Stanley Ridge, in the last issue of Wilde Oats, zeroed in on something that's missing from erotic and romantic literature: depictions of "underage" sexuality.

I found Ridge's discussion provocative but incomplete. In the interests of continuing a dialogue, I'd like to refine and, in some measure, dispute his comments.

I first want to clarify some terms and my approach. I am going to discuss sex in the context of emotional, romantic relationships, which I think was Ridge's intent. Frankly, without that context, I don't see portrayals of sex as anything more than pornography. We also must consider what we mean by "underage." It's one of those malleable terms that we're going to have to bring under some control if we hope to be intelligible. We're in danger of conflating two concepts here: the age of consent, which in the U.S. can be as low as 15, and in some countries as low as 13; and the age of majority, which in general runs between the ages of 18 and 21. What we're left with is the fact that a person who is legally a minor can also legally consent to sexual relations. Because there are legal, and to a lesser extent moral, ramifications here, I'm going to take underage sex as referring to sex between and with minors. (It has happened that persons over the age of majority have been prosecuted for such charges as "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" for having sex with younger persons who were at or above the age of consent, but below the age of majority.)

Ridge's focus is literature, but he seems to concentrate on literature that is created in the West. I'm going to talk about literature, or a form of it, that is available in the West, although created elsewhere. Manga, Japanese comics, contains an entire genre devoted largely to underage love affairs, and what's worse, from the standpoint of more conservative elements in Western society, is that the sex, and the romance, are between boys and young men. (And quite frankly, given the stance of some anti-gay conservatives in the U.S., it's hard to know whether it's the sex or the romance they find more objectionable.)

Known variously as BL (boys' love), yaoi, and shounen-ai, the genre is a branch of shoujo manga, "manga for girls" (and, in fact, it is created almost entirely by women for a target audience composed mostly of teenage girls), and follows the thematic and formal emphases in that area: the focus is on character and relationships, the character designs adhere to a bishounen ("pretty boy") aesthetic, and the visual components tend to be intuitive, lean, and free-form, incorporating frames of various shapes and often forgoing them completely. There is a strong element of abstract graphic design, in part derived from Japanese graphic arts traditions, evident in the work of the more accomplished artists ("mangaka") creating BL manga. Mangaka regularly dispense with dialogue as well, relying on the visuals to carry the story line: there is a real synergy evident among the various components in the medium. Sex is an expected part of the mix, although actual depictions range from quite demure to blatant, depending on the devices various mangaka have found to circumvent Japanese censorship laws. Given the general high quality of the examples available in English, I have to say that it's a fascinating look at the potential inherent in graphic literature.

First, sex and romance between age-mates: in my lighter moments, I've referred to BL as "school-boy romances," and they quite often are. Those in this category are formulaic and in general terms predictable, which does not preclude excellence. The story generally takes place in a school, often an all-boys high school (though not always), and the action hinges on insecurities, miscues, and all the awkwardness of youth when faced with emotional complexities -- not to mention raging hormones.

My first exposure to the genre was a series by Sakuragi Yaya, Tea for Two, presently at two volumes. It's a comedy, often quite funny, and what impressed me about it was that it is entirely character-driven: two high-school boys, neither of whom considers himself gay (and this is quite common in BL manga), fall in love. The action hinges on various doubts and insecurities coming to the fore at the worst possible times.

Other mangaka doing what I consider exemplary work in this subgenre are Fujiyama Hyouta (whose Sunflower is the best I've run across), Takanaga Hinako (her Little Butterfly is graced by emotional realism and highly sophisticated graphic work), Motoni Modoru (whose Dog Style is raunchy, raucous, and poetic), and Ishihara Satoru (creator of Kimi Shiruya -- Dost Thou Know?, an amazingly erotic, understated story without sex scenes, built almost entirely on metaphor).

Many of these series have been adapted to anime; in fact, some originated there before they became manga series. It's worth pointing out, as a reflection of the different (and I think much more realistic and sane) attitudes toward sex and growing up -- and portrayals thereof -- in many non-Western cultures, that the anime series are the products of Japanese television. Granted, many of the more explicit series have been restricted to late-night TV, but there is also at least one series, Kyo Kara Maoh, aimed at younger viewers, in which a boy's love element is openly expressed, although it is played for comic effect (comedy being a major element in BL manga) and the physical aspects are downplayed.

A strong example of BL anime is Gakuen Heaven: Boy's Love Hyper, a thirteen-episode comedy-drama that takes place in an all-boys school. The boy's love element is understated, although there is a homoerotic subtext all the way through (which appears openly in some stills that bridge commercial breaks and "preludes" to some episodes that offer highly suggestive dialogue that resolves into perfectly innocent situations), and the consummation in this case is a charming romantic scene in which the two lovers, Keita and Kazuki, share their first kiss.

The other strand of this discussion involves relationships between young men -- teenagers -- and older men, usually in their twenties. While there are a number of series and single works that portray these kinds of relationships, both in manga and in anime, there are one or two that stand out for their excellence.

