Yaoi Novels - A Different Sensibility

As I mentioned in my last post, yaoi novels are similar to m/m romance novels in some ways and not in others. The main thing about them that is (enjoyably) different is the Japanese setting and sensibility.

Only a small percentage of yaoi novels have been translated and adapted into English, so it's hard to make general statements about "what yaoi novels are like." But in my experience, the stories and characters are as varied as they are in American m/m stories. The stories range from sweet to explicit to downright raunchy, just as m/m stories do; and the characters in these novels are equally diverse.

One of my favorite yaoi novels is Sweet Admiration. The protagonist of Sweet Admiration is Katsuya, a recent college graduate who comes to Tokyo to work for a start-up company. His ulterior motive for accepting a job with this company is that Shio, the older brother of his childhood friend Kazuki, works there.



Where Sweet Admiration differs from an American m/m story is that Katsuya unexpectedly finds himself as Shio's roommate in a "company housing" situation. (In Japan there are company dormitories and other forms of company housing. Imagine working twelve-hour days and then coming home to live with your co-workers. :0)

Sweet Admiration is, as its title implies, sweet rather than explicit. With the exception of a few sex scenes toward the end, the emphasis is on Katsuya's feelings about his growing relationship with Shio. On the other end of the explicitness scale is All You Need Is Love, a yakuza story set in the urban wilds of Kabuki-cho, Tokyo's red light district.




Junya Sawa and Uzuki Kobayakawa met in high school and had a brief relationship before things went disastrously wrong. Now it's years later and Uzuki, the heir to a yakuza clan, falls even harder for Junya than before. Uzuki is an ultra-seme of the first order, dominating Junya to within an inch of his life, and the sex scenes in All You Need Is Love are some of the most explicit that I've read outside of actual porn - second only to the sex scenes in Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, another Digital Manga Publishing series that I'm the English adaptation writer on.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I was the English adaptation writer, aka translation rewriter, on All You Need Is Love, vol. II and on the next three novels I want to mention.)



A very different kind of yaoi love story can be found in Love Water, set in the Meiji Era. Misao is an indentured servant in a Osaka brothel who finds an unexpected chance at love in the form of Masaomi, a wealthy heir to a corporation. I wrote about Love Water in my other blog, which you can read here.



I Want to Bite is a vampire story set in a contemporary urban fantasy setting where Isaac, a college student by day and overworked vampire hunter at night, finds himself partnered with vampire Tristan in order to bring down an evil vampire lord. Isaac fights his attraction to Tristan, but of course, lustlove wins the day eventually...



Finally, my personal favorite of the yaoi novels I've worked on is the infamously-named Eat or Be Eaten which, yes, does actually take place in the restaurant industry. ;) Masaki is a consultant hired to find the perfect chef for a five-star French restaurant in Tokyo. When he finds Tsubaki, the ideal person for the job, he offers to work for free for one month at Tsubaki's restaurant so that he can try to win him over for the new restaurant. Masaki finds himself strangely attracted to the gruff Tsubaki, and well... much eating ensues. ;)

Yaoi novels speak to the same part of the imagination as m/m romance novels do, only in a subtly different voice - a Japanese voice. These stories unmistakably come from another culture. Even considering the recent censorship controversy about The Selfish Demon King and its possible underage issue, all of the characters in the yaoi novels I've discussed here - with the exception of Misao in Love Water who I think is just over the age of consent - are in their 20s or 30s. Yaoi novels aren't all about older men and teenage boys: they don't all contain exaggerated seme and uke characters either. And yaoi novels have been published and openly accepted as a part of Japanese culture for decades longer than m/m stories have been in the U.S. If you're an m/m romance reader who would welcome a window into Japanese culture to go along with your m/m romance fix, consider giving yaoi novels a try.