660182

Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among “Rotten Girls” in Contemporary
Japan
Author(s): Patrick W. Galbraith
Source: Signs, Vol. 37, No. 1 (September 2011), pp. 219-240
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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P a t r i c k W. G a l b r a i t h
Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among

“Rotten Girls” in Contemporary Japan
T his article is a theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into intimate com-

munication and friendship among young women in contemporary
Japan.1 I follow the work of Janice A. Radway (1984), whose pio-
neering study of female readers of romance novels shifts the focus to the
practice of reading rather than the content of the books. The interactions
with media described here are not necessarily an escape into private time
and space to cope with social pressures, however, and the pleasure is not
necessarily singular. I am considering self-formed groups that consume,
produce, and reproduce fictional narratives of romance, often inspired by
commercial manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation),
not only for personal pleasure but also to publicize and discuss. This is
similar to the phenomenon of fan fiction and fan art in other parts of the
world (Jenkins 1992). Fans not only produce works of homage and parody
to reenchant commodities for personal pleasure, but they also publicize
their works to facilitate interaction or to bridge a shared imaginary.2 In
Japan, as elsewhere, women account for the majority of this activity (Thorn
2004), but unique to Japan is the relative autonomy these groups have
achieved and the high visibility of their activities. A single event for fan-
produced materials drew 550,000 people in August 2007 (Comic Market
Preparations Committee 2008). While fan communities are not unusual
on the Internet, the existence of overlapping spheres of virtual and physical
fan activity on the present scale in Japan provides a unique opportunity
I would like to thank David Slater, Erika Alpert, James Welker, and my two anonymous
reviewers for their generous comments on various versions of this article.
1
I use “intimacy” here to indicate a feeling of connectedness, closeness, and comfort
that is performed and negotiated while sharing space, communication, and activity. This
definition is intentionally broad and open ended to allow for intimacy to be understood
processually.
2
As Steve Fox (2004) has argued in his critique of Benedict Anderson, this imaginary
spans both physical and virtual dimensions. See Azuma (2010) for a discussion of “fantasy
community.”
[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2011, vol. 37, no. 1]
䉷 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2011/3701-0016$10.00
212 ❙ Galbraith
to analyze emergent patterns of intimacy at a time when interactions with

media and technology are playing an increasingly important role in shaping
communication and friendship.
All of my informants self-identify as fujoshi, a term transforming the
Japanese word for ladies into a homonym meaning rotten girls.3 Fujoshi
are rotten because they are enthusiastic about yaoi, a genre of fan-pro-
duced fiction and art, usually manga, that places established male char-
acters from commercial anime, manga, and video games into unintended
romantic relationships, roughly analogous to “slash” fiction outside Japan
(Jenkins 1992; Pagliassotti 2010). Stories range from depicting boys just
holding hands to boys having sex, sometimes roughly, always passionately,
and appear as text and images in physical and virtual forms.4 Yaoi evolved
from the mainstream commercial medium of shōjo (for girls) manga and
shares the genre’s focus on romance and interpersonal relationships, but
yaoi is dedicated to relationships between androgynous men. In a country
where patriarchal family values persist, fujoshi are criticized for pursuing
yaoi and are described as rotten because they are attracted to fantasies of
sex that is not productive of children (Sugiura 2006).5 However, fujoshi
typically lead heteronormative lives despite their queer fantasies, which
they describe as nothing more than play. Indeed, fujoshi consciously situate
their fantasy as digression: the term yaoi is an acronym for “no climax,
no punch line, no meaning” (yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi). This
follows a long tradition in Japan of asobi, or play that is outside the
3
Fujoshi is written in Japanese. This is not a standard word but literally means
“rotten” (fu ) and “girl(s)” (joshi ) and sounds like , a standard word meaning
“ladies.”
4
In all cases genitals are blurred, body hair is absent, and penetration is not graphic.
Male lovers tend to be facing each other during sex, making use of the so-called “yaoi hole”
(yaoi ana) instead of the anus. This is a genre of romantic fiction, but it is different from
what Radway (1984) observed: Dru Pagliassotti (2010) has conducted surveys among fans
of the genre outside Japan and discovered that as many as 11 percent chose “explicit sexual
illustrations” as the most important appeal of the genre (65). None of Radway’s informants
chose “lots of scenes with explicit sexual description” as an important element of romance
novels. This, in addition to the focus on sexual images, causes Pagliassotti to comment that
yaoi “may more closely resemble Western pornography than it does Western romance or
erotica” (74). For further discussion, see Nagaike (2003). For a discussion of ladies comics,
or heterosexual pornographic comics for women, see Jones (2005).
5
While the gendered roles of men and women have been changing, there is still a great
deal of pressure on women to reproduce. For example, in January 2007, Japan’s health
minister defined women between the ages of 15 and 50 as “baby-making machines,” or
“people whose role is to give birth” (in Pesek 2007).
S I G N S Autumn 2011 ❙ 213
expectations and rules of the everyday (Hendry and Raveri 2002). Yaoi
erases the female in fantasy because female-male or even female-female
couples are too close to reality.6 Male-male couples, by contrast, are po-
sitioned as what fujoshi call “pure fantasy” (junsui na fantajı̄). In this
way, yaoi represents what psychoanalyst Saitō Tamaki describes as “asym-
metrical” desire “deliberately separated from everyday life” (Saitō 2007,
245). For fujoshi, fantasy is something that coexists with reality as a sep-
arate set of possibilities.
Fujoshi fantasy centers on intimacy. Sharalyn Orbaugh (2010) notes
that rape is a common motif in yaoi, but adds that “rape is always motivated
by the aggressor’s extreme love and desire for the victim” and “the victim
eventually comes to accept and reciprocate the aggressor’s love” (181).7
As Orbaugh sees it, yaoi characters are vulnerable and abject (they describe
themselves as strange), but they accept each other as true or destined
lovers. The bond is key. The characters do not identify as gay (and often
outright deny it) but fall in love with someone who happens to be the
same sex; the bond between them is special and irreproducible.8 Likewise,
yaoi tends to feature the charismatic boys of shōnen (for boys) manga. Be
they friends or rivals, the characters in these action-adventure stories tend
to have very strong feelings for one another. Fujoshi reinterpret touches,
words, and glances in shōnen manga as indirect expressions of affection:
they pick up on implicit tensions in male relations and playfully imagine
intimacy. I call this “transgressive intimacy,” or emotional and erotic po-
tential that is latent in the everyday and separate from it. Fujoshi are
devoted to exposing and exploring transgressive intimacy in their fiction
and art, and among themselves. Some of my informants, even those with
6
There is a subgenre of manga and anime called yuri, which depicts female-female
romance. Female homosexual desire was part of the early male-male romance fandom, and
James Welker (2011) suggests that perhaps male forms were preferred among such women
to avoid lesbian identification. Mizoguchi Akiko (2007) has also worked on lesbianism among
yaoi fans and has stated that she “became” a lesbian because of exposure in adolescence
(Mizoguchi 2008, vi). Yuri still exists, but as a genre it is mostly enjoyed by adult men.
7
A parallel genre, hurt/comfort, exists in slash.
8
Informants regularly told me that the beautiful boys in yaoi are separate from so-called
real gays (riaru gei). Fujoshi conscientiously mark their Web sites with the reminder “yaoi
is fantasy.” This is partially in response to serious criticism from homosexual men in Japan,
who accuse fujoshi of misappropriating the homosexual male image and misrepresenting
reality for their own pleasure. Recently, self-identified gay male characters have appeared in
manga featuring male-male romance, but the social weight and consequence of their sexual
orientation is nullified. For an overview of the criticisms of yaoi, see Vincent (2007).
214 ❙ Galbraith
boyfriends, described themselves as lesbians.9 My informants generally

