres), and so much of the discourse comes from ppl retroactively claiming that yaoi is some sort of cultural LGBT heritage, despite the actual history (& not just, also present, CuzAgainLetsBeHonestModernYaoiDidNotEvolveMuchBeyondItsOriginsDespiteFujosClaimingItDidOnlyDifferenceNowadaysIsThatYaoiMakesALotMoreBankWhichMakesSenseCuzStraightPeopleAreALargerAudienceToAppealToSoThatsWhyIHateWhenItGetsComparedToGenresCreatedByPoorFags&DykesWhoRanMagazinesAtNegativeProfitsEvenNowadaysYouSeeTheBigDifferenceInMoneyThatTheThreeGenresMakeAndYouCanTellWhichTwoAreForLGBTandLike...ItsSoObviousYetDiscouragedToPointOutThisTruth)

but anyways idgaf <- person who does in fact gaf

i agree with this wholeheartedly i really have nothing to add. good breakdown of it

[nieves-de-sugui]

The Yaoi Ronso and Akiko Mizoguchi

here the original post this one stems from. I advice reading that one first if you haven't. Please note I am no expert on this, and this is a post to give an overview of the different topics treated. There might be some inaccuracies.

The Yaoi Debates - 1992

In 1992, a “confrontation between women yaoi fans and gay men about the relation between the representation of homosexual love and society’s prejudice against gay men in real life” that happened in the japanese feminist magazine Bessatsu CHOISIR. 

The Yaoi Ronso (or Yaoi Debates) were a series of letters published in the magazine between Masaki Sato (a gay activist), who criticized the genre, and the female readers, who defended it. Masaki Sato criticized yaoi for showing examples of homosexual life that could negatively impact young gay men who read them. Meanwhile female readers argued back that shonen ai/yaoi was not meant to depict reality, or real men. This exchange of letters ended with Masaki Sato and some of the female readers agreeing in some points, and Sato suggesting that instead of escaping from reality these stories should make reality easier to live in. 

Up to that point, in most of the 20 years of academic studies regarding the subject, it has been argued that the men depicted in these stories chould be thought as a third gender free of societal expectations, object of love in a pure form. A means for female sexual liberation and exploration, made possible thanks to its detachement to reality. Lots of theories at the time said that women used these “boys” to avoid having to become “women”, and the expectations that came with the title. Maintaing the “boyhood” from childhood that is lost as they become women. 

After the Debates, female academics started evaluating the power of the symbol of male homosexual love fantasies. And so started a discussion about the difference between reality and fantasy, getting to question topics such as depictions of rape being easily allowed. All of this as part of gender studies and manga studies.

One of the more discussed things in academic studies regarding shoujo and BL is its heterosexual female public. The shonen-ai/yaoi/BL has served as a medium for homosexuals to find each other but also for heterosexual women to flee society’s heteronormative and gender pressures, heavily associated with fantasy. One example of this is the magazine Barazoku (meaning Rose tribe, bara is a term highly associated with gay content). Which featured a column where letters of female readers would be published. At first these letters expressed the desires of these women to marry gay men, or become gay men themselves to enjoy a freedom they believed gay men enjoyed (they would usually be referred to as okoge or fag hags). Despite its problematic nature, the chief editor of the magazine went against advice and requests to stop publishing such letters. From there on started to appear letters from lesbian women (which ended up being the only kind of letters that woul d be featured) who, interested in depictions of homosexual love would realize their own desire for the same sex. This column was then changed to the name Yurizoku (the Lily Tribe, yuri is a term highly associated with lesbian content). 

The 1990s were also when there was a “gay boom” in japan (lgbt movie festivals and other things started happening). Many of the manga magazines that published BL would feature articles that introduced the japanese gay lifestyle to its women readers. Like, gay bars, Shinjuku Ni-Choume (the gay district of Tokyo), or art popular among gays or even foreign gay communities. Gay men and women has been learned from each other in this way for a number of years now. 

Academics noticed the impact of the Yaoi Ronso on BL as they started to observe gay characters who reached a happy ending emerging. The Yaoi Ronso had a definite impact on the evolution of the gerne as it started to take into account that (having meant to or not) they had a power of influence that affected real people. 

sources Kayo Takeuchi James Welker Wim Lunsing

However, Wim Lunsing brings an important point to the table:

“Gay manga are not essentially different from BLB manga.”

