History of Yuri genre
Yuri genre is a descendent of Class C genre. Class C typically features stories about schoolgirls where the young girl is (platonically) in love with an older one. Class C can be both seen as a genre that features deep and close female friendship and as a genre that features lesbian relationship.
Class C genre was inspired by Takarazuka theater (all roles are played by women) that appeared in Japan in 1914.
Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973) is considered to be one of the most influential Class C writers in the 20th century. Yoshiya Nobuko is also an example of an openly homosexual Japanese female writer.
Yaneura no nishojo by Yoshiya Nobuko (1919) features love relationship between two women.
First yuri manga was written by Ryoko Yamagishi in 1971. It is called Shiroi heiya no futari. The absolute majority of yuri stories written during the 1970s and 1980s are very tragic.
Ikeda Ryoko's works "Lady Oscar" and "Onii-sama he" are often considered yuri but in truth both of these works focus on uneasy platonic relationship between women rather then lesbian love.
In early 1990s Akihito Wakuni published a volume that included both first yuri manga with a somewhat happy ending (Jukkai me no jukkai) and a trans lesbian love story (Odamari)
https://charleneveta.blogspot.com/2019/02/jukkai-me-no-jukkai-yuri-manga-1992.html
https://charleneveta.blogspot.com/2019/02/odamari-trans-lesbian-manga-1992.html
Anime Sailor Moon (1992) famously features a lesbian couple (Haruka and Michiru) and is considered a groundbreaking work when it comes to yuri genre. Sailor moon also features a gay couple and several non-binary characters. Sailor Moon is based on manga by Naoko Takeuchi but anime has more queer characters then the manga does. However the original manga features the lesbian couple.
If you are interested in yuri genre I would recommend to visit this website:
http://www.yuricon.com/essays/
Also you can watch a video about history of yuri genre here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Te2epyC_4
Comments
Post a Comment