imposed temporal and spatial limits on their contact—they often “do not
want to know” one another, as one informant frankly told me, outside
of their shared experiences as fujoshi, which tends to focus discussions and
interactions on yaoi. Fujoshi relationships, like yaoi relationships, are based
on a mutual status as abject and vulnerable (hence fujoshi describe them-
selves as rotten) and are consciously separated from reality as moments
of transgressive intimate potential in fantasy space.
Intimacy among fujoshi is characterized by playful surface interaction.
At the most basic level, when the interaction occurs online, it is a construct
between the user physically sitting in front of the computer and the other
imagined beyond the screen (a flat viewing surface mediating interactions
with a fujoshi partner who is not deeply engaged, talking about supposedly
“meaningless” fantasy). Philosopher Azuma Hiroki uses the metaphor of
the screen to describe the nature of late-stage capitalism as “hyperflatness”
(Azuma 2009, 102). Drawing on Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baud-
rillard, Azuma theorizes that the grand narrative has broken down, leaving
only fragmentary moments of sensual pleasure obsessively reproduced in
a flat world without meaning, since meaning was generated by the grand
narrative. This goes a long way toward explaining fan fiction and art, but
it fails to explain the sociality and intimacy of sharing these moments of
pleasure or sensual intensity. On this point, Suzuki Kensuke has theorized
“neta communication” (neta teki komyunikēshon), or topic-oriented com-
munication in which the topic itself is less important than the commu-
nication act (Suzuki 2002). Neta means material, as in the material a
comedian draws on when making jokes on stage. Those needing reference
for how such communication functions need look no further than Seinfeld,
an American sitcom where a comedian and his friends draw on an endless
string of topics from trivial matters in everyday life to fuel discussions that
unfold like performances. While extreme in arguing that humans have
reverted to buzzing like bees in hive interactions, neta communication
theory highlights the importance of the phatic function of language, which
9
While there certainly are lesbian fujoshi, and while not wanting to deny my informants
their sexual agency, I should point out that it seemed to me that they were using the term
“lesbian” not to indicate a sexual orientation but rather to mean “deeply intimate with
members of the same sex.” This sort of intimacy, or special friendship, at girls’ schools is
not historically unique (Pflugfelder 2005).
seems crucial to understanding fujoshi.10 Communication and interactions

