Taiwanese scholar Yang Ruohui analyzed works of girls' animation s, comics and games ACG , to investigate "yuri," or same-sex, culture in her latest book.
Yuri refers to a genre of Japanese media focusing on relationships between women or girls. Yang firstly develops a general picture of the genre's evolution. The word yuri literally means "lily," and is a relatively common Japanese girl's name. The topics yuri deals with have their roots in the Japanese lesbian fiction of the early 20th century.
However, it was not until the s that lesbian-themed works began to appear in manga. In , the first manga magazine specifically dedicated to yuri , "Yuri Shimai", was launched, attracting readership from around the world. Yang then analyzes the distribution of members of an online Chinese social group called Yuri Forum and studied how the yuri culture spread to China.
After detailed study of the publication and creation of yuri -themed works in Taiwan Province, Yang finds that there are few original publications from the most popular works, despite a flourishing yuri industry in the region.
She also conducted a large-scale survey among the online yuri fanbase, in which she found that most readers are female. While respondents noted feeling spiritually satisfied when reading works with such strong initiative, the publications have diverted people's attention from widespread gender discrimination inherent even in the texts, Yang points out.
