{{short description|Japanese term for an attractive young man}} {{For|the film|Bishonen (film)}} {{Redirect|Bishy|the radial route in York, England|Bishy Road}} {{italic title|reason=}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}} [[File:Gackt in 2008(2)(cropped).jpg|right|thumb|Gackt, a Japanese singer-songwriter, is considered to be one of the living manifestations of the ''bishōnen'' phenomenon.<ref>{{cite book | author=American Anthropological Association | title=Abstracts of the Annual Meeting -- American Anthropological Association | year=2003 | isbn=978-1-931303-15-6 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NMG0AAAAIAAJ | access-date=3 June 2023 | page=336 | quote="...popular music stars such as Gackt and Hyde, will trace their beautification efforts to a domestically - produced aesthetic. The recent appearance of living specimens of the bishounen..."}}</ref><ref name="Johnson">{{cite book |last=Johnson |first=Adrienne Renee |date=2019 |title=Shōjo Across Media: Exploring "Girl" Practices in Contemporary Japan |chapter=From Shōjo to Bangya(ru): Women and Visual Kei |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OcuJDwAAQBAJ |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=308, 322 |isbn=9783030014858 |quote=Laura Miller refers to Gackt, a widely recognizable Visual Kei performer (and former vocalist of Malice Mizer), for example, as a "living … specimen of bishōnen,"45 relating his "baroque, androgynous indeterminacy"46 too to The Rose of Versailles.47}}</ref>]]
{{nihongo||{{linktext|美少年}}|'''Bishōnen'''|{{IPA|ja|bʲiɕo̞ꜜːnẽ̞ɴ|IPA|ja-bishonen.ogg}}; also transliterated {{transliteration|ja|'''bishounen'''}}}} is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth (boy)" and describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in East Asia: a young man of androgynous beauty. This word originated from the Tang dynasty poem ''Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup'' by Du Fu.<ref>{{cite web |title=飲中八仙歌 | trans-title=Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup |url=https://kanbun.info/syubu/toushisen027.html |language=zh|quote=宗之瀟灑美少年 [He has Very High color and Beautiful boy.]}}</ref> It has always shown the strongest manifestation in Japanese pop culture, gaining in popularity due to the androgynous glam rock bands of the 1970s,<ref name=Orbaugh>{{cite book | last = Orbaugh | first =Sharalyn | editor = Sandra Buckley | title = Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture | publisher = Taylor & Francis | year = 2002 | pages = 45–46 | isbn = 0-415-14344-6 }}</ref> but it has roots in ancient Japanese literature, the androsocial and androerotic ideals of the medieval Chinese imperial court and intellectuals, and Indian aesthetic concepts carried over from Hinduism, imported with Buddhism to China.<ref name="encycle">{{cite book | last = Buckley | title = Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture | publisher = Taylor & Francis | year = 2002 | pages = 188, 522, 553 | isbn = 0-415-14344-6 }}</ref>{{Failed verification|reason=None of the pages mention bishonen: page 118 is about Harajuku; page 522 is about contemporary theatre; page 553 is about village depopulation.|date=December 2023}} Today, {{transliteration|ja|bishōnen}} are very popular among girls and women in Japan.<ref name="encycle"/> Reasons for this social phenomenon may include the unique male and female social relationships found within the genre. Some have theorized that {{transliteration|ja|bishōnen}} provide a non-traditional outlet for gender relations. Moreover, it breaks down stereotypes surrounding feminine male characters. These are often depicted with very strong martial arts abilities, sports talent, high intelligence, dandy fashion, or comedic flair, traits that are usually assigned to the hero/protagonist role.<ref name="mmsexuality">{{cite book|last=Pflugfelder|first=Gregory M.|title=Cartographies of desire: male-male sexuality in Japanese discourse, 1600-1950|publisher=University of California Press|year=1999|pages=221–234|isbn=0-520-20909-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pbIwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA228}}</ref>
==Origin== left|thumb|Yoshitsune, the most famous historical ''bishōnen'',<ref name="Yamazaki Yorifuji Yoshida Horn 2010 p. 202">{{cite book | last1=Yamazaki | first1=H. | last2=Yorifuji | first2=B. | last3=Yoshida | first3=T. | last4=Horn | first4=C.G. | title=The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service | publisher=Dark Horse | issue=v. 11 | year=2010 | isbn=978-1-59582-528-5 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7CYCDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 | access-date=2024-01-26 | page=202}}</ref> and his retainer Benkei view the falling cherry blossoms.