may be surface, but they are not trivial. As Elspeth Probyn (1996) suggests,
the social world is a “surface” upon which “all manner of desires to belong
are conducted in relations of proximity to each other” (20).
Despite compelling descriptions of fan products and activities, few at-
tempts have been made to reconcile these materials and practices with
lived experiences. In the case of Japan, there is a rich literature on yaoi,
but surprisingly little is known about fujoshi. Without this context, yaoi
tends to be broadly interpreted as women rebelling against the assumed
patriarchy of Japan. However, Mark McLelland (2001) argues that readers
are interested in pleasure, not politics—in fantasy, not reality (see also
Vincent 2007). The choice of male forms for romantic fantasy is not
necessarily a political one. As McLelland sees it, Confucian-derived think-
ing in Japan traditionally limited female sexuality to the reproductive, while
male lovers were equals; thus, after World War II women projected new
romantic ideals onto male forms. Orbaugh (2010) highlights the androg-
yny of the “beautiful boy,” which allows for a “fluid set of identificatory
possibilities” (181). This is why yaoi can speak to the desires (repressed or
otherwise) of heterosexual women (Fujimoto 1998), homosexual women
(Welker 2011), and transgendered women (Sakakibara 1998). Indeed, a
growing number of men of various orientations also consume yaoi (Yosh-
imoto 2008; see also Saitō 2007). Instead of attempting to isolate iden-
tificatory possibilities through analysis of text and images, I will identify
scenes of play and trace “webs of significance” (Geertz 1973, 5), that is,
the meanings fujoshi make in interaction with yaoi and one another. In
recent years, works on yaoi fans have featured in-depth interviews (Sugiura
2006) and participant observation (Thorn 2004), but the implications of
describing yaoi as “queer” and fans as “playing gender” (Thorn 2004,
176) have not been fully developed. I build especially on the work of
Matthew Thorn to interrogate the meaning of meaningless yaoi fantasy
and play in the lives of young Japanese women.
The primary interaction I describe in this study is the discussion of
moe, a euphoric response to fantasy characters (Galbraith 2009). Moe
10
A phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed
to conveying information. The term was coined by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in
the early 1900s. When greetings are described as phatic, the implication is that the exchange
of words is performed as a mutual recognition of existence. I am expanding this definition
here to mean that the communication among fujoshi is a mutual recognition of existence as
fujoshi. However, in the potential for expression of self and in the expanded play of a shared
imaginary, this communication is not simply phatic, as I discuss later in the article.
216 ❙ Galbraith
provides the impetus to consume and produce yaoi, and the shared dis-
cussion of and desire for it form the core of surface intimacy. When to-
gether, fujoshi persistently discuss yaoi characters and relationships until
they trigger moe. One fujoshi guides others through her fantasy by teasing
out a story, helping listeners understand and share a moment of revelation
and pleasure. Yaoi products are thus used to reenchant relationships. Moe
is most often a reaction to characters encountered in yaoi, but even people,
animals, and inanimate objects can be imagined as characters in romantic
or sexual interplay. The fantasy is queer, a term I use here to tentatively
encompass the unencompassable fluidity that exists outside normative par-
adigms, as is consistent with Euro-American queer theory. Fujoshi ap-
proach fantasy as something unbounded by reality, a space of fluid po-
tential. Further, the meaningless fantasy of yaoi is queer in that it is not
concerned with what Lee Edelman (2004, 2–3) calls “reproductive fu-
turism” (i.e., children) so much as it is playing up pleasurable moments
in the present. Be it with characters or with one another, fujoshi experience
intimacy as transgressive potential cordoned off from everyday reality. This
article will examine how fujoshi produce, consume, and share yaoi in pur-
suit of moe and the sets of discussions and relationships that are made
possible across physical and virtual fields.11
Positioning yaoi in Japan

Before presenting details of my fieldwork with fujoshi, or yaoi enthusiasts,
it is necessary to establish what yaoi is and how this supposedly meaningless
genre of fan production emerged. As many have commented (see, e.g.,
McLelland 2001 and Orbaugh 2010), there is a rich history of homo-
eroticism in Japanese literature, art, and theater. However, fiction featuring
male-male romance written for a female audience is more recent, and can
be traced back to Mori Mari’s 1961 novella A Lover’s Forest, and, for
manga, to Takemiya Keiko’s 1970 In the Sunroom and Hagio Moto’s
1971 The November Gymnasium. The 1970s saw a renaissance in shōnen
11
Data come from participant observation and qualitative interviews with twenty self-
identified fujoshi in Tokyo between April 2006 and March 2007. Informants were all Japanese,
female, and between the ages of 18 and 25. Most were middle-class, highly educated students
at or alumnae of prestigious women’s universities. Living at home, they had the money and
time to indulge in hobbies. Most were heterosexual and single. All direct quotations from
informants were gathered in face-to-face interactions. I conducted interviews and facilitated
group discussions myself. Translations are my own. Informants were aware that I was a
researcher and gave permission to use their stories. All names are pseudonyms.
ai (see Welker 2006), or manga dealing with male-male romance, begin-

ning with Ikeda Riyoko’s smash hit The Rose of Versailles (from 1972 to
1973), which includes a scene of (what appear to be) men in bed together,
and continuing on to commercially distributed series focusing specifically
on the theme of beautiful boys in love with each other, including Hagio’s
1974 The Heart of Thomas and Takemiya’s The Song of the Wind and
Trees (from 1976 to 1984), the latter beginning with a scene of two boys
having sex. In 1978, Comic Jun, a magazine specializing in shōnen ai
manga, was first released, including contributions by Kurimoto Kaoru
(who would go on to author the shōnen ai novel Midnight Angel in 1979).
Renamed June in 1979, the magazine had an editorial policy allowing
unsolicited manuscript submissions, which encouraged women to produce
and share works. Advances in copying technology in the 1970s also al-
lowed women to publish works on their own, first called mini komi zasshi
(mini communication magazines) and later dōjinshi (coterie magazines;
Orbaugh 2010). Sharon Kinsella (2000) adds that this was a time when
manga editors were pressing authors to appeal to the mass market, which
stifled creativity and contributed to the birth of unofficial distribution
channels, such as Comiket, the massive biannual fanzine convention
founded in Tokyo in 1975.
Much of the early dōjinshi activity was dominated by would-be pro-
fessional manga artists, amateur manga critics, and the fan clubs of pro-
fessional manga artists (Thorn 2004). However, in the 1980s, dōjinshi
featuring original characters and stories gave way to aniparo (animation
parody), in which favorite anime characters were placed into unintended
romantic or sexual relationships. Men fixated on Urusei Yatsura (1978–
87), which featured a boy surrounded by beautiful girls, and women on
Captain Tsubasa (1981–88), the story of a boys’ soccer team. Fans read,
responded to, and rewrote stories to meet their desires, and the majority
of the producers were women (Thorn 2004). Tomoko Aoyama suggests
that aniparo as a genre shares continuity with other for-girls literature,
which is characterized by “parody, allusion, quotation, adaptation, and
travesty” (Aoyama 2005, 56–57). As the focus became increasingly cen-
tered on sex, or rather as narratives became increasingly thin excuses for
women to place characters in sexual situations, the word aniparo was
replaced by yaoi in reference to its meaningless nature.12 Since yaoi is
12
According to Hatsu Akiko, to whom the term is often attributed, “yaoi” emerged
organically at the end of the 1970s among members of the Ravuri (Lovely) coterie. It was
initially used as a self-ridiculing assessment of all types of fan fiction/art, not just male-male
218 ❙ Galbraith
based on playfully exposing transgressive intimacy between existing char-

