is a
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or
pornographicPornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, with the increasing use of the VCR, the DVD, and the Internet, as well as the...
comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as
animeis animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation". Anime originated about 1917.Anime, like manga , has a large audience in Japan and high recognition throughout the world...
,
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
and computer games (see Japanese pornography). In Japan it can be used to mean "
metamorphosisMetamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
" or "abnormality". The word "
hentai" has a negative connotation to the Japanese and is commonly used to mean "sexually
pervertedPerversion is a concept describing those types of human behavior that are perceived to be a serious deviation from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although it can refer to varying forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are seen as abnormal or...
".
In
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
the word
hentai is a
kanjiare the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet . The Japanese term kanji literally means "Han characters".- History :Chinese characters first came to Japan on...
compound of 変 (
hen meaning "change" "weird" or "strange") and 態 (
tai meaning "attitude" or "appearance").
is a
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or
pornographicPornography or porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.Over the past few decades, an immense industry for the production and consumption of pornography has grown, with the increasing use of the VCR, the DVD, and the Internet, as well as the...
comics and animation, particularly those of Japanese origin such as
animeis animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation". Anime originated about 1917.Anime, like manga , has a large audience in Japan and high recognition throughout the world...
,
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
and computer games (see Japanese pornography). In Japan it can be used to mean "
metamorphosisMetamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
" or "abnormality". The word "
hentai" has a negative connotation to the Japanese and is commonly used to mean "sexually
pervertedPerversion is a concept describing those types of human behavior that are perceived to be a serious deviation from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although it can refer to varying forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are seen as abnormal or...
".
In
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
the word
hentai is a
kanjiare the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet . The Japanese term kanji literally means "Han characters".- History :Chinese characters first came to Japan on...
compound of 変 (
hen meaning "change" "weird" or "strange") and 態 (
tai meaning "attitude" or "appearance"). The term is used as a shortened form of the phrase 変態性欲 (hentai seiyoku), or "sexual perversion". In slang, 変態 (hentai) is used as an insult meaning roughly "pervert" or "weirdo". The term is not often applied to pornography in Japan. Instead, terms such as
18-kin (18禁, literally "18-prohibited") meaning "prohibited to those not yet 18 years old", and
seijin manga (成人漫画 "adult manga") are used when referring to pornography. The English letters AV are also used, standing for adult video.
H, or ecchi
The English use of "hentai" is more similar to the way the Japanese use the slang term エッチ (
H, or
ecchiEcchi is derived from a Japanese word meaning "lewd", "sexy", or "lascivious" when used as an adjective, or sexual intercourse when used as a noun.-Japanese usage:...
), which refers to any sexually explicit content or behaviour.
Ecchi is simply the spelling-out of the Japanese pronunciation of the letter
H. The origins of this term are uncertain, but it may be a shortened form of
hentai used as a polite codeword in the 1960s.
Demographics
As with other forms of Japanese pop-culture media, publishers of erotic media target material to specific demographic groups. For manga, the most typical divisions are:
Types which are pornographic by definition
- ero-manga or , aimed at (presumptively heterosexual) men
- ladies' comics (redīsu komikku or redicomi), originally meaning any manga for adult women (see josei
, also known as or , is a term that refers to the target demographic of manga created mostly by women for late teenage and adult female audiences. The male equivalent to josei is seinen. In Japanese, the word josei means simply "female" and has no manga-related connotations at all...
) but now often applied specifically to pornographic manga for women
Types which often (but not necessarily) contain pornographic content
- gei comi
, also known as the wasei-eigo construction or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for homosexual men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring homosexual art and content...
or menslove (ML), often called bara in the West, for gay men
- boys' love
[In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, .] is a popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors...
