Sanrūmu Nite

Sanrūmu Nite (Japanese: サンルームにて, transl. "In the Sunroom") is a Japanese manga one-shot written and illustrated by Keiko Takemiya. It was originally published in the December 1970 issue of the manga magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic under the title Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to... (雪と星と天使と, transl. "Snow and Stars and Angels and..."). It is the first work in the shōnen-ai genre (male–male romance manga, sometimes referred to as yaoi or "boys' love").

Sanrūmu Nite
Cover of Sanrūmu Nite in the Keiko Takemiya Collection e-book anthology series
サンルームにて
GenreShōnen-ai [1]
Created byKeiko Takemiya
Manga
Written byKeiko Takemiya
Published by
ImprintSun Comics
MagazineBessatsu Shōjo Comic
DemographicShōjo
Published1970

The story is a loosely adapted and condensed version of Takemiya's later manga series Kaze to Ki no Uta, and follows the relationship between a Roma teenaged boy and the son of a wealthy family. Takemiya faced difficulties in finding a publisher for Sanrūmu Nite due to its homoerotic subject material. Upon its publication, Sanrūmu Nite was a critical success; it is credited with establishing male–male romance as a discrete category of manga, and launching Takemiya's career as a manga artist in earnest

Plot

Serge Battour (セルジュ・バトール, Seruju Batōru),[lower-alpha 1] the teenaged son of a Roma fortuneteller, regularly visits an abandoned mansion to spend time in its sunroom. During one such visit he encounters Étoile Rael (エトアール・ライエル, Etoāru Raieru) and Angel Rael (エンジェル・ライエル, Enjeru Raieru), and learns they are respectively the son and daughter of a family that has recently taken up residence in the mansion. The siblings befriend Serge, and invite him to continue visiting the sunroom. Serge and Étoile gradually grow closer, though Étoile becomes deeply depressed and falls ill after Serge demurs from his romantic advances. Étoile's mother forbids the two from seeing each other, prompting Serge to infiltrate the mansion to visit him. Reunited, Étoile asks Serge to kiss him, which he obliges; Étoile then commits suicide by grabbing Serge's hand and using it to plunge a knife into his own stomach.[2]

Production

Context
Main article: Year 24 Group

Keiko Takemiya made her debut as a manga artist in 1967 in the context of a restrictive shōjo manga (girls' manga) publishing culture:[3] stories were marketed to an audience of children, were focused on uncomplicated subject material such as familial drama or romantic comedy,[4] and favored Cinderella-like female protagonists defined by their passivity.[5][6] The 1970s saw the ascendance of a new generation of shōjo artists who introduced a greater degree of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre, collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group.[lower-alpha 2] The group, of which Takemiya was a member, contributed significantly to the development of shōjo manga by expanding it to incorporate elements of science fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and same-sex romance: both male–male (shōnen-ai and yaoi) and female–female (yuri).[8]

Development

Takemiya grew up reading shōnen manga (manga for boys), and became interested in creating works that featured male rather than female protagonists.[1] She took particular interest in works depicting intense friendship and romance between male characters, and sought to create her own work depicting a "delicate friendship" between two boys.[1] By the early 1970s, Takemiya had already conceived of the plot and characters for what would become her acclaimed 1976 male–male romance series Kaze to Ki no Uta, but faced difficulty finding a publisher;[9] at the time, manga depicting romance between male characters did not yet exist as its own editorial category.[1]

Faced with these barriers, Takemiya sought to publish a "compact" version of Kaze to Ki no Uta in the form of Sanrūmu Nite.[9] Knowing that a male–male romance story was likely to be heavily edited or rejected by her editors, Takemiya adopted a twofold strategy: first, she included the character of Angel, which gave the story the impression of a love triangle narrative.[1] By having one of the central characters be a young girl, Sanrūmu Nite was able to "barely maintain the appearance of a shōjo manga",[1] with Takemiya remarking that Angel's inclusion "made it easier to tell the story. If there were only two boys, there would be no way to tell the story."[9] Second, she attempted to avoid revisions to the story by submitting Sanrūmu Nite to her editor Junya Yamamoto immediately before the publication deadline for its magazine Bessatsu Shōjo Comic.[1] Though Yamamoto expressed displeasure that the content of the story differed vastly from Takemiya's original pitch, there was no time to input edits, and the story was printed as-is.[1]

Release

The 50-page one-shot was published under the title Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to... in the December 1970 issue of Bessatsu Shōjo Comic.[9] In all subsequent releases, it has been published under the title Sanrūmu Nite.[1] As shōnen-ai did not yet exist as a category of manga, the story was marketed as "a manga with bishōnen as the main characters"; manga featuring bishōnen (literally "beautiful boys") as central characters were rare in female-centric shōjo manga of the era.[1] In 1976, Asahi Sonorama published an anthology of short stories by Takemiya titled Sanrūmu Nite under its Sun Comics imprint, which contains the titular one-shot manga.[10] In 1978, Chikuma Shobō also published an anthology containing Sanrūmu Nite, as part of its Keiko Takemiya Collection in the short-lived Gendai Manga Zenshū (現代まんが全集, "Complete Collection of Modern Manga") series.[11][lower-alpha 3] The one-shot was similarly included in anthologies of Takemiya's manga published by Kadokawa Shoten in 1990[14] and Media Factory in 2002.[15] In 2010, eBook Initiative Japan released an e-book anthology titled Sanrūmu Nite, featuring the titular one-shot and five other short stories by Takemiya from the early 1970s. The e-book was the third of fifteen short story volumes released as part of the company's digital Keiko Takemiya Collection.[16]

Legacy

"I think I was able to show the possibility of boys talking about love with each other in [Sanrūmu Nite]. The girls who read it responded so well to it that I wondered why there was such a strong reaction to it, unlike other works. I thought that it is girls who can make a 'story that is incomprehensible' to men into a 'story that is possible'."

