Yup, and that's because Japan is not a Christian (or even Abrahamic) country and nobody believes that homosexuality is a sin. Shintoism and Buddhism have no beef with homosexuality. Heck, in Samurai culture, men were even encouraged to do it -- at least up to a certain age. Today, there are scores of clubs with crossdressing hosts or hostesses, catering to a heterosexual clientele who wants to indulge in queer kinkiness... and these are mainstream places frequented even by married people or by people in company outings.

The pressure to marry and have children in modern Japan exists at a family level, not a religious level. As for social pressure, well, it does exist, but it works mostly in indirect ways... like, a typical sarariman will have a much bigger chance to be promoted if he is married with children (because it makes him look more like a responsible adult).

The reason why it's rare to find a yuri story about Occidental-style repression of lesbianism is that such repression does not exist in Japan.

I am legit baffled, because you say there's not repression, but then you describe a bunch of stuff that would very reasonably cause repression (like social/family/economic pressure to have a "normal" life, or the association between queerness and irresponsibility).

I don't doubt there's plenty of ways the particular form of a society's homophobia trickles down onto the psychology of the individual queer people within that culture, so I imagine it takes a different form than in the US... a few years ago I read a thing about how Japanese lesbians have enormous difficulty STARTING relationships, because of the strong norm against women initiating romantic encounters. That of a specific kind we don't see nearly as much in the US. But I am just not following your logic of "they're not christian; instead they have other hangups, so there's not repression." In fact, from what I know of the daily life of a typical gay person in Japan, that's a bizarre and risible claim. Am I misunderstanding you somehow?

last edited at Jun 14, 2019 6:26PM

The story really has not made a single mention of her not understanding her feelings for a woman. She doesn't understand this excitement and feeling of love in general. Her uncertainty and confusion doesn't stem from the fact that she cheated with a woman, but rather that she has never felt this way about anyone.

And isn't that, given the manga's general tone of being about adult complexities and not shying away from unpleasant truths, kind of silly? It doesn't have to be the focus, but to have her experiencing this ennui in the face of societal expectations for marriage... and then to cheat with a woman and the woman's gender isn't looming particularly large on her mind... a pretty glaring bit of weirdness?

Am I misunderstanding you somehow?

Living in a society where, for ten or fifteen centuries, homosexuality was considered a crime and a mortal sin, where those suspected of it were stoned or burned at the stake, where, even today, people read and worship holy books that claim that, if you tolerate homosexuals living next to you, your city may be destroyed by heavenly fire...

... and living in a society where, for ten or fifteen centuries, homosexuality was considered okay, and sometimes even encouraged, where the religious and legal books don't say a word against homosexuality, where the greatest literary classics (like the Genji Monogatari or the Diary of Murasaki Shikibu) have main characters who are openly bisexual or homosexual and tell us of their happy same-sex encounters in a natural way and a positive light...

... is completely different. There's an abyss of difference.

If you need more reading on the subject, I can recommend some Japanese authors.

we get a lot more of ayano's thought processes next chapter, too

Am I misunderstanding you somehow?

Living in a society where, for ten or fifteen centuries, homosexuality was considered a crime and a mortal sin, where those suspected of it were stoned or burned at the stake, where, even today, people read and worship holy books that claim that, if you tolerate homosexuals living next to you, your city may be destroyed by heavenly fire...

... and living in a society where, for ten or fifteen centuries, homosexuality was considered okay, and sometimes even encouraged, where the religious and legal books don't say a word against homosexuality, where the greatest literary classics (like the Genji Monogatari or the Diary of Murasaki Shikibu) have main characters who are openly bisexual or homosexual and tell us of their happy same-sex encounters in a natural way and a positive light...

... is completely different. There's an abyss of difference.

If you need more reading on the subject, I can recommend some Japanese authors.

What you're saying here is very strange considering what I know of the actual life of actual gay Japanese people. I just did a quick google-search to re-update myself, and... yeah, coming to terms with your gayness in spite of repression is a thing. Telling your parents you're gay is a HUGE thing, and getting rejected is not super uncommon (and has awful emotional implications that don't translate super well to the way we think of things in the west). Being Gay is a huge deal there, because it could be seen of making a show of your weirdness. I kinda don't know why you keep talking about religion when Helen Keller could look at Japanese society and discern some problem stuff in there that would lead to repression.

