Research

Share your masturbation sessions!

August 25, 2021 by Karl Leave a Comment

Shota is used for masturbation. That’s one of the core findings of the ongoing survey on shota comics.

I’m therefore levelling up my research by asking: How?

I want to find out what your masturbation sessions are like. But instead of asking you about your “typical” masturbation habits, like favourite themes, and so on, I want you to describe a few of your actual masturbation sessions.

Keep an okazu diary

Start now! Okazu is Japanse slang for “masturbation material”, and an “okazu diary” (オカズノート, okazu nōto; “okazu notebook”) is a kind of log book for what material you masturbated to – each time!

Record a week of masturbation in your okazu diary and pay attention to these things:

Where and when did you do it? In bed with the phone, in front of the computer, at the toilet, in the shower? At what time and for how long?
What was the material? Describe the genre, characters, theme, story – provide a link to the actual material if possible.
How did you feel when masturbating to this material? Did you imagine yourself being one of the characters – who? Did you imagine your current self being part of this fantasy, or an earlier version of yourself (such as when you were in school)? Or were you more of an onlooker?
Decribe the session from start to finish. How many images did you look at, or how many pages in a comic did you read? How did your excitement increase? What images, comic frames or story events made you come?
What other (non-shota) masturbation sessions did you have? Record them too, but not in detail. Just note if you used regular porn, another comic genre, your own fantasy, and so on.

Include some basic stats about yourself:

Gender
Sexuality
Age
Place of living
Family situation
Actual sex life (to get a contrast to your fantasy sex life!)

Then send your okazu diary to me:

diary [at] shotaology.com

Send it digitally. Photograph the pages if you used a physical book.

A physical okazu diary, *okazu nōto*, or just *o-nōto*: オ🤍ノート.

Example entry

This is what an entry in a shotacon’s okazu diary can look like (translated into English):

1 August 2021, 22.30–22.40
In bed, reading the first story in Bokkiizu (ぼっきーず), it takes place on the sports field of a school.
I immediately like one of the boys. He’s manly and simple. The other one is too feminine. When the manboy massages the other boy’s leg, that boy’s dick pops out of the shorts. Manboy excuses himself and goes to the toilets. Femboy follows and kicks open the door to the toilet stall where manboy is standing with full erection – a striking image! I was shocked in the same way that I would have been if I had seen this at that age (12 or 13 maybe). Manboy was just about to come, so he shoots his load on the inner thigh of his friend. Femboy then takes out his dick. “We’re in the toilets after all”, he says. ”What could be more natural?” They press their glandes against each other, comment that it looks like the dickheads are kissing. And suddenly the friend shoots his load and manboy says: “You’re coming into me!” This was a whole new thing for me, that you can come into someone’s penis if you press the glandes together! I felt immediately that I could come, so I gave it all to this scene despite I hadn’t been going for so long. It almost didn’t work, but then I passed the threshold and felt a sudden surge of pride as I came to this frame – the zoomed in image of the cum squirting dicks – and the very idea that the friend’s cum was entering manboy’s penis.
It was clearly the unexpected that made me come so quickly, as if a border had been crossed, something I had not imagined before. But it was also the whole situation, which could have happened to myself in middle school, but never did.

Sharing our okazu diaries anonymously means sharing our innermost feelings, experiences and imaginations.

Your detailed description of your masturbation sessions will be an invaluable contribution to anthropological research.

It is with great respect and utmost discretion that I anticipate your entries!

My own shota

August 15, 2021 by Karl Leave a Comment

Eric was hot. He had a rough edge, because he was a city boy and his parents were divorced. He had a moped. He had longish hair and lips that pouted just slightly and gave him a simple look. He probably wore braces, I don’t remember. But despite his rough aura, Eric was also kind. He didn’t hang out with the “cool” boys from the city, but he was respected by them. He was friends with the farmers, and since I was closer to the farmers (the only ones who would accept me), Eric was in my vicinity every now and then.

Eric was my classmate for three years in middle school. I don’t know anything about him either before or after, but for those three years I watched him every week in the changing room at gym class. He changed in the part of the changing room where I and the farmers changed.

