Every day, it seems the forces of LGBTQ hate and intolerance make new headway at both the local and national levels of multiple nations. These forces are particularly motivated in the supposedly Christian United States, where Jesus’ admonition to “love thy neighbor” regularly falls on deaf ears.
This week, the forces of bigotry chalked up another minor victory – this time banning a manga from school library shelves. The title’s crime? Depicting a healthy – and non-sexually-explicit – romantic relationship between two men.
Sasaki and Miyano banned for gay love
The Fahrenheit 451 firefighters in our story work for the Brevard County school system in Florida. The board reacted to a challenge filed under Florida Statute F.L. 747.012, which prevents the distribution or sale of “harmful materials” to minors.
The “harmful materials” in question? The boy’s love manga Sasaki and Miyano (佐々木と宮野) (note: affiliate link) by manga author Harusono Sho. The manga depicts the friendship between two male high school students as it gradually becomes romantic.
The series, available in English since around 2022 via Yen Press, is popular in both Japan and the states. Users have given its volumes around a 4.6 star rating on Amazon Japan and around a 4.8 to 4.9 out of 5 star rating on Amazon US.
There’s nothing explicit in Sasaki and Miyano. Indeed, the series is rated as Teen (13+) on its back cover in the US. That makes it appropriate for middle schoolers and beyond.
Unless, of course, you’re a homophobe. An unknown person filed a complaint with Brevard Public Schools, objecting to the book “because sexual orientation should not be encouraged, suggested, or implanted in our youth.” In other words, the objector believes that sexual orientation isn’t something inherent and biological but something that’s taught. Or, perhaps even passed around in the air or by touch, like cooties.
The complaint also says the district should ban the book because exposure to “obcene [sic] explicit content” can cause kids to have “struggles with porno” and “compulsive masturbation.” Setting aside the red flags that porn addiction rhetoric sets off, the objector clearly believes that all homosexual relationships – including the loving, non-explicit one depicted in Sasaki and Miyano – are inherently sexual and pornographic.
The ultimate sin: A book that’s read from right to left!
Additionally, the chair of the Brevard County Public Schools expressed indignation that you read Sasaki and Miyano …wait for it…from right to left.
In a video posted to X, a woman who appears to be chair Megan Wright says:
“I’ve read every one of these books…You start the book, you read it backwards – I mean, it literally, when you start reading a book, which we’ve been teaching our kids from day one, you start at the beginning and then you read from left to right, from the top. Not that book you don’t.”
In Japanese books, novels, and manga, text is printed vertically, and books are read from right to left. In other words, Ms. Wright seems unaware of how the Japanese language works. She seems to regard any book that reads from right to left as suspicious. Possibly even Satanic. (Having lived through the 80s “Satanic Panic” in the United States, her rhetoric feels awfully familiar.)
I guess I shouldn’t be shocked to see such lack of cultural awareness in a school board in Florida. Still, it’s stunning to watch these ignorant words drip from the mouth of someone who has authority over the education of over 74,000 students.
Critics want BL replaced with…Chainsaw Man?!
There’s nothing funny about banning a book because it depicts a healthy LGBTQ relationship, of course. However, the complaint that led to Sasaki and Miyano‘s ban contains several opportunities for grim chuckles.
Along with the complaint, the objector filled in a section that asked what the banned book should be replaced with. The list of titles they included feels like they just grabbed the names of several popular manga and anime titles from Google. They include:
Chainsaw Man: A brilliant but graphically violent and explicit series. Rated 18+ in its US release, it’s packed with bloodletting in every issue and sports a controversial storyline that touches on the issue of sexual consent between two characters, Denji and Yoru. (I guess since both characters are cishet it’s fine.)
To Your Eternity: A manga with a character born male who’s attracted to men and is at the least gender-fluid, expressing their desire to dress as a woman on occasion.
Sailor Moon: A series with a canon lesbian relationship between two main characters, Uranus and Neptune.
Seven Deadly Sins: A series known, according to one X user, for “sexual harassment and ridiculously inappropriate age gap relationships.”
Boy’s Love and LGBTQ manga abound in Japan
News of this ridiculous ban doesn’t seem to have made its way to Japanese media yet. I’m sure if it does, it’ll be met with the same confusion and head-scratching that the press here usually reserves for stories about American gun violence.
BL is commonplace in Japan. No one gives its existence a second thought. To top it off, its most voracious consumers aren’t young men questioning their sexuality, but women. A 2018 survey by bookseller Tsutaya found that one in five women surveyed enjoy the Boy’s Love genre. Most say they consume it because they enjoy “being a third party to a love story.”
That’s not to say there aren’t also great works that touch on LGBTQ themes. Quite the contrary. Manga like Love Me For Who I Am (不可解なぼくのすべてを) tackle issues of gender and self-identification. Meanwhile, other titles such as She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat (作りたい女と食べたい女) and What Did You Eat Yesterday? (きのう何食べた？) depict same-sex relationships in a healthy and wholesome light.
No smooth sailing for LGBTQ people in Japan
That’s not to say everything is smooth sailing for LGBTQ people in Japan. The country still has no national law supporting marriage equality. There’s also an active anti-transgender movement – partly grounded in old second-wave feminism beliefs and partly imported from the global right-wing movement.
Last year, publisher Kadokawa came close to publishing a popular US anti-trans book. The company canceled it at the last moment after strenuous objection from both inside and outside the publisher.
Still, I can’t help but think news of this ban would be incomprehensible to most people here. I hope it stays that way – and that my home country eventually finds its way out of the darkness into which it’s currently plunging.
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Sources
Florida District Bans Popular LGBT Manga, Recommends Chainsaw Man Instead. ComicBook.com
2024 Florida Statutes. Florida Senate
女性の5人に1人がBL好き！意識調査で「第3者として恋愛を楽しめる」魅力も明らかに. AnimeAnime