acters, it is conceptually distinct from shōnen ai, which is original content
that can approach serious literature in tone and theme.
“Boys’ love” (bōizu rabu), or BL, is a category of commercially pub-
lished, original (rather than parodic or derivative) works, typically manga,
depicting male-male romance.13 BL rose with the gay boom in the 1990s,
when homosexuality became chic in Japanese media, especially media tar-
geting women (McLelland 2001). In 1998, the monthly BL offerings
included nine literary magazines, twelve comic magazines, and approxi-
mately thirty new manga volumes available at major bookstores (Mizo-
guchi 2003). In 2003 BL accounted for an estimated 3.8 percent of weekly
manga magazines in Japan (Choo 2008, 278). The annual market is es-
timated at around $120 million (¥12 billion; Sugiura 2006, 27). Images
of men in love with each other have become part of the everyday landscape
of Japanese comics for girls. As opposed to the largely unregulated and
sometimes extreme fan genre of yaoi, BL has received mainstream media
coverage and is slowly gaining positive critical recognition (Aoyama 2009).
For example, Eureka, a conservative, mainstream journal of poetry and
criticism, ran special issues on BL and fujoshi manga, and the well-respected
magazine Davinci has suggested giving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for
literature to such works. Mass media interest in the content, however, has
yet to generate a deeper understanding of fujoshi.
Fujoshi and their media presence

Female fans of manga in Japan came into their own in the 1970s, when
shōjo manga blossomed and began to reach a wider audience. Surveys
show that 42 percent of Japanese women between the ages of 20 and 49
and 81 percent of teenage girls regularly read shōjo manga (Thorn 2004).
Yaoi boomed in the 1980s, and women dominated dōjinshi events; they
still comprise the majority in creative circles registered to sell at Comiket,
the largest of these gatherings (Comic Market Preparations Committee
2008). In 1998, commercial BL manga claimed an estimated 500,000
readers (Mizoguchi 2003), and that estimate was adjusted to 1 million a
decade later (Mizoguchi 2009). Readership of yaoi online is also increasing
romance. In December 1979, Hatsu and a small group of others compiled a collection of
stories centered on male-male romance, though their focus was more on the sex scenes than
the stories per se. They titled this work Rappori: Yaoi tokushū gō (Rappori: Yaoi special issue).
See Hatsu (1993).
13
Though I am drawing distinctions for clarity of analysis, in practice shōnen ai, yaoi,
and BL are often conflated. Fans may use the terms loosely and interchangeably.
at an exponential rate; Web manga Axis Powers Hetaria counted 20 million

page views just a few years after it began in 2003.14 The rising profile of
fujoshi—especially on Otome Road, a street in the Ikebukuro section of
Tokyo where a number of high-profile BL stores have opened—has drawn
much media commentary. In fact the name Otome Road, designating the
area from Sunshine Crossing to Ikebukuro Sanchōme Crossing, was be-
stowed by Puff magazine in May 2004 and translates as “the maiden’s
road.” This marks a turning point in wider recognition of BL and yaoi
culture.
Manga and anime, especially those targeting fans and referring to fan
culture, have long featured fujoshi characters. The most celebrated example
is My Neighbor, Yaoi-chan, which began in 2006 as a Web comic by Kojima
Ajiko.15 The story tells of a young man who falls in love with a fujoshi,
who is a normal young lady until she sees a pair of beautiful boys, goes
into rotten girl mode, and transforms into a lusty little green monster
(literally). The story was picked up by Ohzora, a traditional publisher,
with the first volume of the hard-copy edition selling 150,000 copies. A
live-action film of Yaoi-chan was released on DVD in 2007, and a teaser
for an animated series was released in 2009. This success spawned two
spin-off manga series, A Fujoshi-Like High School Life and Yaoi-Style Junior
High Diary. A similar story of romance with a yaoi lover is seen in
Pentabu’s Fujoshi Girlfriend, which also first appeared as a Web comic
before becoming a book in 2006, manga in 2007, and a live-action film
in 2009.16 Fujoshi have also appeared in manga and anime, for example,
Genshiken (from 2002 to 2006), Lucky Star (from 2004), and Kannagi
(from 2006), as well as live-action TV dramas such as Fujoshi Detective
(in 2008). A number of books written by and about fujoshi have recently
appeared, including 2008’s The Dignity of Fujoshi and The True Longing
of Fujoshi and 2009’s A Manual for Dealing with Fujoshi. To varying
degrees, these works all represent fujoshi as “normal” women who have
an extremely active imagination where beautiful boys in love are con-
cerned.
Since the mid-2000s, mass media, especially comical variety shows, have
used the word fujoshi to describe the female equivalent of otaku, obsessive
fans of anime, manga, and video games. A common trope is to have
14
See http://www.geocities.jp/himaruya/hetaria/. It is so popular that it was published
commercially in manga form in 2008, animated for Japanese television in 2009, and had a
theatrical release in 2010.
15
See http://indigosong.net/.
16
See http://pentabutabu.blog35.fc2.com/.
220 ❙ Galbraith
representative fujoshi wear costumes, which tends to trivialize them.17