My middle school changing room, or junior high school locker room for you Americans, but it didn’t have lockers.

I remember clearly when I watched him undress the first time. His muscles! Despite we were the same age – 12 or 13 years old – the muscles on Eric’s arms were bulging like smooth, toppy hills that disappeared in deep rivers that led into his dark armpit. I was mesmerised by that image, forever imprinted in my mind. I remember the intricacies of that dark pit of raw desire – it was like a mystery to me!

My sketch of Eric in the middle school changing room, as I carry the image with me.

Of course I also remember his penis. It was pointy; stood out a bit from the body, as if it was always slightly erect. A small patch of pubic hair just above it. Over those three years I watched his penis grow: In 9th grade it had the same form – pointy – but was now several sizes bigger. More hair grew on top of it. His muscles had also grown, an intoxicating mess of smooth hills and dark, dangerous rivers. And he had grown underarm hair.

On one of the last days of seventh or eight grade, our teacher asked us what we would do over summer break – would we have a summer job maybe? Eric said he would work at the local saw. “So it’s a muscular Eric who will come back after summer break”, the teacher replied, and I read some desire into her words, like, did she have to mention his body? I still remember this occasion because I thought about Eric and his muscles.

I think I was in love with Eric, but I didn’t realise it, and I’ve never really thought about it after either. At one time the two of us were to go together to a field or forest for an exercise day a bit away from the school. I don’t know how we ended up together, we might have been assigned something, so the others had gone before us. I came to school with the school bus, but Eric had a moped, so he offered me a ride. I did have a moped too, but maybe only later on. I had in any case never sat behind a boy, a sexy boy, on a moped before. I was excited. Where should I hold my hands? There was some kind of metal structure for packages behind the long seat, so I grabbed it behind my back. Eric said: “You can hold on to me.” I didn’t. I thought it would be gay. How I regret that I didn’t, to this day! But I remember the heat from his body under his flannel shirt, flapping in the wind as we rode through the city to the others. I was so much in love!

I don’t have many more memories of Eric. I’ve googled him over the years, but fortunately never seen a picture. He remains in my mind as the perfect 13-year-old boy who I watched naked in the changing room every week for three years. Eric and his muscles. Eric and his penis. Eric and his warm body next to mine on the moped. Eric is my own shota.

Listen up, you reader! You probably carry your own shota with you from when you grew up. Tell me about him! Draw him! And be part of the collective research project into shota and shotacon that will contribute important insights about desire and sexuality to academia. Get in touch, let’s chat, let’s share our imaginations! Fill in the shota survey and let’s take it from there. I want to talk to you!

The Ontology of the Boy, or: What are little boys made of?

July 27, 2021 by Karl Leave a Comment

In the introduction to the book Kono shota ga sugoi (このショタがすごい！) from 1997, Shindōji Gun (真道寺軍) opens with this provocative question:

What are little boys made of?
Kono shota ga sugoi, p. 4

Introduction, page 4–5 in *Kono shota ga sugoi* (このショタがすごい！) by Shindōji Gun (真道寺軍), 1997.

The question evokes so many thoughts. At first, I think about the boy’s body. Like the rest of us, boys are made up of flesh and blood, bones and organs. But just by spelling this out, I realise what a bad answer it is. Of course boys are made of the stuff that makes all of us. Disgusting stuff that I don’t want to see. So why is the boy so great (or “sugoi”) when he’s made of the same things as the rest of us? Is it the composition of these things – the proportions in which the bones are held together? Is it the youthful lustre of the thin layer of skin that so perfectly wraps around the stuff we don’t want to see? Being so concrete about the answer makes me realise that what the question really asks is this:

What is the magic of boys?

