Bishonen
Encyclopedia
is a Japanese
term literally meaning "beautiful youth (boy)". The equivalent English concept is a "pretty boy".
The term describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia
: a young man whose beauty
(and sexual
appeal) transcends the boundary of gender
or sexual orientation. It has always shown the strongest manifestation in Japanese pop culture, gaining in popularity due to the androgynous glam rock bands of the 1970s, but it has roots in ancient Japanese literature
, the homosocial
and homoerotic ideals of the medieval Chinese
imperial court
and intellectual
s, and India
n aesthetic concepts carried over from Hinduism
, imported with Buddhism
to China
.
Today, bishōnen are very popular among girls and women in Japan
. Reasons for this social phenomenon
may include the unique male and female social relationships found within the genre. Some have theorized that bishōnen provide a non-traditional outlet for gender relations. Moreover, it breaks down stereotype
s surrounding feminine male characters. These are often depicted with very strong martial arts
abilities, sport
s talent, high intelligence, or comedic flair, traits that are usually assigned to the hero/protagonist.
beauty, and bijin
, literally "beautiful person", is usually, though not always, used to refer to beautiful women. Bichūnen means "beautiful middle-aged man". Biseinen is to be distinguished from bishōnen as seinen is used to describe men who are of age, including those who have entered or completed tertiary education. The term shōnen is used to describe boys of middle and high school age. Last, bishota can be used to refer to a beautiful, pre-pubescent male child or a child-like male. Outside Japan, bishōnen is the most well-known of the three terms, and has become a generic term for all beautiful boys and young men.
The aesthetic of the bishōnen began as an ideal of a young homosexual
lover, originally embodied in the wakashū
(若衆, literally "young person", although only used for boys), or adolescent boy, and was influenced by the effeminate male actors
who played female characters in kabuki theater
. The term arose in the Meiji era, in part to replace the by then obsolete erotic meaning of the older term wakashū, whose general meaning of "adolescent boy" had by this point been supplanted by the new term shōnen
. The bishōnen was conceived of as "aesthetically different from both women and men [...] both the antithesis and the antecedent of adult masculinity".
The bishōnen is typically slender, with clear skin, stylish hair, and distinctly feminine facial features (such as high cheekbones), but simultaneously retains a male body. This androgynous
appearance is akin to the depiction of angels in Western renaissance
art, with similar social roots for this aesthetic.
The aesthetic of the bishōnen was recorded in Lady Murasaki Shikibu
's Tale of Genji, written in about the year 1000 A.D. Genji concerns the exploits and romances of a young prince, the son of an emperor and beloved concubine, who is not in line to inherit the throne, and follows his intrigues through the court as he comes of age. The novel typifies the Heian
age of Japanese history, a period of highly-stylized romance. Prince Genji's
beauty is described as transcendental, so much so that "one could have wished him a woman", with a bewitching attraction that is acknowledged by men and women alike.
Minamoto no Yoshitsune
and Amakusa Shirō
have been identified as historical bishōnen. Ian Buruma notes that Yoshitsune was considered by contemporaries to be not physically prepossessing, but that his legend later grew and due to this, he became depicted with good looks. Abe no Seimei
was depicted according to the standards of a Heian-era middle-aged man, but since 1989 he has been depicted as a modern-style bishonen.
Kyokutei Bakin
wrote many works with nanshoku undertones featuring bishonen characters, and in 1848 he used the term bishonen in the title of a work about the younger wakashu partner in the nanshoku relationship.
The bishōnen aesthetic is perpetuated today in anime
and manga
, especially shōjo and BL
.
and manga
fans use the term to refer to any handsome male character regardless of age, or any homosexual character. In the original Japanese, however, bishōnen applies only to boys under 18. For those older, the word bidanshi, literally "handsome man" is used. In the place of bishōnen, some fans prefer to use the slightly more sexually neutral bishie (also spelled as bishi) or bijin, but these terms remain less common. The term binanshi was popular in the 1980s. Bishōnen is occasionally used to describe some androgynous female characters, such as Takarazuka actors, Lady Oscar
in The Rose of Versailles
, or any women with traits stereotypical
to bishōnen.