It is true that BL is the most popular form in which we find gay stories in Japan. However, gay comics had existed for almost the same amount of time as yaoi. 

Short introduction to Male Love (ML)

ML, Gei Komi and Bara are the terms with which gay content made by and for gay men are refered to. Gengoroh Tagame is one of the most prominent figures of it. Before he started publishing his very sexual BDSM comics, the beauty ideal that was pursued was the bishonen aesthetic. However, Tagame’s characters where big, muscle-y, fat, hairy men, with a clear influence by Tom of Finland, and its popularity changed the tastes of japanese gay men.

Gengoroh Tagame also started writing slice of life manga in an effort to educate japanese society about gay life and LGBT issues. He is the author of the manga My Brother’s Husband (which was later turned into a 4 episode series).

Another notable manga is Until I Met my Husband, based on an autobiographic essay by Ryousuke Nanansaki.

Akiko Mizoguchi, the Rape Fantasy Expert - An Extra

Akiko Mizoguchi is a notable researcher of BL studies. She is the expert in regards to the analysis of depictions of rape, however she writes mostly in japanese, and my comprehesion of it is very limited for academic readings. 

She has wrote an extensive book: Theorizing BL As a Transformative Genre: Male-Male Fictions by and for Women - which is currently being translated to english.

Summary:

Identifying Mari Mori's 1961 short novel as the origin of the genre and the 1970's-1980's "Beautiful Boy" manga within the girls' (shojo) manga as the precursor, Dr. Akiko Mizoguchi discusses how the commercial BL genre has transformed into an unprecedented genre with feminist and queer activist potential. Recent commercial BL genre has produced stories that portray strong female characters and gay-identified characters who come out and engage in other realistic negotations. Mizoguchi argues that while BL represents beautiful male characters at the center, for veteran women fans and authors, it functions as a female sexualized discursive space in which they exchange pleasure to the extent that these women can be called "virtual gay men" and "virtual lesbians."

source

Mizoguchi is a lesbian woman trying to bring a new type of analysis of BL taking lesbianism into account. 

Other academic authors with a lot on yaoi manga/BL are Mark McLelland and Thomas Baudinette. 

Conclusion (of sorts)

Even though The Yaoi Debates ended, it is still being had up to these days. Both in academics and within the BL fandom. If we change the exhange of letters in magazines for the internet, we find ourselves in a similar situation. I hope that through this post the Debates have become clearer and easier to understand for those who didn’t know about it. 

I close with this quote from one of the text I read for this post:

“The implication that gay sex is objectified for the purpose of the sexual liberation of women surely is a queer use of male homosexuality par excellence.”

Together with a longer version of the previous quote:

“It rather seems that gay men like Satō have difficulty with the idea that women may look at them as sex objects. Gay manga are not essentially different from BLB manga.”

Make with it what you will, but it is indeed food for thought.

Closing Remarks

For those curious ones, wanting to look into how the gay community of Japan was in the 70′s, check out Funeral Parade of Roses. And if anyone is interested in male prostitution in Japan, check out Boys for Sale (if you can, if not here’s an interview).

If you’ve made it to this point, I hope you found this post interesting or helpful in whichever way it may be needed. I have mainly summarized what little I know on the topic but if anybody is curious about the big details in an academic way, here is the best article on it I have been able to find: The Yaoi Ronso (by Wim Lunsing).

Edit: this post has been updated to correct some mistakes. If you happen to see any more please do point them out

[toskarin]

so I know Yaoi as a term is a reference to a joke about "no plot no meaning" and what have you, but why is it called "yuri"? was it all just a ploy by some person who knew that yuri on ice would come out one day to mess with us?

lilies symbolise purity in women -> yuri = lily -> lilies showed up a lot in class s works -> people started using "yuri" as slang for girl x girl stuff

it's unclear exactly where it started, but it was probably helped along when the highly influential barazoku (gay magazine, name means rose tribe) started calling female readers yurizoku (lily tribe)

there's also a really obvious conjecture you can draw, which is that if a lily symbolises a pure woman, the love between two "pure" women could be seen as "yuri love"

