Name: Yuri 101 | Birth of a Genre, Birth of a Nation
Uploaded: 2019-09-11T10:52:03.000Z
Duration: 17 min 18 s
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In 1853, Commodore Perry's fleet of “black ships” reached Japan, demanding the end

of the country's Sakoku policy and the opening of ports. 15 years later, recognizing the

need to shore up the state's power lest the archipelago fall like to Western forces

like the rest of Asia, the shogunate fell, and the Emperor's power was restored after

nearly a millennium. In this restoration, the capitalist class established itself its

reign as the nation's vanguard, subjugating the old nobility. It was the dawn of a new

nation. On January 12, 1896, the 29th year of the Meiji era, Yoshiya Nobuko, godmother

of yuri, was born to a petit-bourgeois family of samurai-descended bureaucrats. She would

become one of the most well-known Japanese authors of the 20th century. It was the dawn

of a new genre. Yoshiya was not born into a time of peace

and democracy, but one of war and authoritarianism. Beginning in 1876, the nation had worked towards

the conquest of Korea, with the 1895 Sino-Japanese War shifting the peninsula from China's

sphere of influence to Japan's. By 1905, it was officially a Japanese protectorate,

and from 1910, the country was an outright colony. Simultaneously, the Japanese state

made it clear to the Western powers that they would sign no “unequal treaties”, thoroughly

defeating Tsarist Russia in 1904 and 1905. The Empire of Japan was not simply a vestigial

title, an attempt to place their ruler on the same tier as China's: it quickly grew

to become the foremost power in Asia, with the success of the Meiji Restoration fueling

said growth. Eager to impress the Western hegemons at all

steps, the Restoration was followed by a swift modernization process. Industrialization moved

forward and education was on the agenda, as the need for an intelligent and hard-working

populace grew. Starting in 1912, the Taisho era brought with it liberalization and democracy,

though only for those deemed Japanese citizens. At the same time came a growth in the left,

from communism to feminism, though authorities were never fond of these groups. As part of

the state modernization effort, Western scientific ideas were imported and adapted. It's in

this context that sexology arrived, growing in prominence towards the beginning of the

20th century as a means for understanding how populations—the unit or category that

the bourgeois state is most concerned with—relate to sex and gender in a scientific manner.

Combined with the growth of education, particularly Christian-led secondary schooling, came a

specific combination: adolescent girls began to spend all of their time with one another,

often in city dorms away from their hometowns, and this became a fertile ground for a new

movement to emerge: Class S. Defining Class S can be tricky and it's

important to start by looking at what made it possible. First, there is a history of

same-sex platonic romance all around the world in the time leading up to it and concurrent

with it. From America, to Germany, to China, spaces navigated primarily by one gender created

room for desires not ordinarily allowed to be expressed, whether that was in military

barracks or school dorms. Sexologists of the time tended to accept these behaviors, with

a caveat. Same-sex action was essentially training, a way to prepare for “proper”

opposite-sex marriage in the future. In many ways, it was encouraged; there was much fear

at the time of sexual relations outside of wedlock, especially when it came to young

girls, and so these 'S' relationships were seen as positively beneficial by comparison,

at least in the aggregate, though the fear remained present of their becoming carnal.

What, then does the S in the name mean? No one can really say, but there are many hypotheses,

all of which make some degree of sense. Some say it's sister, referring to the archetypical

onee-sama and imouto relationships that characterize so much of the experience. Others say it's

for sex itself, representing the fact that it focused exclusively on girls and young

women. More radical scholars of the movement often claim it stands for escape, presenting

it as a flight from marriage, if a temporary one. Most interesting, though, is the theory

that it stands for shoujo, a word whose implications are often missed in general discussions. While

it's typically translated as girl and does mean that, the shoujo as such is a category

which did not appear until the modernization of the country, a new stage of life between

childhood and marriage that arose in this new bourgeois society. The shoujo is a dangerous

beast, assigned the blame as women often are for any perceived ills in society, and their

utmost representation in the early 20th century, the so-called “modern girl”, was equally

fetishized and reviled. In Jennifer Robertson's words, the shoujo is a “not-quite 'female'

female” and as a result, it was a category marked for specific disciplinary action, fundamentally

deviant in its very existence. Class S, insofar as it was accepted, was seen as one of many

ways to tame this shoujo-ness, a method of providing girls a healthy place to explore

themselves and spend their time on the way to marriage, cutting off more dangerous pursuits

such as finding a boyfriend or even sex work. According to one study, as many as 80% of

schoolgirls experienced an S relationship as of 1911; a number which makes it clear

that these were not necessarily homosexual in a modern sense, while also showing the

ways in which shifting discourses can allow for possibilities in the sexual realm that

we can hardly imagine right now; it'd be world-shattering if a contemporary survey

reported similar figures for same-sex experiences. Yoshiya Nobuko herself was just one such modern

girl, wearing her hair in the oh-so-scary Western bob, preferring more masculine clothing,

and avoiding marriage at all costs. But how, then, did she become so popular? It all comes

back to the social context. In the late Meiji and Taisho Periods, magazines targeted towards

the growing number of educated girls popped up, publishing stories and columns that were

often written by their cohorts. Incredibly talented, Yoshiya was a regular writer in

these by the age of 12, and her career only took off from there, until she was publishing

her famous Hana Monogatari or Flower Stories series by the age of 20. These stories were

usually focused on the relationships between young girls, decorated in Yoshiya's characteristic

hyper-flowery, almost narcissistic style. Tapping into the feelings she and many like

her had experienced, her works were immediately popular, playing a defining role in the Class

S movement and genre which many other writers contributed to as well.

But, of course, Class S was not something accessible to everyone. Even by 1920, very

few girls in the nation went on to higher education; it was only those in the middle

and upper classes who could afford the cost and loss of income of sending their daughters

away to boarding schools. The millions of factory and farm girls certainly read shoujo

magazines at the time and especially in the factory dorms there are trace accounts of

same-sex relations, but the Class S movement as such was something which distinctly barred

the working masses, with the shoujo itself being a bourgeois entity, something working

girls didn't have time for. The result of this is a genre with one primary

stake: marriage. In most Class S stories, especially the more romantic ones, the threat

of being wedded away is the primary driver of plot complication. In her famous 1923 story,

Yellow Rose(translated into English by Sarah Frederick), Yoshiya portrays the relationship

between a student and a teacher, one which is explicitly romantic. Using the typography

she was famous for such as dots and dashes to hide the explicit material heavily implied

to occur and invoking such famous sapphic figures as Sappho herself, the story ends

with the student's parents growing concerned and marrying her off, forcing the teacher

to move to America. As many of her stories go, this is a relatively happy ending: nobody

even dies. Marriage was a necessity to most women of this time, and while working girls

had other things to worry about, for schoolgirls it was the sole albatross hanging around their

necks. That said, Yoshiya was not always happy being

constrained to these standards. In 1919, she published Yaneura no Nishojo, or Two Virgins

in the Attic, telling the story of a pair of girls on the cusp of adulthood living in

the attic of a Young Women's Christian Association dorm. As in many of her stories, they create

a strong connection through flowery language, with scenes such as that of a shared piano

performance resonating a century forward. Yet the reason it's most clearly remembered

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Yuri 101 | Birth of a Genre, Birth of a Nation

ultimately

eventually

recognize

context