(boizu rabu or BL), predominately aimed at the shōjo and josei markets (also see below)
- teen's love (TL), a more explicit type of shōjo romances
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
, likewise aimed predominantly at the shōjo and josei markets
- Yuri or girls' love (GL), which has long been a component of both men's ero-manga and shōjo gender-exploration but has more recently arisen as a genre in its own right, in both seijin and josei flavors (also see below)
Classification
There are two main categories of hentai: works that feature mainly heterosexual interactions (often abbreviated as "het"), and those that feature mainly
homosexualHomosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction or behavior among members of the same sex, situationally or as an enduring disposition. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is considered to lie within the heterosexual-homosexual continuum of human sexuality, and refers to an individual’s...
interactions. This second group can be further split into
yaoi[In careful Japanese enunciation, all three vowels are pronounced separately, for a three-mora word, .] is a popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focus on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors...
and yuri subgroups.
Yaoi refers to male homosexual pairings, and
yuri to female homosexual pairings. (Note that both yaoi and, to a lesser extent, yuri are predominantly aimed at members of the opposite sex from the persons depicted.)
Yaoi is predominantly aimed at a female audience and commonly features males of ambiguous
genderGender commonly refers to the set of characteristics that humans perceive as distinguishing between male and female entities, extending from one's biological sex to, in humans, one's social role or gender identity. As a term, "gender" has more than one valid definition...
—in both physical appearance and mannerism—called
bishōnen, is a Japanese term literally meaning "beautiful youth ".The term describes an aesthetic that can be found in disparate areas in Asia: a young man whose beauty transcends the boundary of gender or sexual orientation...
, literally "beautiful boy". Some feature
biseinen ("beautiful man"), males of more adult or masculine appearance than
bishōnen. Less common are
bara—larger, often heavily muscled and sometimes hairy males, the yaoi counterpart of the "
bearBear is LGBT slang for those in the bear communities, a subculture in the gay/bisexual male communities and an emerging subset of LGBT communities with events, codes and culture-specific identity...
" in
gay pornographyGay pornography is the representation of sex between men with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience. There is also a tradition, and continuing considerable output, of lesbian pornography...
—as well as
oyajiIn the Japanese language, is an informal word meaning "dad". It is a juvenile linguistic corruption of , which means "father". The word, used to describe one's father, is very rough and not polite, and its use is usually confined to men. See also Gender differences in spoken Japanese...
(meaning "daddy" or "uncle"), featuring middle-aged and elderly men; these types are mainly found in material aimed at gay men, which may be called
bara, also known as the wasei-eigo construction or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for homosexual men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring homosexual art and content...
or 'men's love' (ML), and is considered to be distinct from yaoi. Yaoi also extends beyond the (sexually explicit) hentai genre, since it is an applies to any anime/manga material that includes male homosexuality (except for that actually aimed at a gay male audience). In Western usage, yaoi is distinguished from shōnen-ai (literally, "boy-love"), in which two males merely express romantic feelings for each other without actually having sexual relations; however in current Japanese usage this term most commonly refers to pornographic
shotacon, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
(stories featuring young boys) for men. Women interested in Yaoi are called "
FujoshiYaoi fandom refers to readers of yaoi , a genre of male-male romance narratives aimed at a female audience, and more specifically those who participate in communal activities organized around yaoi, such as attending conventions, maintaining or posting to fansites, creating fanfiction or fanart, etc...
" (腐女子), a
punA pun, or paronomasia, is a form of word play that deliberately exploits ambiguity between similar-sounding words for humorous or rhetorical effect...
which translate loosely as "rotten girl" or "rotten woman".
Compare fag hagFag hag is a LGBT slang phrase referring to a woman who either associates mostly or exclusively with gay and bisexual men, or has gay and bisexual men as close friends. The phrase originated in gay male culture in the United States and was historically an insult. Some women who associate with gay...
and slash fandomSlash fiction is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on the depiction of romantic or sexual relationships between characters of the same sex. While the term was originally restricted to stories in which male media characters were involved in an explicit adult relationship as a primary plot element,...
.
Yuri is very similar to yaoi, except that the focus is on female homosexual interactions. The characters in yuri are typically "
bishōjois a Japanese term used to refer to young and pretty girls, usually below university age. Bishōjo is not listed as a word in the prominent Japanese dictionary Kōjien...
", meaning "beautiful girl" (this term is not specific to yuri but is applied generally to depictions of attractive women for a male audience; for example, in the term "
bishōjo gameA , Girl game, Gal game or Galge is a type of Japanese video game that is targeted towards a male audience, and centered around interactions with attractive anime girls....