[xbuster]

So, while yaoi is more known in the West, “bara” is the real gay counterpart to yuri. Yuri refers to lesbian manga written by women and bara refers to gay manga written by men. Yaoi, however, usually refers to gay manga written by women for women and also is usually to denote erotic doujinshi. The word “yuri” actually refers to lesbian manga because bara was used to refer to gay manga first. “Bara” means “rose” and was an insult for gay men in Japan. It was later reclaimed as a descriptor for gay manga. There was a magazine for gay men’s manga called the Barazoku that called the female readers the “yurizoku” (probably because “yuri” comes from the Japanese for “lily” like how “bara” comes from “rose”), which caused the word “yuri” to be associated with lesbians.

All of this was just to tell you about a funny joke in Sakura Wars because in the second game a division of the Teikoku Kagekidan was introduced called the “Baragumi” (or “Rose Division”) that is just three gay men. It’s to mirror the all-female “Hanagumi” (“Flower Division”) with an all-male division. Since “hana” means “flower,” they used “bara” (again, meaning “rose”) to contrast the “Hanagumi” while also playing off the meaning of “bara” referring to gay men.

[specterthief]

reading up on some of the history of barazoku magazine for extremely autistic sk8 meta reasons and man, there were a lot of repressed trans men writing into the yurizoku column huh

[skyekurisu]

Alright, so the thing is like this.

Back then in the day 薔薇 (bara, rose) used to be a slur directed to homosexual men.

However, in around between the 1960's and the 1970's the gay media started a reappropriation of the word, leading to some works that included the word Bara on it, most notably the magazine 薔薇族 (barazoku, Rose Tribe) in 1971, by Itou Bungaku, who had already tried his hand at publishing books for homosexual people years before. This magazine became the first succesfully commercial magazine for gay people, and it popularized the term Bara as descriptive for media made for gay men. (Note that, Bara is an obsolete word now, and most people refer to gay media as, well, gay media 「ゲイ雑誌, ゲイコミ」)

In 1976, in an attempt to broad their audience, Barazoku started accepting submissions by the female readers of the magazine, to which he used to call 百合族 (Yurizoku, Lily tribe) as a sort of antonym for Barazoku. These submissions were then compiled into a special section within Barazoku called 百合族の部屋 (Yurizoku no Heya, Lily's Tribe Room).

This is what eventually lead to the popularizing of Yuri as the term for lesbian media in Japan.

Or at least, that's the popular belief.

[princessmo]

bara DOES mean rose and that's also the sense it's used in when referring to gay men/gay manga, it was originally derogatory but then in the 70s a gay magazine called barazoku ("rose tribe") started. also where yuri comes from, the same magazine coined "yurizoku" as the lesbian equivalent

oh hell yeah swag 👍🌹

[im-mender]

I find it neat that yuri as a word for women's gay love allegedly comes from the Japanese 百合属 (yurizoku, "lily tribe/clan"), a term coined by analogy to 薔薇属 (barazoku, "rose tribe/clan") by the editor of Barazoku, the first gay men's magazine in Japan.

[purpleparasol]

Silly pride trivia:

In Japan there was a now defunct gay magazine called barazoku (薔薇族, rose tribe), (薔薇, bara, rose) and (族, zoku, tribe) and within is yurizoku (ユリ族, lily tribe), (ユリ, yuri, lily). Both flowers are now associated with homosexuality and are each genres of said media, bara being gay masculine men and vv for yuri

[daylighteclipsed]

@little-robin-h00d From what I can find, blue roses aren’t considered a queer symbol — But they do generally represent unattainable or unrequited true love. Which, you know, it’s easy to see how that could apply in a queer context. A blue rose can also represent a wish or dream come true. The blue/violet color that dominates the rose door is also the same as Riku’s heart station.

But it’s interesting how the roses on the door Data Riku creates aren’t just blue… It looks like red and pink are starting to bleed into the blue and create purple. And knowing Data Riku not only contains Riku’s memories but Sora’s too… perhaps that love isn’t so unrequited after all. At any rate, it creates the same colors as their Dearly Beloved sound ideas.