Indeed, there is a general tendency to represent fujoshi from a male per-
spective. For example, both My Neighbor, Yaoi-chan and Fujoshi Girlfriend
are narrated by men in relationships with fujoshi. Another widespread
misrepresentation of fujoshi fails to distinguish them from women with
general otaku hobbies (called josei no otaku or otaku joshi), completely
missing fujoshi’s marked preference for fiction centered on male-male ro-
mance. For the sake of clarity, in this article I define fujoshi as enthusiastic
female fans of yaoi and, to a lesser extent, BL manga. The distinction
from shōnen ai is conceptually important. Fujimoto Yukari has argued that
“shōnen ai was created to flee from various gender restrictions and sexuality
taboos,” but, once the mechanism was established, it “enabled girls to
‘play sexuality’” (quoted in Aoyama 2009). Fujoshi are those who are
most interested in playing sexuality, which is most possible through yaoi,
since it is self-consciously defined as meaningless and set apart from reality.
My definition stresses enthusiasm because the fujoshi I encountered had
libraries of hundreds, even thousands, of physical yaoi books and regularly
visited dozens of Web sites. My informants self-identified as fujoshi in
2006 and 2007, at the height of an emergent discourse on fujoshi. I follow
my informants in using the term fujoshi because it marked associations
and distinctions central to the meaning-making process explored in this
article.
The moe response

Moe is a response to fictional characters or representations of them (Gal-
braith 2009). It is concerned with virtual potential, not real people, and
is a reaction “prior to the formation of a distinct subject or viewing po-
sition” (LaMarre 2009, 281). Moe is the goal of producing, consuming,
and sharing yaoi. Focusing on moe opens a window into the ways fujoshi
use yaoi to generate and share affect. Moe is at once the most important
and the most impenetrable aspect of fujoshi activity. All my informants
resisted defining the concept during formal interviews. Informants notably
all described moe as something that can only be captured partially, inter-
preted in the moment in different ways by different people. They were
sure, however, that what distinguishes a fujoshi is an interest in yaoi and
17
For example, promotional posters for the 2009 feature film Fujoshi Girlfriend featured
the female lead in a maid costume. It is interesting that yaoi and BL, despite being prevalent
in Japan and popular overseas, and the fujoshi associated with them, are largely ignored and
regularly excluded from industry and government promotional campaigns.
a sense of moe. Informants referred to non-fujoshi as “normals” (ippanjin),

and they described such women as “short on dreams and long on satis-
faction” (yume nashi, kanketsu ari). Another way to say this was that non-
fujoshi are riajū, meaning “fulfilled in reality,” and often used as an insult.
Sachiko said, “A normal girl has no moe, so love is her moe. That can be
satisfied in life. Fujoshi can never be satisfied because moe is completely
separate from love. It’s fantasy.” Fujoshi spoke of their “rotten filter,”
which screens out the potential for heteronormative romance in their
fantasy and emphasizes signs of transgressive intimacy.18 This fantasy pro-
vides a set of possibilities for fujoshi distinct from their everyday lives, as
demonstrated by their pursuit of moe even when they had a boyfriend or
husband, at times imagining their male partners in relationships with other
men (see also McLelland 2001, 4). As Saitō (2007) points out, the reality
of heterosexual relationships and the virtual potential of homosexual cou-
plings are separate and coexistent. Yaoi scripts (fantasy) were read across
the bodies of physical partners (reality), a “meaningless” play of symbols
in pursuit of moe.
Despite the extremely fluid possibilities of “asymmetrical” desire (Saitō
2007, 245), or fantasy that is deliberately separated from the bounds of
everyday reality, there is an order to moe. Thomas LaMarre (2009) dis-
cusses this as “emergent patterns” (274), where densely connected ag-
gregates, even those that seem most unstructured and chaotic, develop a
degree of order. Consider the example of yaoi. Sociologist Yoshimoto
Taimatsu says that fujoshi “memorize the components of moe, the places
to moe, and construct a database inside the mind to manage the moe
contents” (Yoshimoto 2007, 108).19 Informants called this their “moe
dictionary” (moe jisho), or basic literacy as fujoshi. Through this dictionary
or database, they could identify possible relationships between characters.
When fujoshi expose transgressive intimacy and place characters together,
the relationship is called a character “coupling” (kappuringu). Every char-
acter in a coupling is identified as either a top (seme) or a bottom (uke).
18
The term “filter” ( ) in fujoshi usage replaces the fu sound at the beginning
of the Japanese pronunciation of filter with the fu in fujoshi. See also Meyer (2010) for a
discussion of “yaoi me” (yaoi eye) or “yaoi megane” (yaoi glasses) as representative of the
“destablizing reading practices” or “perverse readings” of “sexual and gender minorities”
(232). I would, however, caution against aligning fujoshi with sexual minorities and sexual
politics, as it misrepresents all three. My informants were very clear that for them “getting
out of hand,” as Thorn (2004) puts it, was all in the name of play and had nothing to do
with real gays or unsettling gendered identity or heteronormative relationships. This is a far
cry from the very real struggles of sexual and gender minorities.
19
For more discussion of the “database,” see Azuma (2009), especially chap. 2.
222 ❙ Galbraith
“Top” designates a dominant personality; common types include narcis-

sistic (oresama), cruel (kichiku), exhausted (tsukushi), younger (toshita),
straight (nonke), and loser (hetare). “Bottom” designates a submissive
personality, usually the protagonist of the story, who is often described
as feminine; common types are seductive (sasoi), old man (oyaji), cool
(kūru), narcissistic (oresama), buff (kinniku), laudable (kenage), impish
(shōakuma), queen (joōsama), and princess (hime). In all cases, a given
top or bottom is a construct of defined character traits and behaviors,
which a fujoshi identifies and responds to in line with her moe dictionary.
Once the top and bottom are decided, they are plugged into a relationship.
This can signify multiple possibilities, from simple relationships of friend-
ship, mutual attraction, or domination to more intricate relationships such
as confounded love that is unspoken, unrequited love, or the complications
of a ménage à trois. As LaMarre (2009) sees it, such patterns emerge in
the dynamic interaction between attractor and cooperator. Mathematically
speaking, the attractor is the set toward which a dynamic system evolves,
while the cooperator is the function involved in the evolution toward the
attractor. For LaMarre (2009), “Attractors are those moe elements that
become salient on the field of dehierarchized distribution of elements.
The otaku interactor, then, is a cooperator. An affective loop or circuit
links cooperator and attractor, or the otaku and the moe elements of
attraction” (274). While LaMarre is talking about male otaku, it seems
clear that fujoshi are also cooperators in an affective loop, organizing
elements of the character, coupling, and situation. The characters and
narratives that these cooperators develop “are the complex patterns that
emerge through the interaction of densely packed elements” (LaMarre
2009, 274), which the cooperators function to organize in evolution
toward the point, curve, manifold, or fractal structure of moe. As LaMarre
stresses, the cooperator does not represent a subject position, just as the
attractor does not represent an object of desire. As Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari put it (1977), desire represents nothing. LaMarre provides
a model that goes a long way toward explaining interactions between
fujoshi and the images of beautiful boys that attract them, but the situation
is more complex when multiple fujoshi are cooperating in the process.
Moebanashi: Intimate communication

