Research

ショタコンのゆりかご

2024-05-10 by Karl Leave a Comment

In ショタコンのゆりかご (shotacon no yurikago = “the cradle of shotacon”), shota expert Budōuri Kusuko (interviewed in 腐男子にきく) traces the origins of the manga genre shotacon. His focus is commercial shota magazines rather than dōjinshi.

The essay begins with a richly referenced study (first published in October 2006) into the etymology of the word shotacon, which partly relies on Watanabe Yumiko’s essay ショタの研究 (shota no kenkyū = “shota research”).

The second chapter describes “the development of shota expressions” in the 1990s, and the third chapter documents a temporary decline in the genre in the late 1990s.

The fourth and last chapter (first published in September 2007) is devoted to the development of commercial shota publications in the first years of this millennium (up until when Budōuri-san wrote his essay).

ショタコンのゆりかご is an excellent resource that provides important historical data to shota research.

A 10 page appendix with data on shota titles accompanies this essay.

An English summary of Budōuri’s findings can be found here:

The rise and fall of commercial shota magazines

My own shota

2024-04-15 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!

国際おたく大学―1998年：最前線からの研究報告

2024-04-03 by Leave a Comment

This anthology, edited by Okada Toshio, contains the essay “Shota research” (ショタの研究) by Watanabe Yumiko (渡辺由美子), under the section “Otaku Sexuality 1” (おたくのセクシュアリティ1).

Watanabe-san’s essay is unique in that it interrogates female and male shota fans in the 1990s, while outlining the history of shota aesthetics, as well as providing an analysis of shota’s allure. I read it in great detail and used it as a springboard to watch several key animes from the 1980s and 1990s, “Mashin Eiyūden Wataru” being the most important of them.

Part 1: The history and definition of shota (p. 32-41)

Regarding the etymology of shota and shotacon, Watanabe-san mentions that there were several terms used within shōjo and shōnen-ai manga, including “ribocon” for “little boy complex”, but that the dōjinshi world eventually settled for the better sounding term “shotacon”, which first appeared in a 1981 issue of Fanroad.

Footnote 2 describes how Animecku’s editor Komaki Masanobu (小牧雅伸) and Fanroad’s editor Hamamatsu Katsuki (浜松克樹), pen name “イニシャルビスケットのK”, came up with the term. It was the lolicon boom in the early 1980s and they wondered what a male equivalent would be, for “boys in shorts” (半ズボンの少年). After Komaki dropped the hint of Kaneda Shōtarō (金田正太郎) from Tetsujin 28-gō (the original manga, not the remake which was broadcast at the time), the editors decided to call it “Shōtarō complex”, which became “shotacon”.

Watanabe-san goes on to describe how a number of mainstream boys’ anime, most importantly the “shota trigger” Mashin Hero Wataru (魔神英雄伝ワタル, Mashin Eiyūden Wataru) from 1988, awakened the “shota mind” and established shota as a new genre, separate from yaoi, among dōjinshi creators. I have summarised this development in a separate post:

Wataru and the birth of shota in mainstream anime

As for shota’s definition and age range, Watanabe-san writes that there might be as many opinions as there are shota fans. However, a shota character’s face should not have adult length, and the character must possess some kind of cuteness.

When it comes to shota characters’ personality, Watanabe-san has created a “shota gauge” (ショタゲージ), or “shotameter” in my translation, where she places the qualities “hot-blooded” vs “cool”, and “shorts” vs “skirt” on two continuums, in which she places the popular boy characters from mainstream manga and anime.

Part 2: Female shota fans (p. 42-47)

This section is a conversation between Watanabe-san and X-Kids mangaka Suō-san, who started out creating aniparo dōjinshi in high school. Starting out with Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho and Gundam W, both popular among aniparo creators, her taste turned towards shota with Shinji from Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン, 1995):

I didn’t think of him as shota until episode 24 when Kaworu appears, and I was like ‘What, is Shinji like that?!’. (laugh)

Suō-san

Episode 24 of Evangelion spurred a Kaworu ✕ Shinji boom among female creators, both in yaoi and shota. Kaworu’s arrival made fans realise that Shinji was a “total uke”.

Survey results from commercial shota magazines for women show that age difference, as in older/younger brother or even father/son, is the most appreciated feature among female readers. However, shota is much less strict than yaoi when it comes to the seme/uke division. If yaoi was a way for women to escape the uke role to become a seme with the power to “attack” male characters, shota is a whole different “playground” which much more open possibilities, Watanabe-san argues.