The prefix ''bi'' (美) more often than not refers to feminine beauty, and ''bijin'', literally "beautiful person", is usually, though not always, used to refer to beautiful women.<ref name="encycle" /> {{nihongo||美中年|Bichūnen}} means "beautiful middle-aged man".<ref name="imageandnarrative">{{cite web |url=http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/viewFile/130/101 |title=On The Iconic Difference between Couple Characters in ''Boys Love'' Manga |author=Febriani Sihombing |access-date=25 March 2011 |archive-date=21 July 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150721000737/http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/viewFile/130/101 |url-status=dead }}</ref> ''Biseinen'' is to be distinguished from ''bishōnen'' as {{nihongo||青年|seinen}} is used to describe men who are of age, including those who have entered or completed tertiary education. The term ''shōnen'' is used to describe boys of middle and high school age. Last, ''bishota'' can be used to refer to a beautiful, pre-pubescent male child or a childlike male.<ref name="encycle" /> Outside Japan, ''bishōnen'' is the most well-known of the three terms, and has become a generic term for all beautiful boys and young men.
The aesthetic of the ''bishōnen'' began as an ideal of a young lover, originally embodied in the {{nihongo||若衆|wakashū|extra=literally "young person", although only used for boys}}, or adolescent boy, and was influenced by the effeminate male actors who played female characters in kabuki theater. The term arose in the Meiji era, in part to replace the by then obsolete erotic meaning of the older term ''wakashū'', whose general meaning of "adolescent boy" had by this point been supplanted by the new term shōnen.<ref name="mmsexuality" /> The ''bishōnen'' was conceived of as "aesthetically different from both women and men [...] both the antithesis and the antecedent of adult masculinity".<ref name="mmsexuality" />
The ''bishōnen'' typically has the same traits as idealized female beauties in Japan: lustrous black hair, opaque skin, red cheeks, etc., but simultaneously retains a male body, making them aesthetically different from either men or women.<ref name="mmsexuality" /> Western audiences may perceive the ''bishōnen'' as the feminized masculine, but the Japanese perception is more that the ''bishōnen'' embodies both the male and female.<ref>{{cite web | title=Bishounen | website=Tofugu | date=26 September 2014 | url=https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bishounen/ | access-date=26 May 2025 |quote="Western readers may perceive bishounen ambiguity as effeminate, but that is a misreading. Bishounen as perceived by the Japanese audience are neither effeminate nor ambiguous; rather, they are seen as "something like angels, wholly male and female." Thus the character is sexually liberated, or is it the Japanese reader who is freed from their own traditional social restraints?"}}</ref>
Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Amakusa Shirō have been identified as historical ''bishōnen''.<ref>Drazen, Patrick (October 2002). '"A Very Pure Thing": Gay and Pseudo-Gay Themes' in ''Anime Explosion! The What, Why & Wow of Japanese Animation'' Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press pp.91-94. {{ISBN|1-880656-72-8}}.</ref> Ian Buruma notes that Yoshitsune was considered by contemporaries to be not physically prepossessing, but that his legend later grew and due to this, he became depicted with good looks.<ref>{{cite book|last=Buruma|first=Ian|author-link=Ian Buruma|title=A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture|publisher=Penguin Books|location=Great Britain|year=1985|orig-year=1984|isbn=978-0-14-007498-7|pages=132–135}}</ref> Abe no Seimei was depicted according to the standards of a Heian-era middle-aged man, but since 1989 he has been depicted as a modern-style ''bishōnen''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Miller|first=Laura|title=Extreme Makeover for a Heian-Era Wizard|journal=Mechademia|year=2008|volume=3|issue=1|pages=30–45|doi=10.1353/mec.0.0034|s2cid=121434600|url=https://umsl.academia.edu/LauraMiller/Papers/83064/Extreme_Makeover_for_a_Heian-Era_Wizard}}</ref>
Kyokutei Bakin wrote many works with ''nanshoku'' undertones featuring ''bishōnen'' characters,<ref>{{cite book|last=Reichert|first=James Robert|title=In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-male Sexuality in Meiji Literature |publisher=Stanford University Press|year=2006|pages=3–4|isbn=978-0-8047-5214-5}}</ref> and in 1848 he used the term ''bishōnen'' in the title of a work about the younger ''wakashu'' partner in the ''nanshoku'' relationship.<ref name=Orbaugh/>
The ''bishōnen'' aesthetic is continued today in anime and manga, especially ''shōjo'' and ''yaoi''.
