I’ve missed you! I really have. The times we had together. The joy. The passion. And the amazing adventure that I took a break from in 2017.
Since then I’ve become an anthropologist, although some would argue that I was one the whole time.
Three years ago, I started a PhD in the UK about Japanese shota comics, which feature cute boys. Not a perfect match in retrospect, the UK and shota. In between my first and second year, my research went viral. You can imagine the field day British tabloids had with my research, not to mention my previous publishing. “It all comes together now,” the little detectives reasoned. The university got cold feet and stopped my research.
But I wasn’t finished. I wanted to find out what it means to like shota comics, how people read these comics in Japan, and, not least, if people who like a certain character type in comics also like this kind of person in real life. Or in plain language: do they like real boys? And if so, how do they think about this attraction?
So I went to Japan. I conducted self-funded fieldwork for half a year, meeting shota fans, interviewing them, participating in the local culture and even creating my own comic and selling it at a shota event. As you can imagine, it was a blast! I came back with over 100 filled out questionnaires, 50 hours of recorded interviews, and one terabyte of video footage.
I spent another half year immersing myself in this rich material. I transcribed, translated, sorted, coded, and used the whole anthropological toolkit to try to understand what was going on here.
What came out on the other side blew me away. Not only did my findings go against previous research of similar genres, but they also show how readers of shota are not the predators that they are sometimes cast as outside of Japan, but rather the vulnerable. One of my key discoveries is that shota is read by LGBT people who were bullied in school, but who get a chance to reclaim their pasts by reliving an alternative version of it through the comics. These readers have been absent from previous research.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m so excited. Because you see …
New book!
I describe all of this and much more in detail in my new book Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan, which is published today.
Except for the ethnographic chapters, which are based on my interviews, I have also gone to the archives to trace shota’s emergence in Japan. I have read a number of Japanese sources, often self-published and hard-to-get, in order to write the history of shota. You will be amazed at the boy craze that infected all of Japan in the 1990s!
Based on the findings, a radical theory of the Boy as an ideal to worship emerges.
This book is what should and would have been my doctoral thesis, which would have been due approximately now. Yes, as a researcher serious about my craft, I kept to my timeline even after the university chickened out.
Meaning, this book is a piece of original research that meets expected standards of academic rigor and ethics. As a case study of the boy as an ideal in society, it should be in the reference library of everyone interested in how humans work and feel. I am just about to ship the book to the National Library of Sweden, and six university libraries, so you will be in good company with academic researchers as an owner of this book. (But although the book is serious, I have, as always, written it in an accessible style – I hate academic jargon!)
The book also includes a bonus chapter about the scandal that my research caused, since the upset reactions outside of Japan beautifully capture a mindset that clashes completely with the playful approach to shota comics that I experienced in the field.
Order directly from Amazon
You can only order the book on Amazon, and the sooner you do it, the better, as it will help other readers find the book.
Check out the book on your favorite Amazon site:
And yes, I’m now an Amazon Associate, which means that I earn from qualifying purchases if you use these links. (You can also get it on Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.com.br, Amazon.com.mx, Amazon.com.au, Amazon.com.be, and Amazon.pl.
We should be together
And now we finally can be! Through this book. 😻
It’s good to be back.
There is more to come. But for now:
Enjoy!
Karl