I'm not a literature student, so I couldn't tell you much about the influence of the classics on modern culture in the two countries. But... like, Stonewall? The gay rights movement in Japan is decades younger than the one in the US. If you're talking about the specific notion of sin, then fine (though the Christian tradition certainly doesn't look at gayness as an identity, but rather as a thing you're tempted to do)... that wouldn't be in Japan, and that would affect things. But if you're somehow saying, like, "It's not realistic to portray Japanese people having psychological issues and anxieties in regards to their gayness, because there's no bible there," then you're just... wrong.

EDIT: This paper is old and not from a discipline I'm familiar with, but it has first-hand accounts of the kind of thing I'm talking about. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Saori_Kamano/publication/26837143_Entering_the_Lesbian_World_in_Japan/links/58e64b83a6fdcc6800b459f2/Entering-the-Lesbian-World-in-Japan.pdf
(what's changed in the last decade, in my understanding, is the commonness of queerness in media and entertainment, which makes it much less likely people will just not be aware it's a thing that exists)

last edited at Jun 14, 2019 8:08PM

(psst you prob shouldn't accuse people of being passive-aggressive and then immediately say you'd report them to the mods if you weren't such a nice person)

Lmao don't try to reason with BugDevil, she won't listen. It ain't her thing.

If she annoys you, just stop paying attention to her.

last edited at Jun 14, 2019 11:27PM

This story reminds me of "Instinct and a Chromosome", a really good manga I read 10 years ago. Maybe some of you remember it, too.

"Instinct and a Chromosome" is a 60-page oneshot about a lesbian girl in a relationship with a bisexual woman. I won't tell too much, but, in a nutshell: they are living happily together, then they break up because the bisexual lady decides she wants to marry a man and have children, then they get together again because this lady realizes her lesbian girlfriend is the one she really loves after all. The reactions in the comments were surprisingly similar to the reactions here: there was a lot of hate against Bi Girl (for pulling that shit and hurting her gf ) and a good deal of disapproval against Lez Girl (for accepting again the other chick after what she did ). Even though the conclusion was supposed to be a happy end, readers weren't very happy with what had transpired.

I'm seeing the same patterns in the comments here. Ayano and Akari start dating, yay! Ayano is married with a man, boo! Ayano wants to continue her affair with Akari, hurr?

If Ayano ever dumps and divorces her husband to be with Akari, we will have completed the circle! (ง͠° ͜ʖ ͡°)ง

last edited at Jun 14, 2019 11:31PM

Yeaaaaah okay you all if you like yuri with likeable girls in a relationship then drop this series. Cheaters are the absolute worst human beings and Ayano, one of the girls in the yuri pairing of this manga, is just a shameless cheater, while the other girl, Akari, who is honest and sincere, falls for this terrible person anyway. And then she decides she doesn't mind the infidelity of the skank and wants to keep having secret encounters with her anyway and it blows. Hell, I'm warning you, it's probably better to read this series for the heterosexual marriage relationship of Ayano and her nice guy husband, which looks much healthier, not the yuri with Akari with is nothing but bad stereotypes that perpetuate the warped image of desperate clingy lesbians and slutty bisexuals.

Sometimes I wish the anti-cheating crusaders would just look at the Cheating tag and take their energy somewhere else where they can be happy rather than furiously ranting about the moral turpitude of cheaters.

We know, cheating is bad behavior—that’s why it’s called “cheating.”

It’s also a thing that happens in the course of human events, and therefore is a thing that sometimes happens in stories. And that’s also why there’s a tag called Cheating.

last edited at Jun 15, 2019 6:33AM

The story really has not made a single mention of her not understanding her feelings for a woman. She doesn't understand this excitement and feeling of love in general. Her uncertainty and confusion doesn't stem from the fact that she cheated with a woman, but rather that she has never felt this way about anyone.

And isn't that, given the manga's general tone of being about adult complexities and not shying away from unpleasant truths, kind of silly? It doesn't have to be the focus, but to have her experiencing this ennui in the face of societal expectations for marriage... and then to cheat with a woman and the woman's gender isn't looming particularly large on her mind... a pretty glaring bit of weirdness?