When fujoshi are together, they often engage in what they call moebanashi,
or moe talk.20 This communication temporarily allows an expanded con-
20
Some informants also used the term moegatari, replacing the nominalization of the
sciousness as participants access a shared imaginary and go beyond per-

sonal limits. This expanded imagination or creative potential is similar to
what Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (2006) describe as the “collec-
tive entity” (6) of women interacting online. Their example involves some-
one posting an outrageous story about gay penguin sex to cheer someone
else up, which in turn inspires someone else to write a poem about gay
penguin sex, which becomes the basis for yet another person to write a
new story about gay penguin sex. The excitement comes less from the
reality of gay penguin sex than the transgressive discussion of the possi-
bility. This example of neta communication (Suzuki 2002) demonstrates
first that an initial burst of creativity encourages others to open up and
participate and second that there is a pleasure in interaction for the sake
of interaction itself. Saitō (2007) comments that the expression of moe
“has a rather self-derisive quality to it” because “enthusiasm is tempered
by a kind of self-awareness that gives it a performed quality” (230). The
ironic or self-reflexive awareness of the structure of one’s own desires,
directed at objects of known fiction, certainly makes social discussions of
moe performative and at times humorous.
Moe is not simply a neta, however, as it is connected to personal,
intimate expression. Morikawa Kaichirō (2003), among the first to write
academically about moe, prefaces his discussion with an explanation of
communication. For Morikawa, who defines moe as being attracted to a
particular character and liking it, the issue is one of “taste” (shumi shikō;
28–29). To describe a certain element, character, setting, or situation as
moe is to indicate one’s taste; fans can understand a great deal about the
taste and personality of others based on what they do and do not describe
as moe. Saitō (2008) agrees that moe is about communication, or rather
about how characters provide a way to communicate and express oneself,
but adds that use of the word moe rather than a more direct and clear
expression of feelings and desires provides a layer of protection to the
speaker (12). Thus moe expresses why one likes the character, one’s re-
lation to the character, and (to a certain extent) one’s own character. At
the same time, one is ironically distant from his or her own desires, which
are objectified, projected, and visualized in the moe object.
Moebanashi typically takes the form of play in which participants probe
“moe points” (tsubo) in a given character, coupling, or situation. Moe
communication is about feeling out overlapping desires, or exploring one’s
verb “talk” (hanashi) with “tell” (katari). One informant, Hachi, explained that moegatari
was a revelatory mode and tended to be more impassioned, as one is talking more deeply
(and perhaps one-sidedly).
224 ❙ Galbraith
own desires through delving into the desires of others for the same or
similar objects. Azuma Sonoko (2010) suggests that discussions of moe
are an “interpretative game” (kaishaku gēmu; 258) in which narratives of
intimacy are discovered and character relationships developed in inter-
actions between women. Fujoshi are “seeking pleasure that is produced
by the bonds of fellow women” (Azuma 2010, 271). This communication
does not always take the form of direct questions and answers, but rather
implications and inferences. Matsui Midori (2005) states that female com-
munication through art constitutes an empathetic dialogue in which sim-
ple and endlessly reproduced forms “capture intuitive, innocent emotions”
and “catalyze the feelings” (222) of a group. Moe is one such mode of
communication, with neither the mediation of logical language nor ra-
tional boundaries. When someone suggests that a character, coupling, or
situation is moe, listeners are being asked to empathize with the speaker
and draw out the implied meaning as narratively expressed (i.e., interpret
what is intentionally vague). Moe can thus be used to empathetically ex-
press deeply personal, intimate, and even transgressive emotions in net-
works of mutual exposure and vulnerability. Sharing moe engenders a
“feeling of oneness” (ittaikan), or intimacy. A desire for this feeling is
the reason fujoshi publish yaoi in physical form, attend events to exchange
material face to face, and make their personal Web sites open to others.21
Examples of moebanashi
I offer some examples from the field to demonstrate how the dynamic
functions in action. Hachi, Megumi, and Tomo are all fans of Angelique,
a series of computer games in which the playable character is a queen
surrounded by hunky men. The game was originally designed for the
player to simulate heterosexual romance, but fujoshi instead imagined
unintended sexual tension between the male characters. One evening,
Hachi and Tomo came to visit Megumi, who lived in an apartment with
her husband while attending university and working part time. They ended
up spending the night; the conversation was boisterous and dominated
21
Offering a more complex model of moe communication, Shiburin (2008) identifies
multiple “communicators,” including users, characters, producers, media, and community
(90–91). The first level of interaction is “moe-logue,” in which only the character and user
are involved. The second level of interaction is “moe experience,” in which the moe symbol
is imbedded in a narrative and the context matters. The media is between the user and
character in the interaction. The third level of interaction is “moe movement,” which involves
all five communicators. A cultural context emerges that makes possible the communal in-
terpretation of the moe symbol and the further production of new moe symbols.
by the topic of yaoi, including coupling dynamics in Angelique. Sitting