That question has been asked before in shota research. In 1996, Manda Ringo phrased it like this in the shota survey published in her book The Syotaroh:

Where does the magic of the boy reside?”
The Syotaroh, p. 15

Popular answers included “smooth legs”, “thin limbs”, “beautiful face”, and “youthful skin”, but the number one answer, as entered independently by 13 respondents, was junsuisa (純粋さ), which can be translated as “purity” or “innocence”. This is something far more abstract than the physical attributes. It is something that is hard or maybe even impossible to grasp, and thus it is denoted as “magic”. But maybe one can try by way of examples. The introduction in Kono shota ga sugoi follows an illustration where the same question is posed – twice for impact:

Boys, what are they made of?
Boys, what are they made of?
Ray guns and spacecrafts,
what’s more, robot monsters,
What a wonderful anything goes!
Kono shota ga sugoi, p. 3

What are little boys made of? Page 3 in *Kono shota ga sugoi* (このショタがすごい！) by Shindōji Gun (真道寺軍), 1997.

The text reads like a poem, and maybe poetry is the only way one can close in on questions about magic.

The continuous outpour of books and dōjinshi discussing shota reflects a will among shota fans to understand themselves. Like few other genres, shota seems to create a curious reflexivity among its readers, who are more diverse than readers of other comics. Women and men, young and old, straight, gay and bi, ask themselves: What is the magic of the boy?

In academic terminology, one might talk about the ontology of the boy, as a way to try to capture his very being. The passionate production of shota dōjinshi provides a unique chance to close in on this transient ontology called Boy: How old is he? (Twelve!) What does he look like? What hobbies does he have? Of course there are many answers depending on personal taste, but taken together, the expressions in these dōjinshi make up an important databank devoted to an ideal that never lets itself be captured, and which therefore keeps engaging us.

So I ask you: What is the magic of the boy? Reply in the comments or in the shota forum – and don’t forget to take the shota survey!

Boys with swords: Wataru, Toraoh, Yoh-kun

Young boys with big swords – phallic symbolism in Wataru and Shaman King

March 15, 2021 by Karl Leave a Comment

A boy’s greatest desire is to become a man. This theme therefore permeates virtually all boys’ manga and anime – only the execution varies. Especially robot anime feeds on this desire, where the robot represents the man that the boy admires, wants to learn from, fight alongside with, and eventually become. The robot is an externalisation not only of the boy’s desire, but of his potential: Eventually, all boys will become men, but this is a complicated process, a process that engages not only the boy himself but all of society. Hence the focus on male coming-of-age rituals in virtually all cultures and eras: The boy must be guided to manhood, and watching a semi-disguised version of that process in anime is what keeps us glued to the screen year after year. Probably it provides us with solace to see new generations of boys being fostered into men, thus implicitly convincing us that the world will continue to exist.

This process is beautifully captured in the transformation sequence of robot anime. That’s where the magic happens, and isn’t the boy’s transformation into a man a kind of magic? The boy’s greatest desire logically receives the greatest care in the form of an advanced animation sequence, a real treat for the eye, accompanied by powerful music. The sequence often includes the boy summoning the robot by throwing a magical token, ejecting or ejaculating a piece of himself if you will, like a seed that gives birth to something greater, outside of himself – the man he will become. The boy is then shown (as in Wataru below) ascending into the inner core of the robot, from where they will control its huge limbs. Boy and robot – boy and man – have become one: Only so can they fight the enemy and save the world.

This process includes overt symbolism. Most obviously, the boy always sports a long and powerful sword (in Granzort we even see it grow), the swinging of which to eliminate the enemy marks the “orgasm” of each episode. If you haven’t got it yet, the sword of course symbolises the boy’s penis, or phallos with a fancier word.

Once you’ve understood that, the story makes more sense, since all boys and men are obsessed with their penises. So whether they “get it” or not on a conscious level, seeing a boy swinging a long object fills male viewers (maybe female too, in a different way) with satisfaction. We’re not only seeing the slaying of a villain – we’re watching the supreme victory of our own sex! And it’s big. Very big. And so it taps into the fascination and desire of every single boy out there: The fascination with the growing capability of their own body part, and the desire that it will one day grow bigger than the little miniscule appendix they are stuck with as boys. Or in short: That they will one day become men.

