Karl Andersson

“ In my current research, I am asking how fans of shota comics in Japan think about desire and identity. My methods have included web surveys, participant observation at dōjinshi conventions and the above-mentioned semi-structured interviews, both recurring and one-off ones. In these interviews, my research participants have talked about various aspects of their relation to shota comics: what kind of shota they like, how they see themselves in relation to the story, how they engage with shota concretely (how they read or draw it) , what shota gives them and so on. ”

“ While the answers are sprawling, a few themes have emerged. My main finding, which I explored through filmmaking, is that some readers use shota as a way to relive an alternative version of their own pasts, which had sometimes been traumatic or uneventful.
So far everything makes sense. Semi-structured interviews had been transcribed, coded and funnelled into neat findings. A bit too neat, maybe. I had a persistent feeling of only having traced the surface of my topic, and of wanting to go deeper. ”

“ It may very well be that masturbation is the activity during which we are least alone. That, in turn, may explain what drives dōjinshi culture: a yearning for being less alone in a society permeated by loneliness on a large scale (Kato et al., 2017) .
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen for commenting on an early version of this article, the two anonymous reviewers for providing useful feedback, and my PhD supervisor Sharon Kinsella for always encouraging me to go where my research takes me. ”

“ The genre emerged in the amateur culture of self-published comics – dōjinshi – in Japan in the 1980s, which is centred around huge conventions that have come to attract hundreds of thousands of participants (Kinsella 1998: 295–96) . Shota was first an offspring of the male homoerotic genre yaoi, which is read and produced mainly by women. Male readers discovered shota through lolicon, a genre that features young girl characters in a sexually explicit way. Yet other male readers positioned themselves against the lolicon reading shota fans (Watanabe, 1998) . ”

“ Erotic confessions The erotic in research ranges from recognizing it as a benevolent influence in education (Pensoneau-Conway, 2009: 176) to anthropologists having sex with research participants in order to understand a certain practice, such as anonymous sex (Langarita Adiego, 2019: 1256) . While there is plenty of literature on masturbation as such, few researchers write about their own masturbation habits. ”

“ This ‘complicated mix of male and female producers and consumers’ (Saitō, 2007: 236) of shota is reflected in its many subgenres, differing in style, themes, the age of the characters and the explicitness of the sex, as well as in the readers’ views on whether or how sexual desire for fictional boys is connected to sexual attraction to actual children. Untangling this largely unresearched knot of desires for fictional boy characters will give us a better understanding of human sexuality and provide a more solid basis for policymaking. ”

“ To a varying extent, that’s what we always do when we have sex with someone. We’re all alone, no matter if we are physically alone or not.
And at the same time, we are not alone. When we masturbate, someone else is always there. During this fieldwork, others were there with me, both in the form of the characters that populated the dōjinshi, but also in the form of the invisible creator of these characters and the other readers who were enjoying them. ”

“ This masturbation session let me experience one of the core aspects of shota that some of my research participants had mentioned: its power to provide an alternative past. The story was realistic enough to make me relate it to my own growing up. I didn’t grow up in Japan and I never lived with a boy my age in the house of my relatives. ”

“ He slips on the snow and is discovered. Tokio-kun angry, but also excited even as he keeps repeating ‘I’m not homo!’. The boy who has admitted to everything has nothing to lose, so he throws himself over Tokio-kun and starts sniffing his cock and licking his smooth balls, and while waiting for the shot I came! ”

“ The three months of masturbation to shota comics resulted in 30 entries in my notebook. Since this essay focuses on the method as such, I will only recount the main findings briefly and in regards to whether they helped me get closer to understanding the experience of my research participants.
Excerpt from my field diary after reading a dōjinshi by Shigeru from the ‘circle’, or dōjinshi group, Shōnen Zoom:
Started reading on the toilet: Boy who is staying with relatives happens to see his same-age friend masturbate. He can’t let go of this sight ... ”

“ Forestalling the criticism of her culture (North America) , Blinne goes into confessional mode: ‘Before I continue, I must confess: I masturbate.’ (ibid.: 955; emphasis in original)
Despite the importance of understanding all aspects of being human, research on sexuality is often seen as ‘dirty work’ (Irvine, 2014: 633) , and researchers, not least of sexually explicit comics, are vulnerable to accusations of having a ‘prurient’ interest in their research topic (Madill, 2018: 270) ”