Bishōnen is also used to describe an anime or manga
character who is drawn as if a female, but has male components. This would make it easier for the artist to create a feminine male, rather than drawing a male character regularly.
Scottish pop singer Momus
notably used the term in his song, "Bishonen" from the "Tender Pervert" album (released on Creation Records). Almost 8 minutes long, the song is an epic tale of a young boy raised to die young by an eccentric stepfather.
to this day.
In particular, Japan's largest male talent agency, Johnny & Associates
Entertainment Company specializes only in producing male Tarento idols
. Accepted into Johnny & Associates in their early teens, these boys, collectively known as 'Johnnys', are trained and promoted to become the next leading singing-acting-commercially successful hit sensations. Almost all can be classifed as bishōnen, exhibiting the same physically feminine
features combined with a sometimes deliberately ambivalent sexuality
or at the very least, a lack of any hint of a relationship in order to maintain their popular availability.
Current bishōnen examples from the same agency include Tomohisa Yamashita
of J-pop
group NEWS
, Jin Akanishi
and Kazuya Kamenashi
of KAT-TUN
, Takuya Kimura
of SMAP
, and Jun Matsumoto
of Arashi
, all of whom are phenomenally successful throughout East Asia by appealing to both younger and older women and whose widely praised, gender-incongruous physical beauty is often deliberately manipulated in terms of role-playing
and, most commonly, fanservice.
. In art, bishōnen are usually drawn delicately, with long limbs, silky or flowing hair, and slender eyes with long eyelashes that can sometimes extend beyond the face. The character's "sex appeal" is highlighted through introducing the character by using an "eroticized" full page spread. Characters with "bulging muscles" are rarely considered bishonen, as they are too masculine.
Bishōnen characters are fairly common in manga
and anime
; a heavy number of male characters show subtle signs of the bishōnen style, such as slender eyes or a feminine
face.
Some manga are completely drawn in the bishonen style, such as Dragon Knights
. Bishōnen manga are generally shōjo manga (girls' comics) or yaoi
(girls' comics focused on homosexual
relationships between beautiful boys), however shōnen manga (boy's comics) may use casts of bishōnen characters for crossover appeal to female readers.
For even more art, the three Demon Triplets from an Anime "Kuroshitsuji" can be called to the scene. Thompson, Timber, and Cantebury. All three are an example of a bish. Those three are also commonly included into yaoi fanfiction.
("beautiful girl") is often mistakenly considered a parallel of bishōnen, because of the similar construction of the terms. There are major differences between the two aesthetics. The bishōjo aesthetic is aimed at a male audience, and is typically centered around young girls, drawn in a cute, pretty style; bishōnen is centered around teenage boys, drawn elegantly. Another common mistake is assuming that the female characters in bishōnen manga and anime are bishōjo. In truth, female characters in bishōnen manga are very different from those in bishōjo; bishōjo females are usually more petite and drawn in a style that is cute rather than beautiful, whereas bishōnen females exhibit the long limbs and elegance of the bishōnen.
For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations"
James Welker describes the bishonen as being "queer
", as the bishonen is an androgynous aesthete with a feminine soul "who lives and loves outside of the heteropatriarchal world".
Jonathan D. Mackintosh believes that the bishonen is a "traditional representation of youth", being "interstitial" between both childhood and adulthood and between being male and being female, regardless of the sexual issues.
Ishida Hitoshi makes the case that the image of the bishōnen is more about a grounding in sexuality than a transcendence of it, drawing on the idea of the image as being a refuge for alternative methods of looking at sexual natures, and sexual realities, at least since the 60's, rather than the elegiac aesthetics of usages in an earlier era.
Representations of men in manga by and for men show "an idealized man being ultramasculine and phallic", bishonen are conversely drawn to "emphasize their beauty and sensuality", and female artists have been said to react against the ultramasculine representation by showing androgynous and "aesthetically beautiful" men.