together in the living room space, the three young women recalled their
shared experiences playing the game. Tomo, a fan of the feminine, “younger
brother–type” character Randy, asked, “How would you couple Randy?”
Megumi responded bluntly, “He’s too damn sweet. It’s impossible.” Hachi,
devoted to the severe Julius, chimed in, “Julius and Randy, like as big
brother, little brother?” suggesting one sort of perverse reassemblage by
indexing familial intimacy. Megumi interjected, “Randy needs a firm hand,
like a teacher, so it has to be Seiran. He may be mean, but imagine him
spoiling cute little Randy while bullying everyone else.” Megumi was sug-
gesting another possibility, this time a common coupling of “older top”
and “seductive bottom” cast in the structural relationship of teacher and
student to clarify roles. Megumi’s vision of intimacy struck a chord with
Tomo, who blurted out “moe!” The discussion gained momentum and
energy as the three participants began to imagine scenarios for these char-
acters. It is important to keep in mind that these fantasy characters and
relations were not necessarily connected to real ideals or desires. Despite
their engagements with Angelique, Megumi was married to a “nice-guy
slob” (the opposite of the Seiran character) and Hachi was a self-professed
lesbian (with ostensibly no sexual interest in men, including fictional ones).
These fujoshi divided their emotional energy between physical partners
and fictional characters (the players in the yaoi coupling), with affective
responses to the latter expanded in intimate communication with fujoshi
friends. This demonstrates how emotional energy is distributed not only
among people but also between reality and fantasy.
Moebanashi is also possible in shared online activity. When surfing the
Internet reading yaoi stories and viewing yaoi art, informants looked at
the computer screen as they spoke, even when they were physically sitting
together in front of the same machine reading the same post at the same
time.22 The words they spoke were in most cases not opinions or verbose
comments but rather verbalizations of written text, descriptions of images,
or rapid-fire, decontextualized comments to draw the other’s attention
to a certain point and invite shared experience. The extreme concentration
devoted to the material bordered on trance, broken only by their rhetoric.
For example, Kombu and Cherry were together viewing a yaoi Web comic,
and Kombu suddenly said, “He’s so depressed.” Cherry scanned the
screen to focus on the image of two boys in military fatigues and voiced
22
In cases when they were surfing the Internet or reading yaoi alone, fujoshi still spoke
aloud lines of dialogue and talked back to the poster or creator imagined behind the text
and images.
226 ❙ Galbraith
one character’s line: “Why doesn’t he eat the food I made?” Kombu
commented: “He probably stayed up all night, too.” Cherry responded:
“Thinking about him.” Scrolling down the page and watching the scene
unfold, Kombu burst out laughing. Her next comment took the form of
online jargon: “LOL” (bakushō). The exchange was stimulated and sup-
ported by the semiotics of the viewing ritual in which words from the
exchange in the fantasy became shared vocabulary for the two women,
neither looking at the other but both on the same page (literally) expe-
riencing the same moment with what Hachi called the same “big brain.”
Access to transgressive intimacy requires a flexible creativity, often bor-
rowed from others contributing to the shared imaginary. For example,
Hachi and Tomo were surfing the Internet sitting together in front of
the same computer. Scrolling down the page reading snippets aloud, Hachi
clicked on an embedded link and she and Tomo were suddenly exposed
to a digitization of Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave at Kan-
agawa. It is a simple picture, just a wave crashing over a tiny boat with
Mount Fuji in the background, and it seemed terribly out of place in a
story about beautiful boys in love. Both Hachi and Tomo dived into the
accompanying text, giggling as they questioned the poster’s strange ma-
neuver. Hachi read aloud: “The strong and confident boatman went too
far and was caught up in the pounding surf.” After an instant of silence,
the connection was made: the wave is the dominant male partner and the
boatman is the submissive male partner. Hachi and Tomo started laughing
uncontrollably. Hachi said: “This is so great! I never thought such a
thing.” Tomo agreed: “This is too much.” Tomo commented that the
person had gone “too far” (yarisugi), but this was delivered as a positive
assessment, demonstrating well that play is the exultation of getting carried
away. It was in undisciplined moments that the affective response of moe
was accessed.
Accessing virtual potential in the everyday

One of the most recognizable features of the pursuit of moe is the trans-
formation of objects into objects of desire. Otaku turn animals, machines,
and even men of historical significance into beautiful young girls to trigger
moe (Galbraith 2009). Similarly, fujoshi can rearticulate anything into a
beautiful boy who can then be placed with other beautiful boys in yaoi
relationships. Moe characters can be based on a written description or
drawn image, a physical person, or even anthropomorphized animals,
plants, and objects. As Hachi put it, fujoshi, ever seeking moe, have a
“power of lascivious fantasy” (mōsōryoku yutaka) that allows them to “fan-
tasize about anything” (nandemo ni mōsō suru). As Megumi said, “Fujoshi

see moe in anything. That changes the way of seeing things, the way of
imagining the relationship between things.” Reading a yaoi coupling in
The Great Wave at Kanagawa is one such example.
In a more specific example from the field, Hachi, Megumi, and Tomo
were walking home from a comic market. Inspired by the dōjinshi they
had seen, they started debating whether or not a submissive bottom acting
in a self-destructive way out of love for a top might be moe. Tomo was
at first skeptical. Hachi impulsively decided to use her surroundings as an
illustration of the coupling: “Is this road moe? See, it’s virgin, freshly paved,
but is doing its best with the cars on top. What if he was trying so hard
to please his lover?” Megumi chimed in, “The road is a loser submissive
in love with one particular car, the top, who is an insensitive pleasure
seeker. In order to win his love, the road agreed to be his sex slave and
is now being broken in by the top’s clients.” Tomo seemed convinced—by
the creativity if not the concept—and joined Megumi and Hachi in laugh-
ter and a chorus of “moe, moe, moe.” The fantasy effectively reenchanted
their world, adding a layer of potential to the mundane (the very ground
under their feet!) and making the familiar other and exciting. The creative
burst opened up channels of communication, and participants shared a
moment of mutual vulnerability, exposure, and transgression, each ques-
tioning whether the others could see the possibilities that she did in a
given set of imagined relationships. A positive response affirms common-
ality, intensifies intimacy, and accelerates play behavior, or the cycle of
getting out of hand. In this prolonged, dirty, silly moment, sexual politics
were funny and a source of moe.23
Concluding remarks: “Graduating” out of rottenness (or not)