Part 3: Male shota fans (p. 48-54)

Watanabe-san begins with explaining how male shota interest emerged from the loli boom in the 1980s. Since the characteristics of loli are smooth, flat chests, and the cute style of shōjo manga, the step was not far to smooth boys. The yaoi boom made it easier for loli mangakas and publishers to experiment with boy characters, which made their ways into loli magazines like Lemon People (レモンピープル) and Hot Milk (ホットミルク). Surveys confirmed that the male readers liked “boy stuff” (少年もの). Eventually the main shota genre “big sister and me” (お姉さんと僕) emerged from this.

Watanabe-san now turns to interview Usagi-no-Tokei-san and Hakuo-san from the shota circle Shiro-usagi, and they claim to not “come from loli”:

At least, we are not shota who came from loli. Both of us were shotacons already in elementary school.

Hakuo-san

They explain how they watched robot animes as children and how they attracted to the boy heroes of animes like Triton of the Sea (海のトリトン) and Babel II (バビル二世), not to mention Kappei of Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 and Amuro of Gundam.

The most appealing thing in boys’ anime is hot friendships. When boys’ friendships are depicted in anime, it moves me and it makes me think of “something” beyond friendship. That “something” is not just friendship or affection.

Hakuo-san

Usagi-no-Tokei-san explains how he experienced “pseudo-love” between boys in elementary and middle school, and how he “got stuck in that stage” when other moved on to male-female relations. He thinks that “staying in the boy stage” is something that shotacons may have in common.

Next, Usagi-no-Tokei-san distinguishes this personal trajectory from that of shota fans who come from loli:

For people who come from loli-kei, as long as it’s smooth (tsurupeta) and cute, a boy too is okay, they seem to reason. Because only the lower body differs (laugh). Therefore they focus on the sex in their shota manga, whereas we who have been shota fans for a long time, for us the boy’s attraction is a much more special thing. That’s how I think about it.”

Usagi-no-Tokei-san

They call their thing “genuine shota” (真性ショタ), and say that there might be more of them than expected. They have set up a website where they collect impressions from other shotacons. They hope that people who find the website might feel relief that they are not the only ones with those feelings. Usagi-no-Tokei-san says that before they found fellow shotacons, they thought they were sick. Interesting here is that the Japanese word shinsei (真性) is also translated as “inborn nature”, and the literal meaning of the kanji is something along the lines of “true sex/sexuality”.

As for their relation to real (actual) boys, they keep a distance and talk about a “compromise” (割り切り). I understand this as a way to rationalise one’s inclination, “I’m ok, I’m not bad”, sort of. Hakuo-san likes 2D only, whereas Usagi-no-Tokei-san likes “2D Plus” (二次元プラス), in that he enjoys watching real (actual) boys, but that is where he draws the border.

Watanabe-san seems very surprised by the mindset of these “genuine” shota fans. She felt a strong sense of “shame”, which is non-existent for female creators who draw yaoi or loli. She observes that shota is drawn differently by men and women. In male shota, not only the seme but also the uke expresses emotions. The reason might be that male shota fans can identify with any boy character they like.

Watanabe-san mentions the recent (that is, recent in 1998) trend of youth ✕ boy (青年 ✕ 少年) couplings, which Usagi-no-Tokei-san exclaims would be “impossible”. Impossible is exactly what makes it good, Watanabe-san argues (with a laugh), and Usagi-no-Tokei-san replies:

(Laugh) I’m more like … Both when I look at shota manga and when I draw it, I immerse myself in that situation, they are not other people to me. If there is a relation between two boys, I too can feel like a boy, but if it’s a youth who does what he wants with a child, that’s a crime. It’s obscene, no matter how much 2D it is …

Usagi-no-Tokei-san

Watanabe-san concludes that for “genuine” shotacons, the boy character is used for self-identification, and that they through shota might be chasing the “imaginative boys” of their own past.

Finally, there is a discussion on homosexuality and how discrimination made it hard to say that you are attracted to your own sex, which I suppose the “genuine” shotacons are? If the word “homosexuality” was not so loaded, liking boys would be just another hobby, like “sabu-kei” (さぶ系) or “shemales” (ニューハーフ), Watanabe-san writes.

In the end, whether people are accepted or not depends on the ‘words’, as conceptual rules, that are attached to them. The fact that we have started to come out little by little is thanks to the word “shota”. I’m a shota, I’m an otaku, whatever the genre, the words attached to people do not only discriminate, but also have positive meaning, which leads to a feeling of acceptance.

Hakuo-san

Watanabe-san concludes that since “shota” is a word that spread from inside out, and wasn’t used by outsiders to discriminate, it can be used to accept, empower, and express oneself.