The desire fueling the imagery of boys with swords is evident in anime 30 years apart: Here cuts from Wataru (1988), Granzort (1989) and Boku no Hero Academia (2019). I’m not much of an anime buff, so you can probably find many more examples:

Shaman King (1998–2004, by Takei Hiroyuki/武井宏之) is not a robot manga, but is fueled by the same manly desire: 13-year-old Yoh-kun merges with various men in the form of ghosts, who enter his body. Instead of controlling the robot, the boy’s body is here controlled by the man whose spirit has entered it. This frame with the boxer was cut out of the anime but well captures the man/boy dynamic of this idea:

The fact that several men can take advantage of Yoh-kun (or “have some fun with his body” as one of them put it) seems to be at odds with the idea that a boy should only have one man who guides him, but after a while the samurai Amidamaru accepts this role. Beyond the obvious symbolism of man-on-boy action (or man inside boy even), the manga also sports several phallic objects, most evidently the sword which Yoh-kun holds in the same iconic way as Wataru above:

13-year-old boy Yoh-kun grabs his big … sword. In the background Amidamaru.

There are lots of other phallic objects that are held and pointing in various suggestive ways throughout Shaman King, but whereas metal pipes and wooden planks are symbolic, the ihai (位牌), or “spirit tablet”, almost perfectly represents the size of a boy penis and is held in a way that reminds of masturbation:

Boy grabbing his hard … *ihai*. Note that something is going on in Yoh-kun’s pocket in the right frame.

Some frames are suggestive in a way that makes you wonder if you’re a pervert who sees “signs” everywhere. But seriously. The wooden stick in the bucket in this frame is simply a bit too perfectly positioned, don’t you think? Just squint your eyes …

Quite early on, Yoh-kun gets a rival in the form of Ren. Ren is equipped with a long halberd. You may want to squint your eyes again …

Yoh-kun’s rival Ren grabs his long … halberd.

It’s amazing to see when Ren gets going. He swings his halberd in such a confident and powerful way that my thoughts go to Murakami Takashi’s legendary sculpture My Lonesome Cowboy. This piece of art is brilliant in that it captures exactly what I have been trying to describe in this post, namely the underlying phallic desire in mainstream boy culture. The boy’s self-image of being an omnipotent, sperm-shooting demigod on his way to manhood is epitomised in Murakami’s sculpture. But look closely and you will be able to see the sperm of the lonesome cowboy running as a common white-greyish thread through so many manga works.

It should be mentioned that this is most probably not a conscious thought process in the creators of manga and anime. Although there are cases where shota and loli artists also create mainstream, non-sexual works, in most cases the desire that results in all these symbols probably works as a motor deep down, under the hood so to speak. It’s a societal desire, and creators are part of the society.

When I studied literary analysis at the university, someone (maybe it was me) asked: “But why do we have to interpret so much? Can’t we just ask the author what they meant, if they’re still alive?” The teacher replied: “No, because it doesn’t matter what the author intended. Our job is to analyse the work and find things in it that not even the author is aware of.” So that’s what I’ve done here. Tell me what you think and please contribute with your own observations!

Survey: Do you like 3D shota? (3DCGショタが好きですか)

March 13, 2021 by Karl Leave a Comment

3D shota looks quite different from regular, comic-style shota. Some would say it looks more realistic. With 3D shota I mean computer generated (CG), for example in DAZ Studio.

If you want to contribute to my research, please fill in the bilingual minisurvey below!

3DCGショタと漫画ショタはよく違うと思います。僕の研究で助けたければ、下のアンケートを回答してください！

Illustration by Barbotage (cropped).

Jumbor Angzengbang 2, ユンボル 1, manga cover art

Jumbor and the eroticism of mainstream boys’ manga

December 22, 2020 by Karl Leave a Comment

I stumbled upon Jumbor (ユンボル) by Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之) at a Mandarake in Tokyo in October 2017. Jumbor is a dystopian manga set in a future ruled by various construction syndicates which fight each other with heavy duty construction machinery. The resistance movement get their hands on a jumbor, which is a mix of human and machine originally used to mine the valuable substance jumborite. This particular Jumbor, model 11D, is a boy: Jumbor Baru.