Ian Buruma
, writing in 1984 considered the "bishonen in distress" to be a recurring motif in popular manga. The bishonen in distress is always rescued by an older, protective, mentor. This scenario has an "unmistakably homoerotic" atmosphere. He also notes that bishonen must either grow up, or die beautifully. He considers the "worship" of the bishonen to be the same as that of the sakura, and notes that "death is the only pure and thus fitting end to the perfection of youth."
A similar, South Korean aesthetic has been noted in the kkot-mi-nam ('flowery pretty boy').
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
term literally meaning "beautiful youth (boy)". The equivalent English concept is a "pretty boy".
The term describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
: a young man whose beauty
Beauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
(and sexual
Sexual attraction
Sexual attractiveness or sex appeal refers to an individual's ability to attract the sexual or erotic interest of another person, and is a factor in sexual selection or mate choice. The attraction can be to the physical or other qualities or traits of a person, or to such qualities in the context...
appeal) transcends the boundary of gender
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
or sexual orientation. It has always shown the strongest manifestation in Japanese pop culture, gaining in popularity due to the androgynous glam rock bands of the 1970s, but it has roots in ancient Japanese literature
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
, the homosocial
Homosocial
In sociology, homosociality describes same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, or others. The opposite of homosocial is heterosocial, preferring non-sexual relations with the opposite sex...
and homoerotic ideals of the medieval Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
imperial court
Noble court
The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure...
and intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
s, and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n aesthetic concepts carried over from Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
, imported with Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
to China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
Today, bishōnen are very popular among girls and women in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Reasons for this social phenomenon
Social phenomenon
Social phenomena include all behavior which influences or is influenced by organisms sufficiently alive to respond to one another.-See also:*Forms of activity and interpersonal relations*List of sociology topics*Social fact-References:...
may include the unique male and female social relationships found within the genre. Some have theorized that bishōnen provide a non-traditional outlet for gender relations. Moreover, it breaks down stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s surrounding feminine male characters. These are often depicted with very strong martial arts
Martial arts
Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....
abilities, sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
s talent, high intelligence, or comedic flair, traits that are usually assigned to the hero/protagonist.
Origin
The prefix bi (美) more often than not refers to feminineGender role
Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...
beauty, and bijin
Bijinga
Bijinga , is a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art, especially in woodblock printing of the ukiyo-e genre, which predate photography...
, literally "beautiful person", is usually, though not always, used to refer to beautiful women. Bichūnen means "beautiful middle-aged man". Biseinen is to be distinguished from bishōnen as seinen is used to describe men who are of age, including those who have entered or completed tertiary education. The term shōnen is used to describe boys of middle and high school age. Last, bishota can be used to refer to a beautiful, pre-pubescent male child or a child-like male. Outside Japan, bishōnen is the most well-known of the three terms, and has become a generic term for all beautiful boys and young men.
The aesthetic of the bishōnen began as an ideal of a young homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
lover, originally embodied in the wakashū
Wakashū
Wakashū , is a historical Japanese term indicating an adolescent boy; more specifically, a boy between the ages at which his head was partially shaven , at which point a boy exited early childhood and could begin formal education, apprenticeship, or employment outside the home,...
(若衆, literally "young person", although only used for boys), or adolescent boy, and was influenced by the effeminate male actors
Oyama (Japanese theatre)
Onnagata or oyama , are male actors who impersonate women in Japanese kabuki theatre. The modern all-male kabuki was originally known as yarō kabuki to distinguish it from earlier forms...
who played female characters in kabuki theater
Kabuki
is classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
. The term arose in the Meiji era, in part to replace the by then obsolete erotic meaning of the older term wakashū, whose general meaning of "adolescent boy" had by this point been supplanted by the new term shōnen
Shonen
The term refers to manga marketed to a male audience aged roughly 10 and up. The Kanji characters literally mean "few" and "year", respectively, where the characters generally mean "comic"...
. The bishōnen was conceived of as "aesthetically different from both women and men [...] both the antithesis and the antecedent of adult masculinity".