And here’s something neat: In the West, roses generally symbolize romance. But in Japan, roses have been a symbol of gay romance…

The Bara Genre owes its name to the Japanese word for rose, "bara.” [Apparently, in Japan “bara” has historically been used as a pejorative for men who love men, but it started being reappropriated by Japanese gay media in the 1960s.] As a symbol for gay men, the rose became popularized by the publication of Barazoku [the first commercially produced gay magazine in Asia] in the early 1970s. However, the idea for the symbol originates in Greek Mythology, specifically deriving from myths of King Laius having affairs with boys under rose trees. "Barazoku" means "rose tribe" and is a slang term for homosexual men, much like how "yurizoku" or "yuri" ("lily tribe" or "lily") is for lesbians.

The more you know, right? The rose is also the sacred flower of Greek god Eros, the patron of love between men. Of all the flowers that could’ve made up this door Data Riku creates for Data Sora, Nomura picked roses. That sure is something.

Bruh soriku got the floral arch, the dearly beloved wedding march, and the paopu fruit 💀

[class-shoujo]

Yuri blog. Hamish. 26. He / Him.

(more under cut)

About This Blog:

This blog will be focused on multiple expressions of the Yuri genre, especially Yuri manga. Most of my personal posts will be my reviews of manga I am reading, but I may also interact with Yuri meta, Yuri edits, Yuri fanart, and relics of the Yuri fan community as a whole. I hope this blog will be enjoyed by and accessible to both seasoned Yuri fans and those who are biYurious.

In the tradition of Erica Friedman, Yuri’s foremost English-speaking scholar, I will be making an effort to capitalize all genre names. Much, but not all, of my knowledge of Yuri will be informed by Erica Friedman’s book, “By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga”, and I will try to credit my sources when possible. I hope you enjoy!

About Me:

I’m Hamish. I am an adult white USAmerican bisexual trans man who uses He / Him pronouns. I at one point identified as a lesbian, but that no longer describes my experience even if stories that are seen as lesbian in nature, like Yuri, still speak to me and my prior experiences. 

If you’d like to learn more about me and my biases feel free to check out my main blog, @fishtomale, or look into my carrd. Thanks!

Quick Definitions:

(The definitions which are indented are taken directly from Erica Friedman’s “By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga” and are provided for ease of interacting with my blog and the Yuri genre and fanbase as a whole. Some definitions may lack nuance or be impacted by my or her biases, but this will help understand where me and those I am reblogging from are coming from on this blog. Also any incorrect grammar or spelling by Erica Friedman is maintained in the quote.)

Shojou: Animation and comics targeted to girls. These can include romance stories, but also Action, Adventure, and Fantasy stories. 

Josei: Animation and comics targeted to adult women. Josei series often include sexual relationships, sometimes explicit, and often are focused on work and home life. 

Shojouai: This was an early term used by Yuri fandom to describe anime and manga with romantic stories between girls or women. You still see it today, along with Girl’s Love.

Yuri: Japanese for “lily”. From the word Yurizoku, (“lily tribe”) coined in the 1970s to describe lesbians. Formerly used in the West to denote series with explicit female / female relationships, but now more often used to refer to any work the contains a lesbian character or relationship, whether sexual or romantic. 

Doujinshi: Small-press or self-published works. Doujinshi are sometimes parodies of existing anime, manga, novels, games, and even popular celebrities, but are also often original works. In Japan, there is a well-accepted undermarket of these works, which may violate copyright as is understood in the West. 

Boy’s Love: Current term, coined by the Japanese publishers, for stories that feature male / male relationships. This term includes both sexual and romantic stories and is often shortened to BL. 

Class S: A genre marketed to Japanese girls in the early 1900s to the 1960s that marked much of the early tropes and concepts of Yuri. Class S frequently tells stories in which intimate friendships between girls hit beats typical of a romance regardless of whether or not there is same gender attraction present.

[yurimother]

Yuricon Celebrates 20 Years with Free Virtual Event

Yuricon, the organization founded by Erica Friedman with the mission of bringing together fans of lesbian images in Japanese animation and comics together is celebrating its 20 year anniversary. The organization announced that it would be holding a free virtual event discussing global Yuri fandom on August 14, 2021.

