"Boys' Love," Yaoi . and Art Education:
Issues of Power and Pedagogy
Brent Wilson
The Pennsylvania State University
Masami Toku
The California State University, Chico
*This is A chapter of a special issue book for Semiotics and Art/Visual Culture (Shank Ed.) which will be published by the NAEA (National Art Education Association) in 2003.
"Empire of Signs" was what Roland Barthes (1982) called Japan. In his introductory essay about this "faraway" nation he wrote:
Now it happens that in this country (Japan) the empire of signifiers is so immense, so in excess of speech, that the exchange of signs remains of a fascinating richness, mobility, and subtlety, despite the opacity of the language, sometimes even as a consequence of that opacity. The reason for this is that in Japan the body exists, acts, shows itself, gives itself, without hysteria, without narcissism, but according to a pure--though subtly discontinuous--erotic project (pp. 9-10).
In his readings of "the empire of signifiers" Barthes directed his attention to a stationery store, bowing, choptsticks, pachinko parlors, packages, the eyelid, and millions of bodies. It is to millions of bodies--graphic bodies--that we wish to direct our reading--an interpretation of a facet of Japan that appeared after Barthes completed the analyses of his "fictive Japan." In his reading of a fictive, and yet not-fictive Japan, Barthes assiduously avoided "vast regions of darkness (capitalist Japan, American acculturation, technological development)" (1982, p. 4). Indeed, it is to a vast region of darkness to which we will attend.
The region of bodies we wish to explore mimics the capitalist system of manga--comic books--which in Japan is indeed big business. Nearly forty-percent of all publications in Japan (Schodt, 1996, p. 19) are in one way or another connected to manga, versions of which are read by infants and their grandmothers in the Empire of Signs. But the comic book para-phenomenon we wish to explore exists primarily among teenagers and young adults. It has to do with art, narrative, and the exploration of gender, identity, and sex. It is an enterprise that points to a failure of art education--or is it a failure? When schools educate students to appreciate and create one form of art and then, when those students end up appreciating and creating quite another form of art, then is it a failure?
Dojinshi and the Comic Market
Most popular visual culture is "cooked-up" by profit-seeking adults and fed to hungry youth, but this is not always so in Japan. The semiannual COMICMARKET (also known as Comiket and Comike), which began in 1975, is a visual cultural phenomenon shaped almost entirely by youth; its meaning and its consequences are of global importance. Art educators need to understand what's happening in Asia, how it's spreading to the West, and its implications for art and visual cultural pedagogy.
COMICMARKET is now held in Tokyo Harbor at the Tokyo International Trade Center also known as Tokyo Big Sight. The center houses six enormous halls, 80,000 square meters of space devoted to the exhibition and sale of comic books (dojinshi) created by amateurs. During the comic market's three days, 35,000 groups, consisting of perhaps as many as 100,000 young creators of dojinshi manga, sell their magazines to approximately 420,000 otaku (fans). (The term dojinshi was originally applied to manga-like fanzines, the hobby magazines and comic books produced by amateurs. Dojin means folks who share the same taste and shi means magazine. The term dojinshi has come to refer to both a club or circle of high school or college students who create their own comic books, and to the comic books themselves. The term otaku which is applied to the purchasers of dojinshi and manga implies a passionate or even fanatic desire to collect artifacts and information related to manga, anime, video games, and, of course, dojinshi.) COMICMARKET and the 2,000 or so other dojinshi comic markets held in Japan each year are, we think, the most easily identified phenomena in a vast visual subculture created mostly by teenagers and young adults mainly for themselves. How did the phenomenon begin?
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