"). Shōjo-ai ("girl love") is a western term for the female equivalent of shōnen-ai; in Japan these works are also called yuri. Yuri may be aimed at (presumptively heterosexual) male, heterosexual female, or
lesbianLesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
female audiences.
The scope of hentai encompasses the entire range of sexual
fetishesSexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal brought on by any object, situation or body part not conventionally viewed as being sexual in nature. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g. in psychiatric medicine, as a disorder of sexual preference or as an enhancing element to a...
, including:
- Bakunyū
is a genre of pornographic media focusing on the depiction of women with large breasts. The Japanese word "bakunyū" can be literally translated to "bursting breasts". Bakunyū is a sub-genre within the genre of hentai anime....
, the depiction of women with large breasts. Literally translated to "bursting breasts".
- Futanari
Futanari in Japanese can mean both the subjects of a special type of pornographic anime or manga , or the genre itself...
, depictions of hermaphrodites or transsexualsTranssexualism is a condition in which an individual identifies with a physical sex different from the one they were born with. A medical diagnosis can be made if a person experiences discomfort as a result of a desire to be a member of the opposite sex, or if a person experiences impaired...
that have both phallic genitalia (penis with scrotum, only a penile shaft, or an enlarged clitoris) and vaginal genitalia, or, alternately, a feminine hourglass shape including breasts combined with a penis and scrotum.
- BDSM
BDSM is a compound acronym derived from the terms bondage and discipline , dominance and submission , sadism and masochism ....
, a spectrum of consensual sexual activities considered to be "kinky" or non mainstream, including such topics as power exchange (domination and submission), bondage, sadomasochism, spanking, etc.
- Bestiality
- Breast-oriented torture and Breast bondage
Breast bondage is a bondage technique which involves the tying of rope around a woman's breasts in a visually intricate and decorative pattern...
, BDSM practices focusing on breasts, many times coupled with a variety of tortureTorture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is:In addition to state-sponsored torture, individuals or groups may be motivated to inflict torture on others for similar reasons to those of a state; however, the motive for torture can also be for the sadistic gratification of...
.
- Erotic lactation
Erotic lactation refers to an adult's sexual arousal from breastfeeding. Depending on the context, the terms adult suckling, adult nursing, and adult breastfeeding can refer to the practice. Practitioners sometimes refer to themselves as being in an adult nursing relationship...
- Lolicon
, also romanized as rorikon, is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex". In Japan, the term describes an attraction to young girls, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is less common and most often refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein childlike...
, depicts prepubescent or preadolescent girls.
- Maiesiophilia
Pregnancy fetishism is a term used to describe the contexts in which pregnancy is seen by individuals and cultures as an erotic phenomenon...
in which individuals struggle with a full bladder before finally wetting themselves (also known as watersportsUrolagnia is a paraphilia in which sexual excitement is associated with the sight or thought of urine or urination. The term has origins in the Greek Language ....
).
- Urolagnia
Urolagnia is a paraphilia in which sexual excitement is associated with the sight or thought of urine or urination. The term has origins in the Greek Language ....
: Urinating
- Coprophilia
Coprophilia , also called scat, is the paraphilia involving sexual pleasure from feces...
: Feces
- Shotacon
, sometimes shortened to , is a Japanese slang portmanteau of the phrase and describes an attraction to young boys, or an individual with such an attraction. Outside Japan, the term is used less often with this meaning. It refers to a genre of manga and anime wherein pre-pubescent or pubescent...
, the depiction of young boys, either with other young boys or older men, or depicting young boys with older women (known as "straight shota" in western jargon).
- Tentacle erotica, the depiction of tentacled creatures and sometimes monsters (fictional imaginative or otherwise, also includes alien-like creatures) engaging in sex or rape
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may be by a man on a man, woman on a man or woman on a woman. Approximately one in six American women will be a victim of a sexual assault in her lifetime...
with girls and less often men.
- Incest
Incest is any sexual activity between close relatives irrespective of the ages of the participants and irrespective of their consent, that is illegal or socially taboo. The type of sexual activity and the nature of the relationship between persons that constitutes a breach of law or social taboo...