==Usage== Some non-Japanese, especially American, anime and manga fans use the term to refer to any handsome male character regardless of age, or any homosexual character.<ref name="beauty">Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics. Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2006.{{ISBN|0520245091}}</ref> In the original Japanese, however, ''bishōnen'' applies only to boys under 18. For those older, the word {{nihongo||美男子|'''bidanshi'''|extra=literally "handsome man"}} is used. In the place of ''bishōnen'', some fans prefer to use the slightly more sexually neutral {{nihongo||美人|bijin}} or the Anglicized slang term "bishie" (also spelled "bishi"), but these terms remain less common. The term ''binanshi'' was popular in the 1980s. ''Bishōnen'' is occasionally used to describe some androgynous female characters, such as Takarazuka actors,<ref name="Mirror p.125"/> Lady Oscar in ''The Rose of Versailles'',<ref name=Orbaugh/> or any women with traits stereotypical to ''bishōnen''.
Scottish pop singer Momus notably used the term in his song "Bishonen" from the ''Tender Pervert'' album (released on Creation Records).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://imomus.com/index17.html |title=''Tender Pervert'' Lyrics |publisher=Imomus.com |access-date=2011-10-31}}</ref> Almost 8 minutes long, the song is an epic tale of a young boy raised to die young by an eccentric stepfather.
==Popular culture==
According to Pflugfelder, the ''bishōnen'' concept can be related to the "smoothie/roughneck" dichotomy of the Edo period. Sophisticated Japanese young men (''smoothies'') competed for hierarchical sexual dominance with so-called "roughneck" (juvenile delinquent) men, with occasional reports of violence between the two groups. By the 1920s the "smoothie" men had won out over the roughnecks in the popular imagination; "''rough was no match for smooth''", writes Pflugfelder.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflugfelder|1999|pp=224–225|ps=: "Echoing Mori, one commentator wrote in 1914 that "juvenile delinquents" of the "rough-neck" stripe saw themselves as "toughs" (soshi) and "swashbucklers" (kyo-kaku), while "smoothies" fancies themselves "high caller dandies" (harikara danji)...With the close of the Meiji period, however, such reports began gradually to diminish, until, by the end of the 1920s, most "juvenile delinquents" had become, according to one authority on the subject, confirmed ''nanpa''. In the popular imagination, "rough" was no match for "smooth"."}}</ref>
In particular, Japan's largest male talent agency, Johnny & Associates Entertainment Company, specializes only in producing male Tarento idols.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.japan-zone.com/modern/johnnys.shtml |title=Modern Japan - Entertainment - Johnny's Jimusho |publisher=Japan-zone.com |date=2006-11-16 |access-date=2011-10-31}}</ref> Accepted into Johnny & Associates in their early teens, these boys, collectively known as 'Johnnys', are trained and promoted to become the next leading singing-acting-commercially successful hit sensations. Almost all can be classified as ''bishōnen'', exhibiting the same physically feminine features combined with a sometimes deliberately ambivalent sexuality or at the very least, a lack of any hint of a relationship to maintain their popular availability. Many of the ''bishōnen'' stars hired by Johnny & Associates eventually abandoned their princely image, and became stock characters in variety shows and other normal day-to-day programming.