Well, let me draw a comparison to another very grounded and rather popular Yuri work here then: Bloom Into You/Yagate Kimi ni Naru.
Ayano's struggle here reminds me a lot of Koito Yuu (the protagonist) in YagaKimi, who did not understand what love is, what it feels like and had wrong impressions imprinted on her by culture and media about what a "normal romance" should be like. YagaKimi revolves around two girls getting into a relationship slowly, but it is not technically about lesbianism at all. The idea of love, loving someone and not comprehening those feelings stand on their own.

This story seems rather reminiscent of that. Ayano is overwhelmed by feeling these emotions for anyone. There is no reason to be overly concerned with gender, when she just had a much grander experience that defies her emotional understanding.

Let me put it this way... this story up to now could be the exact same if she cheated with a man instead and felt these emotions for him.

Lmao don't try to reason with BugDevil, she won't listen. It ain't her thing.

If she annoys you, just stop paying attention to her.

Ah and here is the known liar and cause for the entire "conflict". So good to see you still prefer your echo chamber.

last edited at Jun 15, 2019 6:25AM

Shimura Takako is one mangaka I will always read with anticipation. Her stuff is rarely comfortable. Look at what Fumi had to go through in Aoi Hana, or Shuichi in Hourou Musuko or the MC in 34-sai Mushoku-san. Etc. The romances don't work according to wish fulfillment -- they're incidental to the dictates of the plot.

Nothing but the truth.
I'm a super big fan of Shimura Takako myself. I loved Aoi Hana so much! I'm always happy when a new series of hers comes out.
And you're right about her romantic plots, too. Heaven knows I love the lesbian wish-fulfillment romantic fantasies like A Room For Two or Kase-san, but I also enjoy the hell out of a good realistic story where things don't always go the way the readers expect for their satisfaction... and Shimura Takako provides that in spades!

I mean, just look at the other comments in this thread, and count how many of them are screeching diatribes against cheating... (even tho there was a tag warning 'bout it!)

The gay rights movement in Japan is decades younger than the one in the US.

You see, this is what you're doing wrong: you're looking at Japan through the eyes of the gay rights movement, and getting your data from gay movement activists. That won't do.

The gay rights movement in the US has been around for decades. And it has an extensive program, a program that has been finely tailored to suit the needs of the gay people in the US.

The gay rights movement in Japan is much younger. In fact, it was mostly organized by American activists who traveled to Japan to promote their ideas and theories. And it has an extensive program, a program that has been finely tailored to suit the needs of the gay people in the US.

Now, I wonder, do you see where the problem is?

Academic research shows that most homosexual men and women in Japan don't care for the gay rights movement. They don't feel the sort of alienation and discrimination American gays tend to experience, and they have their own social networks to deal with whatever concern they may meet. When they listen to gay movement people making speeches, it sounds so alien to them it's like those people are talking about a different country... which in fact is the case.

Nene is right. Japan has a completely different culture than the West when it comes to homosexuality. The "one size fits all" approach of American-style gay movement activists falls flat in face of this.

Can someone please restate how this "gay in Japan" debate affects the interpretation of this story/its characters?

(I realize that it is relevant, but I've lost the plot a bit on exactly what is being claimed about/for/against this specific story.)

Thanks.

Yeaaaaah okay you all if you like yuri with likeable girls in a relationship then drop this series. Cheaters are the absolute worst human beings and Ayano, one of the girls in the yuri pairing of this manga, is just a shameless cheater, while the other girl, Akari, who is honest and sincere, falls for this terrible person anyway. And then she decides she doesn't mind the infidelity of the skank and wants to keep having secret encounters with her anyway and it blows.

I guess it's time for you to stop reading this manga, then, and move on to stories that don't have the 'cheating' tag
The tags are not there just for show, ya know, they're supposed to be there to help you detect the themes & tropes you like and don't like, and dodge the stories you can tell from the start you won't enjoy

The gay rights movement in Japan is decades younger than the one in the US.

You see, this is what you're doing wrong: you're looking at Japan through the eyes of the gay rights movement, and getting your data from gay movement activists. That won't do.

The gay rights movement in the US has been around for decades. And it has an extensive program, a program that has been finely tailored to suit the needs of the gay people in the US.

The gay rights movement in Japan is much younger. In fact, it was mostly organized by American activists who traveled to Japan to promote their ideas and theories. And it has an extensive program, a program that has been finely tailored to suit the needs of the gay people in the US.