, sexual activity with legal family members; noticeably seen in The Sagara FamilyThe Sagara Family is a hentai game, developed and released in Japan by ZyX in 2003, and translated into English by G-Collections in 2005...
, a hentai computer game.
Hentai media
- Adult anime, or hentai anime, is anime that relies primarily on sex.
- Adult manga, or hentai manga, is manga designed for purely pornographic purposes. Plot is still used to develop character and setting, but most of the time, the ultimate goal is to show scenes of sexuality with few exceptions. Adult manga is often sold in convenience stores, book stores, and magazine stores in Japan, and also other public places such as airports, and is far more prolific and accessible than the U.S. adult comic book
A comic book is a magazine made up of narrative artwork, often accompanied by dialog and often including brief descriptive prose...
market. It is usually distributed in digest format, containing several stories by different artists (e.g. an anthologyAn anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
).
- Adult CG artwork
CG is a term most commonly known in the West for its use in Japanese webpages to denote digital artwork. In the original Japanese, it is an abbreviation of the Japanese gairaigo , used to refer to any form of digital artwork, from digitally shaded dōjinshi to legitimate cinema...
includes individual drawings by artists. Art can be available on websites, CD-ROMCD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback, the 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data. CD-ROMs are popularly used to...
s, or in printed art books. CG artwork is used frequently in adult video games.
- Adult video games, or eroge
An is a Japanese video or computer game that features erotic content, usually in the form of anime-style artwork.In English, eroge are often called hentai games in keeping with the English slang definition of hentai...
, are games with a pornographic element. They can include bishōjo gameA , Girl game, Gal game or Galge is a type of Japanese video game that is targeted towards a male audience, and centered around interactions with attractive anime girls....
s that involve character driven plots, and can exist as sex simulationSimulation is the imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
s.
- Adult dōjinshi, or H dōjinshi, refers to a type of work that uses copyrighted characters presented in sexual situations. It usually refers to printed manga, but can also refer to any type of visual work depicting copyrighted characters, including video games, animation, and CG artwork. Familiarity with a particular character or setting can add a sense of relating to the character over a generic character used in mainstream hentai, making dōjinshi more appealing to fans of a particular work. Despite not representing characters and licensed properties as intended, companies often view these works as a free form of license recognition and advertising through dedicated fandom. Some mangaka create hentai dōjinshi with characters from their own manga, such as Kazushi Hagiwara
is a Japanese manga artist best known for creating the manga Bastard!!. He originally began as an assistant to hentai manga artist Dirty Matsumoto, and then as an assistant to manga artist Izumi Matsumoto in the production of Kimagure Orange Road, creating his own stories in his spare time. He...
, who himself created Bastard - Expansion, a pornographic dōjin with characters from Bastard!!is a manga by Kazushi Hagiwara. It first appeared in Weekly Shōnen Jump, in 1988, and continues to be published irregularly today in Ultra Jump. Currently, it spans 26 volumes....
Lemon
In Western fanfiction circles, hentai-based works are popularly referred to as "lemon", based on a more popular hentai anime anthology series called
Cream Lemonis an H anime series with some in-depth storylines and classic artwork. The first Cream Lemon OVA was released in 1984, though Cream Lemon was not the first hentai OVA...
. Fictions referred to as "lime" are ones in which the characters do everything short of having sexual intercourse with each other.
See also
- Cartoon pornography
Cartoon pornography is the portrayal of illustrated or animated fictional characters in erotic or sexual situations. Cartoon pornography includes but is not limited to parody renditions of famous cartoons and comics.-Non-parody artists:...
- Ero guro
- List of hentai authors (groups, studios, production companies, circles)
- List of pornographic sub-genres
- Panchira
means upskirt in Japan. The word is a portmanteau of and chira, the Japanese sound symbolism representing a glance or glimpse.Panchira is an expression used by Japanese women to warn each other that their underwear is visible; the term carries risque connotations similar to the phrase "your slip...
- Shunga
' is a Japanese term for erotic art. Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format. While rare, there are extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate the Ukiyo-e movement...
External links