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Yoshimoto | first1=M. | last2=Tsai | first2=E. | last3=Choi | first3=J.B. | title=Television, Japan, and Globalization | publisher=University of Michigan Press | series=Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies | year=2016 | isbn=978-1-929280-76-6 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gJpFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98 | access-date=2023-06-05 | page=98}}</ref>
==Art== alt=A manga style drawing of a slender young man with blonde hair and green eyes holding an orange.|thumb|An example of a manga style ''bishōnen.'' Besides being a character type, ''bishōnen'' is also a distinct art style not usually forgotten in books about drawing manga. In art, ''bishōnen'' are usually drawn delicately, with long limbs, silky or flowing hair,<ref>{{cite journal|year=2004|title=Short anime glossary [Краткий анимешно-русский разговорник]|journal=anime*magazine|issue=3|page=36|issn=1810-8644|language=ru}}</ref> and slender eyes with long eyelashes that can sometimes extend beyond the face. The character's "sex appeal" is highlighted through introducing the character by using an "eroticized" full-page spread.<ref name=Wood-06>Wood, Andrea. (Spring 2006). "Straight" Women, Queer Texts: Boy-Love Manga and the Rise of a Global Counterpublic. ''WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly'', '''34''' (1/2), pp. 394-414.</ref> Characters with "bulging muscles" are rarely considered ''bishōnen'', as they are too masculine.<ref name="imageandnarrative" />
''Bishōnen'' characters are fairly common in shōjo manga and anime. Many of the male characters show subtle signs of the ''bishōnen'' style, such as slender eyes or a feminine face.
Some manga are completely drawn in the ''bishōnen'' style, such as ''Saint Seiya''. ''bishōnen'' manga are generally shōjo manga (girls' comics) or yaoi (girls' comics focused on homosexual relationships between beautiful boys), however shōnen manga (boy's comics) may use casts of ''bishōnen'' characters for crossover appeal to female readers.<ref>{{cite book|last=Thompson|first=Jason|author-link=Jason Thompson (writer)|title=Manga: The Complete Guide|publisher=Del Rey|year=2007|page=417|isbn=978-0-345-48590-8}}</ref> Mainstream shounen and seinen fare also often uses such characters as rivals for a traditional masculine protagonist, with some degree of comic relief, or for the blander everyman, whether as the embodiment of his insecurities in a grittier realism, or as a more lighthearted constant reminder of his less than advantageous social status and the constraints thereof. Comics for younger boys tend to use arrogant ''bishōnen'' in the role of the recurring minor rivals readers love to hate, though their effeminate good looks there will often appear older, bigger, stronger, and thus in fact more masculine than the commonly shorter and less mature protagonists.
