P Yuri Popular Books

P Yuri Biography & Facts

Yuri (Japanese: 百合, lit. "lily"), also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu), is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbianism is a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and literature. Themes associated with yuri originate from Japanese lesbian fiction of the early twentieth century, notably the writings of Nobuko Yoshiya and literature in the Class S genre. Manga depicting female homoeroticism began to appear in the 1970s in the works of artists associated with the Year 24 Group, notably Ryoko Yamagishi and Riyoko Ikeda. The genre gained wider popularity beginning in the 1990s; the founding of Yuri Shimai in 2003 as the first manga magazine devoted exclusively to yuri, followed by its successor Comic Yuri Hime in 2005, led to the establishment of yuri as a discrete publishing genre and the creation of a yuri fan culture. As a genre, yuri does not inherently target a single gender demographic, unlike its male homoerotic counterparts yaoi (marketed towards a female audience) and gay manga (marketed towards a gay male audience). Although yuri originated as a genre targeted towards a female audience, yuri works have been produced that target a male audience, as in manga from Comic Yuri Hime's male-targeted sister magazine Comic Yuri Hime S. Terminology and etymology Yuri The word yuri (百合) translates literally to "lily", and is a relatively common Japanese feminine name. White lilies have been used since the Romantic era of Japanese literature to symbolize beauty and purity in women, and are a de facto symbol of the yuri genre. In 1976, Ito Bungaku, editor of the gay men's magazine Barazoku (薔薇族, lit. "Rose Tribe"), used the term yurizoku (百合族, lit. "lily tribe") in reference to female readers of the magazine in a column of letters titled Yurizoku no Heya (百合族の部屋, lit. "Lily Tribe's Room"). While not all women whose letters appeared in Yurizoku no Heya were lesbians, and it is unclear whether the column was the first instance of the term yuri in this context, an association of yuri with lesbianism subsequently developed. For example, the male-male romance magazine Allan began publishing Yuri Tsūshin (百合通信, "Lily Communication") in July 1983 as a personal ad column for "lesbiennes" to communicate. The term came to be associated with lesbian pornographic manga beginning in the 1990s, notably through the manga magazine Lady's Comic Misuto (1996–1999), which heavily featured symbolic lily flowers. When the term yuri began being used in the west in the 1990s, it was similarly used almost exclusively to describe pornographic manga aimed at male readers featuring lesbian couples. Over time, the term drifted from this pornographic connotation to describe the portrayal of intimate love, sex, or emotional connections between women, and became broadly recognized as a genre name for works depicting same-sex female intimacy in the mid-2000s following the founding of the specialized yuri manga magazines Yuri Shimai and Comic Yurihime. The Western use of yuri subsequently broadened beginning in the 2000s, picking up connotations from the Japanese use. American publishing companies such as ALC Publishing and Seven Seas Entertainment have also adopted the Japanese usage of the term to classify their yuri manga publications. In Korea and China, "lily" is used as a semantic loan from the Japanese usage to describe female-female romance media, where each use the direct translation of the term – baekhap (백합) in Korea and bǎihé (百合) in China. Girls' love The wasei-eigo construction "girls' love" (ガールズラブ, gāruzu rabu) and its abbreviation "GL" were adopted by Japanese publishers in the 2000s, likely as an antonym of the male-male romance genre boys' love (BL). While the term is generally considered synonymous with yuri, in rare cases it is used to denote yuri media that is sexually explicit, following the publication of the erotic yuri manga anthology Girls Love by Ichijinsha in 2011. However, this distinction is infrequently made, and yuri and "girls' love" are almost always used interchangeably. Shōjo-ai In the 1990s, western fans began to use the term shōjo-ai (少女愛, lit. "girl love") to describe yuri works that do not depict explicit sex. Its usage was modeled after the western appropriation of the term shōnen-ai (少年愛, lit. "boy love") to describe yaoi works that do not feature sexually explicit content. In Japan, the term shōjo-ai is not used with this meaning, and instead denotes pedophilic relationships between adult men and girls. History Before 1970: Class S literature Among the first Japanese authors to produce works about love between women was Nobuko Yoshiya, a novelist active in the Taishō and Shōwa periods. Yoshiya was a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, including the early twentieth century Class S genre. Her works popularized many of the ideas and tropes which drove the yuri genre for years to come. Class S stories depict lesbian attachments as emotionally intense yet platonic relationships, destined to be curtailed by graduation from school, marriage, or death. The root of this genre is in part the contemporary belief that same-sex love was a transitory and normal part of female development leading into heterosexuality and motherhood. Class S developed in the 1930s through Japanese girls' magazines, but declined as a result of state censorship brought about by the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Though homosociality between girls would re-emerge as a common theme in post-war shōjo manga (comics for girls), Class S gradually declined in popularity in favor of works focused on male-female romances. Traditionally, Class S stories focus on strong emotional bonds between an upperclassman and an underclassman, or in rare cases, between a student and her teacher. Private all-girls schools are a common setting for Class S stories, which are depicted as an idyllic homosocial world reserved for women. Works in the genre focus heavily on the beauty and innocence of their protagonists, a theme that would recur in yuri. Critics have alternately considered Class S as a distinct genre from yuri, as a "proto-yuri", and a component of yuri. 1970s and 1980s: The "dark age" In 1970, manga artist Masako Yashiro published the shōjo manga Shīkuretto Rabu (シークレットラブ, "Secret Love"), which focuses on a love triangle between two girls and a boy. Noted as the first non-Class S manga to depict an intimate relationship between women, Shīkuretto Rabu is regarded by some scholars as the first work in the yuri genre. As both Yashiro and Shīkuretto Rabu are relatively obscure and the work focuses in part on male-female romance, most.... Discover the P Yuri popular books. Find the top 100 most popular P Yuri books.