In the last section, Watanabe-san describes what she calls “borderless gender transformation” (性ボーダレス化):

Men turn from loli to shota, women turn to loli, in the shota world phenomena like “female Shinji” appear, whatever, whenever can be meshed together.

Watanabe Kumiko-san

However, my impression is that the “genuine” shota fans are not included in that optimistic analysis. Even so, Watanabe-san’s interview with Hakuo-san and Usagi-no-Tokei-san is indeed groundbreaking, and a great stepping stone for further research into shota and its readers.

腐男子にきく。

2024-03-28 by Leave a Comment

This is the first study of “fudanshi” (腐男子), or “rotten boys”, originally published as a dōjinshi in 2008 by Yoshimoto Taimatsu. The term “fujoshi” (腐女子), or “rotten girls”, for women with a strong interest in BL and yaoi gained attention in 2006. Taimatsu-san turned his focus to male readers of BL and yaoi. In the words of Nagaike Kazumi:

In 2008, another male fan and critic of BL, Yoshimoto Taimatsu, self-published a study, Interviewing Fudanshi (Fudanshi ni kiku) in an initial attempt, by means of an innovative analysis of heterosexual male readings of BL, to make heterosexual male readers of BL (i.e., fudanshi or “rotten boys”) visible for the first time.

Nagaike, Kazumi. 2015. “Do Heterosexual Men Dream of Homosexual Men? BL Fudanshi and Discourse on Male Feminization.” In Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, edited by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker, 189–209. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Taimatsu-san comments in the preface that the common image of straight men is that they are uninterested in, and sometimes hostile towards, homosexual imagery. Fudanshi obviously break with this homophobic tradition:

これまで男性は、同性愛者でない限り、同性愛は嫌いなのが当たり前と考えられてきた。同性愛者は「近寄るな」と遠ざけられるか、いいところネタとして、笑いの対象になるのがせいぜいだった。しかし「腐男子」は、嬉々として男性同士の恋愛を楽しんでいる。いったい彼らはどのような性志向を持っているのだろうか?

Of particular interest is the interview with BL and shota expert Budouuri XQO-san (葡萄瓜さん), who has bought shota material “in realtime” since their appearance around 1991. Among other things, the two discuss how BL became a refuge for (straight) men who felt opressed in terms of love and sex during the bubble years, and how those men deal with the fact that the content is “homo”. As for shota research, they emphasise the importance of looking at reader letters in shota magazines.

Budouuri-san and Taimatsu-san discuss the allure of shota, and I want to quote from the interview here:

T: ただ、ショタには惹かれるものがあったのですよね。
B: ありましたね。男の子同士のふれあいは、異性とのふれあいと少し違うかな、と言う感覚がありました。
T: やっぱり男の子同士が一番いい、と感じられていたのですか。
B: あくまでも男の子同士のふれあい、つながりの気分ですね。その表現としてエロもありと言うことで。
T: セックス先にありき、では無いわけですね、一貫して。
B: 無いですね。

I think Fudanshi ni kiku is a unique contribution to this field, and I look forward to digging deeper into it.

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

2024-03-27 by Karl 1 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!

The Syotaroh

2024-03-26 by Leave a Comment

The Syotaroh is subtitled “syota-con magazin”, and that is exactly what this amazing book is. Mixing short comic stories, survey results, and guest contributions in the form of one-page questionnaires filled out with a pen, and laid out in an appetizing, crazy, yes passionate style, this is indeed a magazine for shotacons – published as early as August 1996.

I came across this book by way of Yoshimoto Taimatsu (吉本たいまつ), who gives it credit in his work “Another side of ショタアンソロジーを考える : 1994-1999 分析編” (yet to be reviewed). It seems to be very rare. I only found one copy which could only be bought through a flea market app with all kinds of restrictions – in the end I had a Japanese friend order it for me. But at least I got it and I’m now making my way through it, slowly and meticulously – and with joy!

The book starts – after a very sweet prologue comic – with the results of a survey taken by 82 shotacons – 63 women, 18 men, 1 okama. Their answers about their favourite age for boys (12-13), their favourite boy attributes (socks), their favourite boy characters (Romeo from Romeo no Aoi Sora/ロミオの青い空), as well as their thoughts on why they became shotacons provide a unique glimpse into this small and under-researched subculture.

I have just started reading this book and look forward to providing more details as I progress. Manda Ringo’s book seems to be a fantastic resource for shota researchers.

It’s here – the book about shota!

Research

Part 1: The history and definition of shota (p. 32-41)

Part 2: Female shota fans (p. 42-47)

Part 3: Male shota fans (p. 48-54)