The bishōnen is typically slender, with clear skin, stylish hair, and distinctly feminine facial features (such as high cheekbones), but simultaneously retains a male body. This androgynous
Androgyny
Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ, stem ανδρ- and γυνή , referring to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics...
appearance is akin to the depiction of angels in Western renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
art, with similar social roots for this aesthetic.
The aesthetic of the bishōnen was recorded in Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
's Tale of Genji, written in about the year 1000 A.D. Genji concerns the exploits and romances of a young prince, the son of an emperor and beloved concubine, who is not in line to inherit the throne, and follows his intrigues through the court as he comes of age. The novel typifies the Heian
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
age of Japanese history, a period of highly-stylized romance. Prince Genji's
Hikaru Genji
is the protagonist of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. In the story, he is described as the most handsome man in the world and he attracts all women. Genji is the second son of Emperor Kiritsubo , but he is delegated to civilian life for political reasons and begins a career as an imperial...
beauty is described as transcendental, so much so that "one could have wished him a woman", with a bewitching attraction that is acknowledged by men and women alike.
Minamoto no Yoshitsune
Minamoto no Yoshitsune
was a general of the Minamoto clan of Japan in the late Heian and early Kamakura period. Yoshitsune was the ninth son of Minamoto no Yoshitomo, and the third and final son and child that Yoshitomo would father with Tokiwa Gozen. Yoshitsune's older brother Minamoto no Yoritomo founded the Kamakura...
and Amakusa Shirō
Amakusa Shiro
also known as was the teenage leader of the Shimabara Rebellion.- Biography :The son of former Konishi clan retainer , Shirō was born in modern-day Kami-Amakusa, Kumamoto in a Catholic family...
have been identified as historical bishōnen. Ian Buruma notes that Yoshitsune was considered by contemporaries to be not physically prepossessing, but that his legend later grew and due to this, he became depicted with good looks. Abe no Seimei
Abe no Seimei
was an onmyōji, a leading specialist of onmyōdō during the middle of the Heian Period in Japan. In addition to his prominence in history, he is a legendary figure in Japanese folklore and has been portrayed in a number of stories and films....
was depicted according to the standards of a Heian-era middle-aged man, but since 1989 he has been depicted as a modern-style bishonen.
Kyokutei Bakin
Kyokutei Bakin
was a late Japanese Edo period gesaku author best known for works such as Nansō Satomi Hakkenden and Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki.-Life:He was born as , he wrote under the pen name which is a pun as the kanji may also be read as Kuruwa de Makoto meaning a man who is truly devoted to the courtesans of...
wrote many works with nanshoku undertones featuring bishonen characters, and in 1848 he used the term bishonen in the title of a work about the younger wakashu partner in the nanshoku relationship.
The bishōnen aesthetic is perpetuated today in anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
and manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
, especially shōjo and BL
Yaoi
In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...
.
Usage
Some non-Japanese, especially American, animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
and manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
fans use the term to refer to any handsome male character regardless of age, or any homosexual character. In the original Japanese, however, bishōnen applies only to boys under 18. For those older, the word bidanshi, literally "handsome man" is used. In the place of bishōnen, some fans prefer to use the slightly more sexually neutral bishie (also spelled as bishi) or bijin, but these terms remain less common. The term binanshi was popular in the 1980s. Bishōnen is occasionally used to describe some androgynous female characters, such as Takarazuka actors, Lady Oscar
Oscar François de Jarjayes
is one of the main characters in the manga/anime series The Rose of Versailles, created by Riyoko Ikeda.-Character history:Born the last of five daughters to the Commander of the Royal Guards, General François Augustin Regnier de Jarjayes she is raised by her father as if she were a boy in order...
in The Rose of Versailles
The Rose of Versailles
, also known as Lady Oscar or La Rose de Versailles, is one of the best-known titles in shōjo manga and a media franchise created by Riyoko Ikeda. It has been adapted into several Takarazuka Revue musicals, as well an anime television series, produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and broadcast by the...
, or any women with traits stereotypical
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
to bishōnen.
Bishōnen is also used to describe an anime or manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
character who is drawn as if a female, but has male components. This would make it easier for the artist to create a feminine male, rather than drawing a male character regularly.