But enough of the background – just look at these striking covers! One of the volumes even comes with a full colour fold-out with the shirtless Jumbor, pin-up style:

Fold-out in Jumbor Angzengbang, volume 2 (ユンボル安全版, 全2巻), 2010.

Jumbor Baru has been frozen for several years, so when he finally wakes up, he has the body of a 10-year-old boy, despite he is actually a teenager. After having examined the huge mechanical hands and feet he has been equipped with, he glances down at his crotch and concludes with sweat drops in his face:

But that thing …! It’s still small, hasn’t grown at all!!!
しかもコイツは…！小せえし生えてねえ!!!
Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之). 2010. Jumbor (ユンボル), volume 1, p. 87-88.

Jumbor Baru discovers his prepubescent penis, p. 86-87.

Baby elephant in diapers symbolises small penis — This discovery is illustrated with the symbolic image of a baby elephant in diapers, p. 88.

The jokes on the boy’s penis continue when Jumbor realises that the woman who has awaken him is in fact Princess Rivetta, who he knew as a child – when they were both children:

“That means, you must be that tiny little Princess Rivetta, right?”
“Right. Speaking of tiny little things, how about covering yourself up, Jumbor Baru.”
「するとやっぱりあんたはあの小せえリベッタ姫なのか…？」
「さあな。あれこれ聞く前にその小せえモノを隠したらどうだユンボル・バル」
Takei Hiroyuki (武井宏之). 2010. Jumbor (ユンボル), volume 1, p. 100-101.

So it’s small. Super tiny. 小せえ! But that is compensated by a huge shovel, many times his own size, that grows out of one of Jumbor Baru’s mechanical hands the first time he’s confronted by an enemy. He’s surprised by this sudden power, which he was not aware of and which he can’t control well in the beginning. Princess Rivetta observes him contentedly in the foreground as he battles with his shovel: “So that’s his secret power.”

This is what awaits all boys. Their bodies will transform and they will have a hard time mastering the new powers that demand attention within them. I come to think of the anime D.N.Angel, where 14-year-old Niwa Daisuke transforms into a “phantom thief” at certain occasions. Or why not Momonari Junta, the good-for-nothing rascal who turns into “Mega-Playboy” in DNA². Just like Jumbor Baru, Daisuke and Junta can’t control the powers they’ve been equipped with. What we’re seeing is the struggle of puberty and newly awakened sexuality, as manifested in a shovel, a phantom thief, and a playboy.

But back to Jumbor. Even after he has got dressed, Jumbor Baru is running around in several sizes too big bib trousers that expose his shirtless upper body. This imagery is erotic, but not erotic enough to be designated as such. It reminds quite a bit of Takei’s hit manga and anime Shaman King (シャーマンキング) from 1998 (and onwards), whose 13-year-old boy protagonist Asukara Yoh (麻倉葉) similarly has an exposed chest under an unbuttoned shirt:

Moe! We might call this imagery titillating, but titillating for who? For boy readers with a latent erotic interest in their peers (and themselves)? Or for older readers? The lack of furigana makes me think that the manga is not aimed at too young readers.

On the female side, people have argued that the girl characters in series like Sailor Moon were sexed up to cater to a secondary (or maybe even primary) target group of adult men, beyond the obvious audience of teenage girls (see Patrick W. Galbraith: Otaku and the struggle for imagination in Japan, Duke University Press 2019, p. 113–115). Is something similar at play in mainstream boys’ (shōnen) manga? I think it’s quite obvious that a series like Made in Abyss (on Netflix of all places) flirts quite shamelessly with both shotacon and lolicon, with Reg – like Jumbor, a boy with robot hands – being one of the most popular characters in shota fan art.

The shota genre makes explicit what is implicit in mainstream manga. No one would claim that Hunter x Hunter and other mainstream series featuring and made for boys have an erotic undertone, and anyone who claims that would not be able to prove it. And that’s exactly what makes mainstream manga so interesting – because you have to read between the lines!

Please contribute with additional examples.