==''Bishōnen'' and ''bishōjo''== ''Bishōjo'' ('beautiful girl') is often mistakenly considered a parallel of ''bishōnen'', because of the similar construction of the terms. There are major differences between the two aesthetics. The ''bishōjo'' aesthetic is aimed at a male audience, and is typically centered on young girls, drawn in a cute, pretty style; ''bishōnen'' is aimed at a female audience, centered on teenage boys, and drawn elegantly. Another common mistake is assuming that the female characters in ''bishōnen'' manga and anime are ''bishōjo''. In truth, female characters in ''bishōnen'' manga are very different from those in ''bishōjo''; ''bishōjo'' females are usually more petite and drawn in a style that is cute rather than beautiful, whereas ''bishōnen'' females exhibit the long limbs and elegance of the ''bishōnen'' themselves.<ref name="beauty" />
==Critical attention==
Several cultural anthropologists and authors have raised the multifaceted aspect of what ''bishōnen'' represents and what it is interpreted as, mostly to fit a particular external viewpoint.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Monnet|first=Livia|title=Montage, cinematic subjectivity and feminism in Ozaki Midori's Drifting in the World of the Seventh Sense|journal=Japan Forum|year=1999|volume=11|issue=1|pages=57–82|doi=10.1080/09555809908721622}}</ref> Ian Buruma noted that although Western comics for girls also included "impossibly beautiful men" who are clearly masculine and always get the girl in the end, the ''bishōnen'' are "more ambivalent" and sometimes get each other.<ref name="Mirror p.125"/>
For Sandra Buckley, ''bishōnen'' narratives champion "the imagined potentialities of alternative [gender] differentiations"<ref name="Buckley">Buckley, Sandra (1991) "'Penguin in Bondage': A Graphic Tale of Japanese Comic Books", pp. 163–196, In ''Technoculture''. C. Penley and A. Ross, eds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota {{ISBN|0-8166-1932-8}}</ref> James Welker describes the ''bishōnen'' as being "queer", as the ''bishōnen'' is an androgynous aesthete with a feminine soul "who lives and loves outside of the heteropatriarchal world".<ref>{{cite journal|last=Welker |first=James |year=2006 |journal=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society |volume=31 |issue=3 |doi= 10.1086/498987|title=Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: "Boys' Love" as Girls' Love in Shōjo Manga|page=842|s2cid=144888475 }}</ref>
Jonathan D. Mackintosh believes that the ''bishōnen'' is a "traditional representation of youth", being "interstitial" between both childhood and adulthood and between being male and being female,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/aoki.html |title=Intersections: Itō Bungaku and the Solidarity of the Rose Tribes [Barazoku]: Stirrings of Homo Solidarity in Early 1970s Japan |publisher=Intersections.anu.edu.au |access-date=2011-10-31}}</ref> regardless of the sexual issues.
Ishida Hitoshi makes the case that the image of the ''bishōnen'' is more about a grounding in sexuality than a transcendence of it, drawing on the idea of the image as being a refuge for alternative methods of looking at sexual natures, and sexual realities, at least since the 1960s, rather than the elegiac aesthetics of usages in an earlier era.<ref>The Process of Divergence between 'Men who Love Men' and 'Feminised Men' in Postwar Japanese Media. Ishida Hitoshi and Murakami Takanori. Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context. Issue 12 January 2006. http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/ishida.html</ref>
Representations of men in manga by and for men show "an idealized man being ultramasculine and phallic", ''bishōnen'' are conversely drawn to "emphasize their beauty and sensuality", and female artists have been said to react against the ultramasculine representation by showing androgynous and "aesthetically beautiful" men.<ref name="Wood-06"/>
Ian Buruma, writing in 1984, considered the "bishonen in distress" to be a recurring motif in popular manga. The ''bishōnen'' in distress is always rescued by an older, protective, mentor. This scenario has an "unmistakably homoerotic" atmosphere.<ref name="Mirror p.125">{{cite book|last=Buruma|first=Ian|author-link=Ian Buruma|title=A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture|publisher=Penguin Books|location=Great Britain|year=1985|orig-year=1984|isbn=978-0-14-007498-7|page=125}}</ref> He also notes that ''bishōnen'' must either grow up, or die beautifully. He considers the "worship" of the ''bishōnen'' to be the same as that of the sakura, and notes that "death is the only pure and thus fitting end to the perfection of youth."<ref>{{cite book|last=Buruma|first=Ian|author-link=Ian Buruma|title=A Japanese Mirror: Heroes and Villains of Japanese Culture|publisher=Penguin Books|location=Great Britain|year=1985|orig-year=1984|isbn=978-0-14-007498-7|pages=130–131}}</ref>
==See also== {{Wiktionary}} {{Div col|colwidth=8em}} * ''Bijin'' * ''Bishōjo'' * Dandy * ''Ephebos'' * Himbo * ''Ikemen'' * ''Kkonminam'' * Metrosexual * ''Shōnen'' * ''Yaoi'' {{Div col end}}
== References == {{Reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bishonen}} Category:Androgyny Category:Culture of Japan Category:Japanese words and phrases Category:Japanese sex terms Category:Male beauty Category:Male stock characters in anime and manga