Kazumi Nagaike - BL Manga Studies: Essentializing and Queering “Japanese Studies”

Aug 20, 2026

The study examines how “Japanese studies” is simultaneously essentialized and queered within the context of boys’ love (BL) manga and its global circulation. It critically addresses area-studies approaches that privilege a single locality, arguing for strategies that disrupt rigid boundaries. Through analysis of self-identified heterosexual fudanshi—male BL readers—the paper highlights the need to treat sexual pleasure and embodied experience as central, while proposing “connective studies” to enable multicultural and transdisciplinary exchange.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Fudanshi Studies as Area Studies

Connective Studies and Anti-Boundary Discourse

Kazumi Nagaike BL Manga Studies: Essentializing and Queering “Japanese Studies” Keywords: boys’ love, fudanshi, connective studies, beating fantasies Introduction In Japanese popular culture, boys’ love (BL) represents a genre of femaleoriented narratives concerning male homosexuality, often taking the form of graphic narratives, that is, manga. The popularity of BL also continues to spread abroad in what has been called “Glo‘BL’ization.”1 BL has also attracted the attention of critics in various academic disciplines including“Japanese studies,” both in Japan and abroad. The prevailing mood of uncertainty in relation to “Japanese studies” as an academic field coincides with a new intense phase of transnational, even transdisciplinary challenges. This paper presents critical insights regarding both essentializing and queering the field of “Japanese studies” as part of an organized intellectual project that is intended to provide a distinctive foundation for BL studies and to explore its cross-cultural as well as cross-disciplinary possibilities on that basis. One part is the thematic analysis of self-identified hetero-sexual fudanshi (i. e. male readers of BL, lit. “rotten boys”), who initially seemed to demonstrate the critical importance of Japan as a locality. Accordingly I myself focused on the concept of a strategically essentialized Japaneseness in my fudanshi research in Japan to open up anew phase of BL manga studies.2 However, my inter-Asian fudanshi research enabled me to question a place-defining approach. In this context, I would like to discuss the importance of using the anti-boundary 1 This term was coined by Dru Pagliassotti, an American-based BL scholar. See Pagliassotti (2009) . 2 I fully analyzed issues concerning female identity, sexuality and sexual desires related to BL production and consumption in my monograph, Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Women Write Male-Male Erotica (2012) . My fujoshi research definitely provided a starting point from which it is possible to analyze the mutually compatible contexts of female BL readers and male BL readers in terms of attempts to question heteronormative standards. discourse which is called “connective studies” (Hokari, 2007) as a means to facilitate multicultural/disciplinary transactions. Fudanshi Studies as Area Studies BL has been embodied as the habitus of what gender studies scholar Alice Jardine calls “gynesis,” an exclusively female-oriented sphere.3 The word fujoshi, which literally means “rotten girls,” connotes the presumed perversion of women who fantasize about male-male eroticism, and this term is now widely accepted in popular jargon.4 Yoshimoto Taimatsu (2008 and 2010), a Japanese cultural critic and one of the founders of Japanese fudanshi studies, attempts to widen that research focus by making male readers of BL visible. Fudanshi is used as a generic term to refer to all (biologically and socially acknowledged) male readers of BL, no matter what sexual orientation they may have (or are believed to have), including homo-, hetero-, bi-sexual and others; the respondents in Yoshimoto’s research include many gay and bisexual men. However, Yoshimoto claims that fudanshi identity is mainly hetero-sexual, which has only recently been discovered, and he suggests that their psychology deviates from established heteronormativity. My research on Japanese heterosexual fudanshi initially deployed the approaches of traditional area studies to craft a firm Japaneseness out of this porous material, underscoring the importance of one locality: Japan. I have previously shown the ways in which BL may subvert socially enforced gender paradigms among Japanese heterosexual fudanshi (Nagaike, 2015) . In the process of recognizing their own desire to participate in BL, a previously female-dominated genre, they may be enabled to take a postmodern perspective on pre-existing concepts of maleness and masculinity (e.g. practicing self-feminization) . I found

FAQs

What does the paper aim to challenge about “Japanese studies”?

It critiques how the field is subject to both essentializing and queering pressures, especially in relation to transnational and transdisciplinary challenges.

Who are “fudanshi” in the study’s framework?

Fudanshi are male readers of BL, including people across different sexual orientations, and the paper focuses on self-identified heterosexual fudanshi.

Why does the paper emphasize “connective studies”?

It treats connective studies, via an anti-boundary discourse, as a way to facilitate multicultural and disciplinary transactions beyond place-defining approaches.

Aug 20, 2026

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