Junjo Romantica, originally a manga series by Nakamura Shungiku, has become an extremely popular anime, having run two seasons on Japanese television, with indications of a third. (The manga series is up to 10 volumes in English.) There are three story lines, two involving couples with what I consider significant age differences: the main story, involving Takahashi Misaki, in his final year of high school when the story starts, and Usami Akihiko, called "Usagi" ("rabbit"), a famous novelist, who is ten years older; and a secondary plotline, focusing on Miyagi You, a professor of Japanese literature, aged 35, and his ex-wife's little brother, Shinobu, still in high school. It's a comedy, again character-driven. (Misaki, in particular, although he takes some getting used to, displays a combination of inarticulateness, avoidance, and temper that plays off Usagi's forcefulness and arrogance. The energy generated from their interactions drives that story line at a good pace.)

Kouga Yun's Loveless is one of the most arresting works in this genre that I've run across, and probably one of the most controversial for Westerners. The manga series is a complex and dark-edged contemporary fantasy, with hints throughout of an element of kink, and is focused largely on a central mystery. The anime, which covers the first four volumes of the manga, is somewhat different: the emphasis is much more on the relationship between Aoyagi Ritsuka, a 12-year-old boy who remembers nothing before his tenth birthday, and Agatsuma Soubi, a 20-year-old university student who knew Ritsuka's recently deceased older brother, Seimei.

I'm told that Loveless is not considered BL in Japan, where the designation owes as much or more to the publisher's "brand" than to the actual content. From the standpoint of a Westerner, I can't see it as anything else, although it's much more in the vein of shounen-ai, which is to say, the emphasis is on the romantic aspects and there is no sex. In fact, Soubi explicitly rejects the idea of sex with Ritsuka until "later," noting that he doesn't get excited for children. Ritsuka is just at the age where he's starting to have feelings toward others that he can't really name. Soubi is a man who has been deeply wounded and is operating under constraints that neither Ritsuka nor the audience fully recognize, and who desperately needs a connection to another human being. What makes it special is that the focus is on the emotional reality of the developing relationship, which also ties in with Ritsuka's confusion and anger at discovering a world that is bare of the sureties he has enjoyed as a child, as unpleasant as some of them have been.

One thing that's notable here, and throughout the examples I've cited, is the degree of autonomy displayed by the younger partner. Appearances in some cases to the contrary, they are not subject to coercion or undue influence. In fact, in the story of Miyagi and Shinobu, it is Shinobu, the high-school boy, who initiates the relationship and pursues Miyagi relentlessly. Misaki, when Usagi has misgivings about having forced himself on the younger man, points out that if he really hadn't wanted it, he could have left. And Soubi casts himself as Ritsuka's servant, to which Ritsuka has an ambivalent reaction: what he feels is unformed but painful, yet he keeps coming back. It is the simple fact of this autonomy that undercuts our preconceptions about what this kind of relationship must be.

A comment that seems appropriate, but may be somewhat of a sidebar: the mangaka creating these comics rely heavily on "traditional" sex roles, which in the case of the male/male relationships they are portraying necessarily means that one partner will be the seme ("pitcher") and the other the uke ("catcher"). One wonders how much authority they're giving that tradition, though: they have a lot of fun playing with younger seme and older uke, and there is one anime, Seikimatsu Darling, in which the bulk of the story hinges on which is going to be which: neither of the men (both adults in this one) is comfortable with being the bottom. (It also happens to be one of the funniest BL anime I've seen.) From the standpoint of a gay American who has gotten quite used to the idea of egalitarian relationships, the Japanese attitude is somewhat unsettling.

So, in contradiction of Ridge's assertion, there is literature portraying underage sexual and romantic relationships -- not created in the West, but available here. (And by "the West" I mean any place with a culture that derives from that of Christian Europe.) And it happens to be an innately subversive genre, not only in its depiction of love among men (something that meets even less approval in contemporary Japan than in the U.S.), but in its treatment of those relationships involving teenagers -- "underage" romances. These relationships are treated not as crimes or scandals or pathologies, but as a normal part of growing up. Which, after all, they are.

Stanley Ridge responds:

I did indeed have the Western tradition (I ought to say Western publishers) in mind, but I also focused on traditional prose literature, thus not works presented in dialogue and illustrations, cinema, or poetry.  What one may or may not depict in all four is quite different.  BL manga is a fascinating phenomenon as a genre, and I am glad that Tilendis has called our attention to it.

I do question the assertion that portraying sex outside "the context of [...] romantic relationships" is pornography. I think what matters is whether the work is about a relationship or just about sex. The relationship need not be romantic, however; it can be mildly affectionate or even be abusive. Where we find a sex scene that succeeds in dismaying all its readers but a handful of perverts, we are not dealing with pornography. Lolita, for example. Granted, the novel does not contain graphic sexual descriptions, but it is erotic in its own curious way, a playful eroticism, playful in the sense that it plays with our horror of that relationship.

– SR

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Robert M. Tilendis is an artist and writer living in Chicago and traveling the world by means of the Internet. He is a reviewer of just about anything that can be reviewed, but focuses mainly on books, music, and art. He is grossly overeducated, and somehow manages to find more to learn. He spends entirely too much time reading. He is very happy at this point to have found a job that stays put when he leaves for the day.

His online presence is multivalent. His photographs and bibliographies (alas, sadly in need of an update) are at a/k/a/ Hunter, his political and social commentary at Hunter at Random, and his online journal at Booklag.  His reviews of books, music, and the occasional frying pan can be found at Green Man Review, Epinions, and  Rambles.

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