It’s 8/01! And according to Crunchyroll,

n Japanese, a short reading of “801” can be reading 8 as “ya,” 0 as a western influenced “o” and 1 as “i.” So, the “yaoi” numeric sequence has become otaku shorthand for the genre of male romance media and, following that logic, in countries that list the date month-day, August 1st is yaoi day!

When I lived in Japan, people didn’t really say “yaoi” anymore to describe the genre, but the phrase BL was primarily how M/M and boys love romances were termed.

According to Japan Powered,

Yaoi is an acronym, by the way. It stands for: yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (no climax, no point, and no meaning).  The acronym sounds sexual but actually refers to the story structures used in the sub-genre. Osamu Tezuka was said to be the first to use the phrase to describe poor quality manga.

So, yaoi hasn’t always had a good rep. It came about in the 1970s as a part of the shojo demographic, and is predominantly created by women for women, despite the depiction of homosexual relationships. These are meant to be idealized. As Japan Powered says,

Interestingly, yaoi characters typically do not identify as homosexual. They are more neutrally in love with a particular character as opposed to being a certain sexual orientation.  Male characters also help avoid misogyny, female stereotypes, and sometimes abusive treatment of female characters in sexual scenes.

It it thought that yaoi allows girls to safely explore different sexual identities free from stereotypes and societal norms. The androgynous designs of the characters can let a reader see the characters as both male, male and female, or even both female. Also, the characters tend to relate to each other as equals more than a traditional male/female relationship.

I’ve written about my love of BL before…and did some research that corroborates much of what’s already been said about it.

For years I hid my love of BL/yaoi. I was ashamed because I was into sexually explicit material–I was not ashamed of liking M/M relationships. It was all the naked people and spicy scenes. It wasn’t until I moved to Japan that I came out and proud as a fujoshi or “rotten girl” and openly purchased hundreds of BL manga when I lived there. I brought the best of the best home, then started collecting English yaoi thanks to publishers like Seven Seas, TOKYOPOP, Kodansha, and many others making it available to English-speaking readers.

I also got into BL manhwa, or Korean comics (you can see in my collage An Easy Target and BJ Alex, two of my faves and of very different styles). And now I’m into manhua, too, but due to censorship there’s no explicit homosexuality in the art. Just a lot of subtlety and cues.

I celebrate yaoi/BL from all cultures. So today, I’m going to honor the genre by reading more BL (I do it all the time).