The event, which is based on a similar event held during the Mechademia International Academic Conference, will see three panelists discussing Yuri and its fandom across the globe. The event is free but there is limited space. Attendees can register online at https://www.yuricon.com/essays/yuricon20th/

The speakers to be featured during the event are:

Verena Maser:

Verena has a PhD in Japanese studies and work primarily as translator of manga and anime from Japanese to German, including Citrus and Yuri is My Job.

No Place for Lilies? Yuri’s Rocky Road to Germany

Ever since the 1990s, manga have seen enormous success in Germany, easily outselling any other form of graphic storytelling. Yet to this day, not all genres are created equal. While fantasy and boys love are thriving, yuri has had to face far more challenges and seen far fewer successes. My talk will trace these challenges both from the angle of the overall market situation, as well as from a linguistic angle, as I myself have translated several yuri manga to German.Nevertheless, their translation remains a challenge as stories often rely on shared tropes like being set at an all-girls’ school and featuring an “older sister” type paired with a “younger sister” type. Such tropes often have to be rewritten or even erased in translation. This includes the term “yuri” itself, as the lily symbolism is not understood by all audience members and German publishers prefer the term “Girls Love”.

James Welker

James Welker is a professor at the University of Kanagawa. He researches queer cultures, feminisms, & popular culture, in modern & contemporary Japan, including Boy’s Love in Japan/Asia. He is an editor of and contributor to Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia  (Collaboration)  2021   Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, Rethinking Japanese Feminisms, and Queer Voices from Japan.

The Yuri Genre in Its Transnational Permutations

Yuri, that is, manga, light novels, anime, and related media depicting female–female romantic intimacy, has always been a transnational genre. In addition to the genre’s early twentieth century roots in always already transnational Japanese girls fiction (shōjo shōsetsu), Yuricon was an early Yuri event.While yuri remains a relatively minor genre domestically and globally compared with BL, yuri subevents have been held within larger fan events in Europe, North America, and Latin America, and yuri-only events have been held regularly in both Taiwan and Korea for the past several years. Drawing on participant observation since 2013, in this presentation I discuss yuri-only events in Japan (Girls Love Festival), Korea (Our Lily Festival), and Taiwan (ComicHorizon), yuri subevents in Canada (Yuri North and Yurithon), and other fan events at which yuri works have been present including Tokyo’s Comic Market and Comitia, and BL events in Southeast Asia. I focus on ways that yuri has been transformed in various contexts, as well as links to local LGBTQ cultures.

Moderator – Erica Friedman

Erica Friedman is the Founder of Yuricon. Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka,  Animerica magazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund,  Dark Horse, and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, and The Mary Sue online. She has written news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog Okazu since 2002 and is the author of By Your Side: The First 100 Year of Yuri Anime and Manga, coming out in June 2022 from Journey Press.

Love Online – Global Yuri Fandom Speaks For Itself

The term yuri, is both descriptive and divisive, shaped by creators, publishers and by different audiences within fandom. The story of yuri as a genre is the story of a global online fandom, which absorbed, adapted, and regurgitated Japanese words and concepts associated with the genre. Non-Japanese, English-language yuri fandom developed relatively cut off from both Japanese otaku communities and LGBTQ communities in Japan and abroad.

I will trace the arguments, the compromises, the failures and triumphs of the growth of this fandom from a first-person perspective, from small groups online in the late 1990s, through the development of yuri as a manga and anime genre legitimized by publishers and creators in both the West and Japan, by identifying and discussing the terms that were and are being used by that fandom.

Yuricon was founded in 2000 under the name AniLesboCon, with the mission of bringing together fans of lesbian narrative in Japanese animation and comics to discuss and create stories that represented an entire continuum of lesbian experience. In 2001, the community was rebranded as Yuricon, to better represent the mission: to celebrate Yuri in anime and manga and to remember the ties to the lesbian community through the Yurizoku.  Yuricon community members participate in panels, write articles, and conduct lectures all over the world, in order to expand the global Yuri community.

YuriMother is not affiliated with the event of Yuricon, however, Nicki "YuriMother' Bauman will be in attendance at the event.