Now, I wonder, do you see where the problem is?

Academic research shows that most homosexual men and women in Japan don't care for the gay rights movement. They don't feel the sort of alienation and discrimination American gays tend to experience, and they have their own social networks to deal with whatever concern they may meet. When they listen to gay movement people making speeches, it sounds so alien to them it's like those people are talking about a different country... which in fact is the case.

Nene is right. Japan has a completely different culture than the West when it comes to homosexuality. The "one size fits all" approach of American-style gay movement activists falls flat in face of this.

I don't doubt that there's problems with Western gay rights activists imposing their cultural assumptions onto Japan! I'm sure there are things that don't translate well both ways, and a better job needs to be done to have the movement led by people within the Japanese LGBT community.

I absolutely do NOT accept the absolutely ludicrous claim that things are hunky-dory in Japan for gay people without any sort of gay rights movement. I'm legit shocked that anyone could think this is true. If all you're saying is "the discrimination and alienation the Japanese LGBT community experiences is of a different kind than what Western LGBT people go through" then fine... though there are plenty of similarities, and if you read the paper I posted, which was just interviews with Japanese lesbians talking about some of their very familiar problems and dismiss it as some sort of Western imposition that contains no useful information, then I don't know what you would accept. But if you're saying "the discrimination and alienation of the Japanese LGBT community is minimal," then I have no earthly idea what you're talking about.

Can someone please restate how this "gay in Japan" debate affects the interpretation of this story/its characters?

My original complaint was that yuri manga has a tendency to not want anyone to speak out loud about the gay part of a gay relationship, even within the own characters' heads. This is very silly, because having non-normative desires, especially the same kinds repeatedly, is very likely to be psychologically important to a Japanese person! Even IF you don't merge your identity with your sexuality (which, blame westerners if you want, but most Japanese people WOULD in 2019), it's still something you'd think about. The response, and I still feel like I must be misinterpreting it somehow, was "No one has to repress their gayness in Japan, because they're not christian."

It came to my mind for this manga not because it's especially bad in this regard, but because it apparently has a main character driven by normative pressure to marry, but who is attracted to women (or at least is attracted to one now)... and there's no textual acknowledgement on her part of the non-normativeness of that! It's like, the pressure to have a normal life is her driving psychological force, but meanwhile she has a "love is love; sometimes gender doesn't matter!" orientation toward gayness at the same time, and it's baffling.

The author could still surprise me and bring it up later. Like I said, it doesn't have to be THE major thing... the specific pressure to get married could still be the main issue. If it comes up SOME, that'd be fine. But when even a manga packaged as a complex adult story about complex adult emotions is coy about addressing it, there's something really weird about the medium. There's this desire to keep from ruining the innocent purity of youthful girl's love (in a story about grown-ups).

Sweet Blue Flowers was a very distinctive and weird example, because there's some (subtextual but clearly deliberate) addressing of this with the teacher, but there's so much coy subtlety, I reached the end of the story truly unsure if the main character's primary love interest is attracted to women or not.

last edited at Jun 15, 2019 3:07PM

Yeaaaaah okay you all if you like yuri with likeable girls in a relationship then drop this series. Cheaters are the absolute worst human beings and Ayano, one of the girls in the yuri pairing of this manga, is just a shameless cheater, while the other girl, Akari, who is honest and sincere, falls for this terrible person anyway. And then she decides she doesn't mind the infidelity of the skank and wants to keep having secret encounters with her anyway and it blows.

I guess it's time for you to stop reading this manga, then, and move on to stories that don't have the 'cheating' tag
The tags are not there just for show, ya know, they're supposed to be there to help you detect the themes & tropes you like and don't like, and dodge the stories you can tell from the start you won't enjoy

I can't believe that when we're finally done arguing, in another manga thread, against some guys who hate Age gap and all manga that feature it... now I come here to find people who hate Cheating and are damning this manga to hell. >_< It's like we are overrun by angry zealots who keep bashing every new series in the Dynasty reader to promote their particular brand of political correction! ʕ ͡° ʖ̯ ͡° ʔノ︵┻┻

One wonders what's the fun in constantly writing rants against stuff you dislike... you'd think fandom should be about finding something you like and enjoying it together with other persons who share your taste...