— Keiko Takemiya[9][lower-alpha 4]

Sanrūmu Nite was the first work in the genre that would become known as shōnen-ai.[3][1][17] It played a significant role in establishing male–male romance as a discrete category of manga, and is credited with launching Takemiya's career as a manga artist in earnest.[18] Takemiya has described the one-shot as the "foundation" of Kaze to Ki no Uta, with both works sharing common narrative and thematic elements.[9] Both stories focus on a Roma teenager named Serge Battour, and his relationship with a blonde boy who dies at the end of the story; Serge and Étoile have been described as "prototypes" of Serge and Gilbert, the primary couple in Kaze to Ki no Uta.[2][17] A character similar to Carl Maïsser, a secondary character in Kaze to Ki no Uta, also appears in Sanrūmu Nite.[9]

Notes
  1. A character named "Serge Battour" also appears as a primary character in the later Kaze to Ki no Uta, though in that series, his surname is spelled in katakana as Batūru (バトゥール).
  2. The group was so named because its members were born in or around year 24 of the Shōwa era (or 1949 in the Gregorian calendar).[7]
  3. Chikuma Shobō's Gendai Manga Zenshū series ceased publication after the release of its first Takemiya volume in July 1978.[12] Chikuma Shobō filed for bankruptcy in summer 1978.[13]
  4. この作品で少年同士が愛を語る可能性を示すことができ たのではないかと思います。読 者の少女たちからは、なぜ他の作品と違ってこんなにも反応があるのだろうというくらい、手応えがあった。男性からしたら「訳が分からん話」が「あり得る話」になるのは、やっぱり女の子だな、と思いました。[9]

References
  1. Nakagawa, Yūsuke (October 15, 2019). 「COM」の終焉と「美少年マンガ」の登場 [The end of COM and the rise of bishōnen manga]. Gentosha Plus (in Japanese). Archived from the original on December 26, 2019.
  2. Nakano, Haruyuki (November 21, 2020). BL誕生50年の源流 美少年マンガの先駆「雪と星と天使と」 [The origin of 50 years of BL: Yuki to Hoshi to Tenshi to, the pioneer of bishōnen manga]. ZakZak (in Japanese). The Sankei Shimbun. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  3. Welker, James (2015). "A Brief History of Shōnen'ai, Yaoi and Boys Love". Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan. University Press of Mississippi: 47. doi:10.14325/mississippi/9781628461190.003.0003. ISBN 978-1-62846-119-0.
  4. Thorn, Rachel (2010). "The Magnificent Forty-Niners". A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. p. V. ISBN 978-1-60699-377-4. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  5. Matsui, Midori (1993). "Little girls were little boys: Displaced Femininity in the representation of homosexuality in Japanese girls' comics". In Gunew, S.; Yeatman, A. (eds.). Feminism and The Politics of Difference. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-895686-27-2.
  6. Suzuki, Kazuko (1999). Inness, Sherrie (ed.). "Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon". Millennium Girls: Today's Girls Around the World. London: Rowman & Littlefield: 246. ISBN 0-8476-9136-5.
  7. Hemmann, Kathryn (2020). Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. London: Springer Nature. p. 10. ISBN 978-3-030-18095-9.
  8. Toku, Masami (2004). "The Power of Girls' Comics: The Value and Contribution to Visual Culture and Society". Visual Culture Research in Art and Education. California State University, Chico. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved December 2, 2020.
  9. 竹宮惠子 カレイドスコープ [Keiko Takemiya: Kaleidoscope] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Shinchosha. September 16, 2016. p. 70. ISBN 978-4-10-602269-2.
  10. サンルームにて [Sanrūmu Nite]. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved March 29, 2022.
  11. 竹宮恵子集 [Keiko Takemiya Collection]. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved March 29, 2022.
  12. 竹宮恵子集 1 [Keiko Takemiya Collection 1]. Media Arts Database (in Japanese). Agency for Cultural Affairs. Retrieved April 18, 2022. 備考：2巻以降は未発行 [Notes: Volume 2 and beyond were not published.]
  13. Nagae, Akira (2011). いいことも悪いこともみんな書いた 筑摩書房の激動の七〇年／永江朗 [I wrote about it all, the good and the bad: The turbulent 70 years of Chikuma Shobō / Akira Nagae]. Chikuma Shobō (in Japanese). Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  14. Takemiya, Keiko (1990). ほほえむ少年 [Hohoemu Shōnen]. The Complete Keiko Takemiya (in Japanese). Vol. 27. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten. ISBN 4-04-852137-3.
  15. Takemiya, Keiko (2002). まほうつかいの弟子 [Mahōtsukai no Deshi]. MF Bunko (in Japanese). Tokyo: Media Factory. ISBN 4-8401-0503-0.
  16. 竹宮惠子作品集 サンルームにて [Keiko Takemiya Works Collection: Sanrūmu Nite]. eBook Japan (in Japanese). Yahoo! Japan. Retrieved April 18, 2022.
  17. Nekome, Yū (February 19, 2014). サンルームにて／竹宮恵子 [Sanrūmu Nite / Keiko Takemiya]. Otakuma Keizai Shinbun (in Japanese). CST Entertainment. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  18. Orbaugh, Sharalyn (2003). "Creativity and Constraint in Amateur Manga Production". U.S.–Japan Women's Journal (25): 114. JSTOR 42771905.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.