Scottish pop singer Momus
Momus (artist)
Nick Currie , more popularly known under the artist name Momus , is a songwriter, blogger and former journalist for Wired...
notably used the term in his song, "Bishonen" from the "Tender Pervert" album (released on Creation Records). Almost 8 minutes long, the song is an epic tale of a young boy raised to die young by an eccentric stepfather.
Popular culture
The enduring preference for bishōnen males can clearly be seen in Japan and throughout parts of East AsiaEast Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
to this day.
In particular, Japan's largest male talent agency, Johnny & Associates
Johnny & Associates
is a talent agency formed by Johnny Kitagawa in 1962. Johnny & Associates trains and promotes groups of male idols, collectively known as , in Japan.-1962–1989:...
Entertainment Company specializes only in producing male Tarento idols
Tarento
is a Japanese rendering of the English word "talent" and is used as a catch-all term for mass media personalities who regularly appear on television. Detractors of the phenomenon have referred to it in an English sense as "famous just for being famous" because many that fall into this career line...
. Accepted into Johnny & Associates in their early teens, these boys, collectively known as 'Johnnys', are trained and promoted to become the next leading singing-acting-commercially successful hit sensations. Almost all can be classifed as bishōnen, exhibiting the same physically feminine
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
features combined with a sometimes deliberately ambivalent sexuality
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
or at the very least, a lack of any hint of a relationship in order to maintain their popular availability.
Current bishōnen examples from the same agency include Tomohisa Yamashita
Tomohisa Yamashita
, also widely known as Yamapi, is a Japanese idol, actor, and singer.Yamashita joined the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates in 1996 at the age of 11 and made his official CD debut with NEWS in 2004. He debuted as a solo artist in 2006 with the hit single "Daite Senorita". His first solo...
of J-pop
J-pop
, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music, such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene...
group NEWS
NeWS
NeWS was a windowing system developed by Sun Microsystems in the mid 1980s. Originally known as "SunDew", its primary authors were James Gosling and David S. H. Rosenthal...
, Jin Akanishi
Jin Akanishi
is a Japanese idol, singer-songwriter, actor, seiyū, and former radio host. Akanishi is a former member of the J-pop group, KAT-TUN, and was one of the two lead vocalists...
and Kazuya Kamenashi
Kazuya Kamenashi
, often called Kame, is a Japanese idol, singer–songwriter, actor, television personality, producer, radio host and occasional model. Born and raised in Edogawa, Tokyo, he joined the Japanese talent agency, Johnny & Associates, at the age of 12 and was drafted as a member and co-lead vocalist of...
of KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN
KAT-TUN is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates in 2001. The group's name is an acronym based on the first letter of each member's family name until the departure of Jin Akanishi in 2010. As of 2010, KAT-TUN stands for Kazuya KAmenashi, Junnosuke Taguchi, Koki Tanaka, Tatsuya Ueda,...
, Takuya Kimura
Takuya Kimura
, nicknamed , is a Japanese singer and actor. He is also a member of the Japanese idol group SMAP. Most of the TV dramas he starred in produced high ratings in Japan...
of SMAP
SMAP
SMAP is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates. While originally consisting of six members, the current group members are Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori...
, and Jun Matsumoto
Jun Matsumoto
, often called by the portmanteau nickname , is a Japanese idol, singer, actor and radio host. He is a member of Japanese boy band Arashi and is best known to Japanese television drama audiences for his portrayal as Tsukasa Dōmyōji in the Hana Yori Dango series, in which he won GQ Japan's Man Of...
of Arashi
Arashi
is a Japanese boy band formed under the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates, which announced the formation of the group on November 3, 1999 in Honolulu, Hawaii...
, all of whom are phenomenally successful throughout East Asia by appealing to both younger and older women and whose widely praised, gender-incongruous physical beauty is often deliberately manipulated in terms of role-playing
Role-playing
Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role...
and, most commonly, fanservice.