[sharlenevetayaoi]

Yaoi anime/manga/books 1961-1990

Koibito tachi no mori 1961

A novel by Mari Mori (1903-1987). Considered to be a first YAOI novel. Supported by Yukio Misima.

Sanroom nite 1970

By Takemiya Keiko. First yaoi manga.

Tomasu no shinzo 1973

By Hagio Moto. Yaoi manga

Hagio Moto and Takemiya Keiko were close friends and even shared an apartment. Their works were inspired by gay magazine Barazoku. By the way Barazoku magazine used the word yuri to refer to love stories about women. While gay men were referred to as "barazoku", lesbian women were refered to as "yurizoku".

Natsu he no tobira 1975

Yaoi manga by Takemiya Keiko. Anime (1981)

Kaze to ki no uta 1976

Yaoi manga by Takemiya Keiko. Anime (1987)

Patalliro 1978

Yaoi manga by Mineo Maya. Anime (1982-1983)

Earthian 1987

Yaoi manga by Kouga Yuu. Anime (1989-1996)

Kouga Yuu is most known for her manga Loveless but she is also one of the first yaoi manga artists. She started as a doujinshi artist. She mostly drew Seint Seiya doujinshi.

Zetsuai 1989

Yaoi manga by Minami Ozaki. Anime (1992)

[angyo]

Good stuff! I will say I'm p sure the reason utena was yaoi was bc the term yuri wasn't used that way yet (it officially became what we know in the early 00s) and b4 that lesbians also went to the yaoi pile. I could be misunderstanding and that's what you meant, but i like talking abt yuri lol. I think yaoi at that point was pretty much an umbrella for all the queer taboo works, but yaoi isn't what i know much abt

Also, the evolution of the term yuri has a few different phases, and to my amateur eyes it looks like yaoi has focused it's scope while yuri has expanded to where they're both similar sized umbrellas. Ofc, i could be misunderstanding ur brevity but i figure expanding on the yuri timeline with what i know can't hurt lol

For the term yuri, we all know abt the yurizoku column in barazoku but I've seen offhand mention that after that straight guys started using it for lesbian porn at comiket. The lesbians saw it and were like, hey, that's actually a p good idea. So when they were officially deciding how to call the genre in the early 00s yuri was on the table and got chosen.

Then it got stuck in a very iyashi rut for a while with publishers a bit suspicious of whether porn could be yuri, or if a certain level of contact made it "rezu". While also being cautious of whether discussion of actual queer issues would appeal to yuri readers, or if that would also be more of a rezu thing. Through the 2010s it evolved to just include all of those aspects as publishers realized yuri readers will read basically anything with girls flirting (going thru yuri hime's early 10s catalogue you can see the experimentation).

I'm not the best person to compare the 2 since idk much abt yaoi, but if i had to pinpoint the difference in vibe I'd focus on the dynamics. Specifically, as i understand it yaoi very commonly features hard line dynamics. Obv uke and seme, but even outside of those yaoi tends to lean into the stratification of the relationship while yuri tends to equalize. Like, even toxic yuri tends to lean into the characters having complementary traits that makes them worse together. While from my limited knowledge of toxic yaoi, it tends to have more straightforward abuse.

Mostly i notice that the yuri pairs i usually see getting called yaoi are ones with more competitive or contrasting dynamics. For example, kuromaya gets called yaoi pretty often and is quite competitive. But that's my 2 cents.

In case you didn't already know abt these sources, as yuri goes the yuricon website is a great resource.

There's also this paper from 2013 that has a lot of good info.

Hi! I came across a post complaining about the guy yuri poll and discourse aside, I vaguely remember you made a post about what is yaoi and what is yuri? I dunno if I dreamed this post up, but I've scrolled and scrolled and I can't find it. So, I wanted to ask (if you don't mind answering >.<), what is yaoi/yuri? (beyond the basic definitions) What counts as guy yuri and girl yaoi?

Uwaa ok so I will say Im planning to actually write a paper on this but I haven't done much research yet so ask in a few months and you'll hopefully have a better answer with cited sources. But here is a bit of what I'm conceptualizing at this point (corrections and additions very welcome!)