When a fujoshi ceases to be interested in yaoi and seek moe, she is said to
have “graduated” (sotsugyō shita). Use of the word graduate in Japan
indicates a major shift in one’s status, life path, and expected behavior.
23
Though space does not allow me to go into it here, strictly online interactions are
also extremely rich. For example, the echa (“picture chat”) is a cooperative exchange of
pictures to stimulate discussion on a certain theme. Interactions take place on designated
Web sites at a specific time of the evening, when all the participants have returned to their
rooms and are in front of their computers. This is an intimate sharing or association of
imagination. There is also naricha (“become a character to chat”), where discussants create
beautiful boy avatars to role-play yaoi fantasies in real-time intimate storytelling. This can
include virtual sex between characters (and users). In both cases, there may be an audience
watching or commenting.
228 ❙ Galbraith
For fujoshi, it means the loss of a space for queer fantasy. This is not a
structural shift per se but a gradual deenchantment of intimacy, or loss
of the ability to access transgressive intimacy. As James Welker (2006)
points out, the beautiful boy in yaoi “signifies both the shōjo manga reader
and the phallic power that, through him, she is able to transgress. . . .
This circumvention is as ephemeral as the beautiful boy himself, slowly
waning as adulthood approaches” (865). Adulthood is the key word, as
it foregrounds the connotations of the word fujoshi itself: this is a grad-
uation from “rotten girl” to “lady.” Indeed, the graduation tends to occur
as responsibilities at home and work take time away from consuming and
producing yaoi and as growing social pressure decreases access to fujoshi
friends and (rotten) girl time. This was the case with my sample, most of
whom, by the end of 2007, had graduated from university into stable
jobs and romantic relationships, and did not consider themselves to be
fujoshi anymore. This suggests that the play activity observed among fu-
joshi is accepted by most as part of a bounded, temporal stage, a childlike
freedom that must at some point be reined in. Stated another way, society
resists the idea of women rotting in moments of unproductive, meaning-
less fantasy, in a queer space where “reproductive futurism” (Edelman
2004, 2) has lost its sway to moments of sensual intensity. This queerness
might come from fujoshi and the beautiful boys that attract them—a body
as yet unorganized by genital desire—or from the symbolic destruction
of children that Edelman (2004) describes, certainly one aspect of the
sexual and sometimes violent fantasies involving beautiful boys.
It should be noted that fujoshi are not particularly political in their play
or pursuits of pleasure. As Orbaugh (2010) states, the trajectory is toward
“increasingly queer spaces and increasingly fluid and complex imaginings
of desire, increasingly independent of traditionally conceptualized gender”
(186). Sharing a space of imagination allows for a sort of transgressive
intimacy among fujoshi that refashions the everyday, that opens up the
potential for intimacy latent in and separate from the everyday. I have
suggested that this transgressive intimacy, which can be expanded in group
interactions, seems to be more accessible for young women and appears
to become less appealing (or accessible) as one takes on roles and re-
sponsibilities at work and home, which tend to divert investments of time
and energy. It should also be noted, however, that my sample is by no
means representative and that my observations are not conclusive. It is
entirely possible that the relatively high social status of my informants
(attending a prestigious women’s university) translated into increased pres-
sure to conform. Not all situations will contribute to a transition from
rotten girl to lady that is so stark. There are many women who identify
as fujoshi into their thirties or forties, including many well-known yaoi

creators appearing at large events such as Comiket. Not only is the loss
of (rotten) girl time not inevitable, but it is also entirely possible that the
transitional period after university graduation leads to a mirrored grad-
uation from fujoshi activities that is only temporary. In 2010, long after
I had left the field, I was contacted by Hachi and Megumi. Despite adverse
economic conditions, Hachi had managed to find full-time employment,
and Megumi had entered a master’s degree program; both were com-
fortably settled into relationships with male partners. However, both in-
formed me that they were born-again fujoshi, apparently using Twitter to
reconnect with friends and talk about yaoi. They could access the “big
brain” and share thoughts regardless of time or place. Even if it does not
necessarily reflect social acceptance, the possibility of extending spaces of
fluid fantasy potential seems to be a function of the increasing availability
of yaoi and BL media, as well as access to informal networks through
cheap and abundant communication technology. Perhaps societies in the
late stages of capitalism are more open to girl time, however rotten it may
be.
Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies

University of Tokyo
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Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among “Rotten Girls” in Contemporary

Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among

T his article is a theoretical and ethnographic inquiry into intimate com-

to analyze emergent patterns of intimacy at a time when interactions with

boyfriends, described themselves as lesbians.9 My informants generally

seems crucial to understanding fujoshi.10 Communication and interactions

Positioning yaoi in Japan

ai (see Welker 2006), or manga dealing with male-male romance, begin-

based on playfully exposing transgressive intimacy between existing char-

Fujoshi and their media presence

at an exponential rate; Web manga Axis Powers Hetaria counted 20 million

representative fujoshi wear costumes, which tends to trivialize them.17

The moe response

a sense of moe. Informants referred to non-fujoshi as “normals” (ippanjin),

“Top” designates a dominant personality; common types include narcis-

Moebanashi: Intimate communication

sciousness as participants access a shared imaginary and go beyond per-

by the topic of yaoi, including coupling dynamics in Angelique. Sitting

Accessing virtual potential in the everyday

tasize about anything” (nandemo ni mōsō suru). As Megumi said, “Fujoshi

Concluding remarks: “Graduating” out of rottenness (or not)

as fujoshi into their thirties or forties, including many well-known yaoi

Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies

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