Art
Besides being a character type, bishōnen is also a distinct art style not usually forgotten in books about drawing mangaManga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
. In art, bishōnen are usually drawn delicately, with long limbs, silky or flowing hair, and slender eyes with long eyelashes that can sometimes extend beyond the face. The character's "sex appeal" is highlighted through introducing the character by using an "eroticized" full page spread. Characters with "bulging muscles" are rarely considered bishonen, as they are too masculine.
Bishōnen characters are fairly common in manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
and anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
; a heavy number of male characters show subtle signs of the bishōnen style, such as slender eyes or a feminine
Femininity
Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...
face.
Some manga are completely drawn in the bishonen style, such as Dragon Knights
Dragon Knights
is a manga series drawn by Mineko Ohkami and shown in the monthly Japanese magazine Wings. The manga is translated in the United States by Tokyopop...
. Bishōnen manga are generally shōjo manga (girls' comics) or yaoi
Yaoi
In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, . The English equivalent is . also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by...
(girls' comics focused on homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
relationships between beautiful boys), however shōnen manga (boy's comics) may use casts of bishōnen characters for crossover appeal to female readers.
For even more art, the three Demon Triplets from an Anime "Kuroshitsuji" can be called to the scene. Thompson, Timber, and Cantebury. All three are an example of a bish. Those three are also commonly included into yaoi fanfiction.
Bishōnen and Bishōjo
BishōjoBishojo
is a Japanese term used to refer to young and pretty girls, usually below university age. Bishōjo is not listed as a word in the prominent Japanese dictionary Kōjien...
("beautiful girl") is often mistakenly considered a parallel of bishōnen, because of the similar construction of the terms. There are major differences between the two aesthetics. The bishōjo aesthetic is aimed at a male audience, and is typically centered around young girls, drawn in a cute, pretty style; bishōnen is centered around teenage boys, drawn elegantly. Another common mistake is assuming that the female characters in bishōnen manga and anime are bishōjo. In truth, female characters in bishōnen manga are very different from those in bishōjo; bishōjo females are usually more petite and drawn in a style that is cute rather than beautiful, whereas bishōnen females exhibit the long limbs and elegance of the bishōnen.
Critical attention
Several cultural anthropologists and authors have raised the multifaceted aspect of what bishonen represents and what it is interpreted as, mostly to fit a particular external viewpoint. Ian Buruma noted that although Western comics for girls also included "impossibly beautiful men" who are clearly masculine and always get the girl in the end, the bishonen are "more ambivalent" and sometimes get each other.For Sandra Buckley, bishōnen narratives champion “the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations"
James Welker describes the bishonen as being "queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
", as the bishonen is an androgynous aesthete with a feminine soul "who lives and loves outside of the heteropatriarchal world".
Jonathan D. Mackintosh believes that the bishonen is a "traditional representation of youth", being "interstitial" between both childhood and adulthood and between being male and being female, regardless of the sexual issues.
Ishida Hitoshi makes the case that the image of the bishōnen is more about a grounding in sexuality than a transcendence of it, drawing on the idea of the image as being a refuge for alternative methods of looking at sexual natures, and sexual realities, at least since the 60's, rather than the elegiac aesthetics of usages in an earlier era.
Representations of men in manga by and for men show "an idealized man being ultramasculine and phallic", bishonen are conversely drawn to "emphasize their beauty and sensuality", and female artists have been said to react against the ultramasculine representation by showing androgynous and "aesthetically beautiful" men.
Ian Buruma
Ian Buruma
Buruma is a nephew of the English film director John Schlesinger, a series of interviews with whom he published in book form.-Works:*The Japanese Tattoo with Donald Richie ISBN 978-0-8348-0228-5...
, writing in 1984 considered the "bishonen in distress" to be a recurring motif in popular manga. The bishonen in distress is always rescued by an older, protective, mentor. This scenario has an "unmistakably homoerotic" atmosphere. He also notes that bishonen must either grow up, or die beautifully. He considers the "worship" of the bishonen to be the same as that of the sakura, and notes that "death is the only pure and thus fitting end to the perfection of youth."
A similar, South Korean aesthetic has been noted in the kkot-mi-nam ('flowery pretty boy').