Perversely Reading Manga - Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies Vol. 11 - Paper

Aug 25, 2026

Mary A. Knighton examines queer theoretical tensions within Japan area studies and gender/sexuality scholarship by analyzing the manga culture surrounding fujoshi. Tracing fujoshi’s emergence from yaoi and boys’ love traditions and its recent mainstream visibility in Tokyo’s otaku boom, the paper argues that fujoshi self-naming and textual inversions reframe gendered and sexual academic object choices. The discussion connects public media controversies to shifts in gender studies, challenging how educators’ practices are shaped by youth and consumer culture.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages21

Reading Time32 min

AccessFree to download

Perversely Reading Manga

Context: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and postgender debates

Queer studies, gender theory, and academic object choices

The case of fujoshi within manga culture

Otome Road mainstreaming and media controversies

# “Perversely Reading Manga” Mary A.Knighton Proceedings of the Association for JapaneseLiterary Studies 11(2010):81-100. PAJLSProceedings of theAssociation forJapanese Literary StudiesVol.11Summer 2010AJLSPAUL GORDON SCHALOW,EDITORJANET A.WALKER,EDITOR PAJLS11:PAJLS11: Rethinking Gender in the Postgender Era.Ed.Paul Gordon Schalow and Janet A.WalkerNote:The author directs readers to her more recent articles:"Becoming Insect Woman':Tezuka's Feminist Species."Mechademia 8(2013):3-24. "Tezuka Osamu's Feminist Manga ‘Diary of an Insect Shōjo'sVagabond Life'[『昆虫少女の放浪記』(Konchū shōjo no hōroki,1955)]”Mechademia 8(2013):25-33. # Perversely Reading Manga MARY A.KNIGHTON Washington &Lee University With the passing ofEve Kosofsky Sedgwick(1950-2009)earlier thisyear,colleaguesboth on this panel and outside this conference have shared the desire to recognizethe extraordinary impact Sedgwick has had on literary as well as gender and queerstudies,no less in Japan than in North America.One can attend to neither studentnor American and Japanese colleagues'work in these fields without some sense of thewatershed moment in the disciplines that her scholarly contributions represent. Queer studies developed as an academic discipline out of feminist andwomen's studies,registering yet an earlier“post"to the one of“postgender"thatthis conference takes up;as such,it may well tell us something about the futureof gender studies,possible missteps past and to come,as well as the liberationistaspirations of appending"post"in the first place.In Feminism Meets Queer Theory(I997),the editors and contributors debate the shift in gender studies signaled byGayle Rubin's early essays,"The Traffic in Women”and "Thinking Sex.”Rubin hadargued that gender and sexuality are separate,and that this separation apparentlymarks out theoretical object choices for the gender studies field as well:feministwork emphasizes gender while queer studies focuses on sexuality.Foundational tothese developments in gender and literary studies was Sedgwick,who continuedto argue for a separate space for queer studies.The work of Biddy Martin engagesin a productive questioning of this divide so well articulated and defended byEve Sedgwick,persistently asking what it means to do sexuality without gender.As a consequence,queer critics have raised the stakes of how we make our aca-demic object choices.²In this paper,I will engage some tensions in the fields of Japanarea studies and gender/sexuality studies by considering the case of fujoshi(腐女子)within the larger manga(漫画)culture,an increasingly dominant field for ouracademic consumption,production,and teaching.This will branch off at timesinto a polemic I wish to raise along the way-a provocation,really-about our academic practices:When do we as educators in Japan“area studies”in the cor-porate university find ourselves and our teaching overly compromised by youthand consumer culture? The しatest Yaoi Avatar:Fujoshi しet's take the case of the young women known as fujoshiand their manga.Together;they make up a contested category,having evolved most directly out of yaoi(や书いhomosexual comics for ostensibly straight female readers)and Bし(same-sex,"boy's love"-themed comics)cultures,all traceable back to I97os shojo comics(少女まんが)and I98os“ladies'comics”(レディ一ス口三ック),which is whenexplicitly sexual subject matter in comics for women began to appear.3 Fujoshimanga began to reach mainstream attention in Japan recently in geographicalterms:Otome Road (こ女口一ド),east of Ikebukuro Station,in that more gritty,working-class part of Tokyo that is Ikebukuro.Written up in a 2005 edition of theTokyo weekly,AERA magazine,fujoshi suddenly became common currency withtheir perverse and parodic self-naming;that is,fujoshi,a term usually meaninga proper lady(婦女子)—and alluding somewhat euphemistically to pornographic“Iadies'comics”-had evolved into a “rotting”one(腐女子).4 This provocative self-naming and identification set off a flap in the media du

FAQs

What central example does the paper use to rethink gender and sexuality studies in Japan-related scholarship?

It centers on fujoshi (腐女子) and their place within the broader manga culture, treating fujoshi as a revealing case for academic tensions in gender/sexuality work and Japan area studies.

How does Knighton describe the origins and development of fujoshi manga?

She traces fujoshi manga to yaoi and boys’ love cultures, which connect back to shojo comics and later “ladies’ comics,” when explicitly sexual subject matter for women began to appear.

Why did fujoshi suddenly gain mainstream attention in Japan, according to the paper?

The paper links the mainstream moment to otaku shifting toward celebrity status and to the distinctive media articulation of fujoshi, not merely yaoi or boy’s love fandom.

Aug 25, 2026

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