What set me down this path really was of course the fantastic Yaoizine hosted by tshirt3000, which includes a rather poignant author's note about broadening the definition of yaoi in public to the abstraction. Indeed, the actual origin of the term "yaoi" is an acronym for "yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi" (plotless, climaxless, meaningless) from 70s doujinshi spheres wherein it was used as a somewhat self-degrading term to define a specific type of porn-without-plot self-indulgent indie fancomic. These were of course, mostly of the male-male variety. However, as the Yaoizine makes clear, there's not really an inherent gendering within the word in any sense but genre expectation-wise. This becomes particularly salient in the case of perhaps one of the most famous wlw romances out there, Revolutionary Girl Utena. Tshirt cites an interview with the creator of the anime, Ikuhara Kunihiko, where he refers to the relationship between the two main female characters (among other things) as yaoi, recontextualizing the term from merely a mlm genre into a statement on the dynamics of power and consumption as they relate to gender-- an act of sexual passion paired with a reversal of societal norms = yaoi in this case, which is why utenanthy fits perfectly within the term.

Conversely, yuri (lily) is a bit more difficult to analyze from a gender-neutral perspective as it originated not as a counterpart to yaoi, but instead as a counterpart to bara (rose, a term used to refer to erotic gay male content) used when lesbians would write in to gay magazines trying to hook up and whatnot. However, it's pretty agreed upon that the genre grew out of Class S literature, a type of literature based on girls, often senpai and kouhai, going to an all-girls school together and experiencing a connection that straddles the thin line between romance and homosociality. Homosociality like this among women has historically been and to this day remains somewhat under the radar and perceived as a "phase" or an amateur attempt at romance before a woman eventually marries a man. This is where we see significant overlap between pre/early modern Japanese male homosexual literature and lesbian literature, where homosexuality is seen as a youthful phase that will inevitably be grown out of (as in the case with the chigo system, LUG (lesbian before graduation), etc). Essentially, it was very common for the characters of early modern queer literature (mostly written by queer authors btw) to have brief and passionate schoolyard flings before graduating onto "normal" sexuality. Of course, these narratives fell out of style and are considered dead today, but their remnants can still be seen in the subsequent shojo and modern gl manga boom. The yuri that grew from this in the beginning was usually explicitly erotic, but still somewhat held onto the predominant themes of schoolgirl innocence and youthful beauty. Over time, meanings and terminology shifted, and the "yuri" we use today is more interchangeable with "gl", meaning it's not so much of an indicator of explicit content as "yaoi" is. However, I would still argue that one of the largest indicators of a story's "yuri factor" (if you could say that) is its ties to the establishing homosociality progressed into homoromantic relationship genre expectation. Of course, there are many wlw stories that subvert this, (as there are many mlm stories that subvert the yaoi or even bl template) but to me, if you were to compare yaoi and yuri's theming, yaoi's focus tends to skew more towards the intimacy in explicit eroticism, while yuri looks more into the implicit eroticism in intimacy. If that makes sense.

Of course, when looking into "boy yuri" there's also a transfem-coding factor to consider, which I think is what the majority of people have in mind when they refer to a couple as "boy yuri". Historically, there is massive precedent for feminization between male queer couples in historical Japanese literature, as well as in early modern relatives of bl, mainly Inagaki Taruho's work, so it would be somewhat disingenuous to say feminization is a purely modern, female-created phenomenon. But anyway, those are my (somewhat messy and likely inaccurate) thoughts so far, let me know what you all think. Have a happy yaoimas and merry new yuri, as they say.

[rottenboysclub]

Other terms used for m x m fiction fans in Japan:

Yurizoku/Yuri - Hasn’t been used since the 80s. Came from a gay men’s magazine column (“yurizoku no heya” / “Lily Tribe’s room”) in the 70s/80s and referred to their female readers. (originally published in the November 1976 edition of “Barazoku”) Because so many of these female readers were lesbian or bisexual, the shortened term “yuri” eventually came to mean fxf relationships in manga and novels.

Yaoraa - Not used anymore. I haven’t seen this used, ever, actually. It’s probably from early BBS days.

Literally all we have that’s useable is the Fu-words.