Look at the tags, for Pete's sake, and, if you don't like what you see, do yourself a favor and don't read that manga! Save yourselves a lot of time and angst...

last edited at Jun 15, 2019 7:15PM

Fuck, why I'm here again...

Fuck, why I'm here again...

IDK for you, but I end up here due to entering the thread to check for new posts... only to skip most of said new posts.

I feel so bad for the younger girl, even though did the do with the wife. Its shown that she's accidentally drawn to these people and have always ended up doing the do with married women. She actively has methods to avoid these women but still got stuck being attracted to the wife.

As for the wife, idk man. Wtf is up with her

Completely boring dead-end lives with nothing exciting ever happening. Glued to your monitor screen all day long. Joining forums out of tedium. Posting 3000+ messages, most of them freakishly large blocks of text, in 10 months. Dull, empty dead-end lives with absolutely nothing to do.

Lmao don't try to reason with BugDevil, she won't listen. It ain't her thing.

If she annoys you, just stop paying attention to her.

Ah and here is the known liar and cause for the entire "conflict". So good to see you still prefer your echo chamber.

Hey guys, I think once we're reaching the level of personal sniping, that's probably a good hint it's time to take a break. It doesn't really matter who started it, either - at this point it's just a derailment that need not be engaged with further. Consider dropping the off-topic chatter, so those of us interested in discussing the manga can do so in a more appetising environment.

Can someone please restate how this "gay in Japan" debate affects the interpretation of this story/its characters?

(I realize that it is relevant, but I've lost the plot a bit on exactly what is being claimed about/for/against this specific story.)

Thanks.

As for the rest, I'm going to echo Blastaar's words here, expanded to include all these various tangents we're off on at the moment. Discussion and debate are welcome, but off-topic derailments ought to be kept...in a different topic, preferably. If your discussions aren't directly relevant to the manga at hand, they likely need not exist in the manga's thread.

Just going to add that I endorse everything said above, and that it's doubly...no, triply...good because it's Pekoe saying it.

As for the rest, I'm going to echo Blastaar's words here, expanded to include all these various tangents we're off on at the moment. Discussion and debate are welcome, but off-topic derailments ought to be kept...in a different topic, preferably. If your discussions aren't directly relevant to the manga at hand, they likely need not exist in the manga's thread.

That means Blastaar & Nene can't talk anymore about Wild West novels? darn, and here I was hoping to learn more about those devilish Comanche hoss thieves......
just kiddin' :p

As for the rest, I'm going to echo Blastaar's words here, expanded to include all these various tangents we're off on at the moment. Discussion and debate are welcome, but off-topic derailments ought to be kept...in a different topic, preferably. If your discussions aren't directly relevant to the manga at hand, they likely need not exist in the manga's thread.

That means Blastaar & Nene can't talk anymore about Wild West novels? darn, and here I was hoping to learn more about those devilish Comanche hoss thieves......
just kiddin' :p

Knock yourself out.

https://dynasty-scans.com/forum/topics/10103-dynasty-cafe-a-home-for-off-topic-discussion-where-everyone-s-welcome

I feel so bad for the younger girl, even though did the do with the wife. Its shown that she's accidentally drawn to these people and have always ended up doing the do with married women. She actively has methods to avoid these women but still got stuck being attracted to the wife.

Younger girl? Oh? You caught my attention there.

Y'see, all this time, I was of the impression that Akari was the older one.

We can only guess, of course, as, even though we know Ayano is 35, we are never told Akari's exact age. But my guess was that they were very close in age, with Akari being slightly older.

My reasons? Well, mostly little details, like in chapter 2, page 13 - Akari: "I thought I'd found some sweet, innocent girl and seduced her." So Akari seemingly thought Ayano was the naive younger one in the couple?

In point of fact, she does act most of the time like she's way more experienced, and talks like she has a long history of broken romances behind her.

What makes you think Akari is younger? The difference in jobs?

I think that's what Shimura wanted, make us think Akari is older than Ayano, just like Akari believed, until ch.2 reveal, when we find she's 35
Akari is prolly in her late 20s, say 27 or 28, and she thought Ayano was 25 or so, younger than her, and we thought it too until the reveal when we find Ayano is 10 years older than she looks like
So at first it looked like: Akari 28, Ayano 25 or so.. then we find the truth: Ayano 35, Akari 28... I think that's how it is