Lolicon - Wiki

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History
Background

In the 1970s, shōjo manga (marketed to girls) underwent a renaissance in which artists experimented with new narratives and styles, and introduced themes such as psychology, gender, and sexuality.[26] These developments attracted adult male fans of shōjo manga, who crossed gendered boundaries to produce and consume it.[27] The first appearance of the term "Lolita complex" in manga was in Stumbling Upon a Cabbage Patch,[h] an Alice in Wonderland–inspired work by Shinji Wada published in the June 1974 issue of the shōjo manga magazine Bessatsu Margaret, where a male character calls Lewis Carroll a man with a "strange character of liking only small children" in an inside joke to adult readers.[28][i] Early lolicon artwork was influenced by male artists mimicking shōjo manga,[29][30] as well as erotic manga created by female artists for male readers.[8]

The image of the shōjo (young girl) became dominant in Japanese mass media by the 1970s as an idealization of cuteness, innocence, and an "idealized Eros", attributes which became attached to imagery of younger girls over time.[31] Nude photographs of shōjo, conceived as fine art, gained popularity: a photo collection entitled Nymphet: The Myth of the 12-Year-Old [ja] was published in 1969, and in 1972 and 1973 there was an "Alice boom" in nude photos themed around Alice in Wonderland.[32] Specialty adult magazines carrying nude photos, fiction, and essays on the appeal of young girls emerged in the 1980s;[33] this trend faded in the late 1980s, due to backlash and because many men preferred images of shōjo in manga and anime.[34] The spread of such imagery, both in photographs[35] and in manga,[36] may have been helped by prohibitions on displaying pubic hair under Japan's obscenity laws.[j]

1970s–1980s

Front page from Hideo Azuma's first contribution to Cybele [ja]. Critic Gō Itō identifies the work as a comment on a "certain eroticism" in the roundness of Osamu Tezuka's characters.[38]
The rise of lolicon as a genre began at Comiket (Comic Market), a convention for the sale of dōjinshi (self-published works) founded in 1975 by the group Meikyu [ja] (Labyrinth), made of adult male fans of shōjo manga; in 1979, a group of male artists published the first issue of the fanzine Cybele [ja],[39] whose standout work was an erotic parody of Little Red Riding Hood by Hideo Azuma, known as a pioneer of lolicon.[38][k] Prior to Cybele, the dominant style in seinen (marketed to men) and pornographic manga was gekiga, characterized by realism, sharp angles, dark hatching, and gritty linework.[40] Azuma's work, in contrast, displayed light shading and clean, circular lines, which he saw as "thoroughly erotic" and sharing with shōjo manga a "lack of reality".[40] Azuma's combination of the stout bodies of Osamu Tezuka's manga and the emotive faces of shōjo manga marked the advent of the bishōjo character and the aesthetic of "cute eroticism" (kawaii ero).[l][41] While erotic, Azuma's manga was also viewed as humorous and parodic; only a minority of readers found his style erotic at first, but a large fan base soon grew in response to the alternative to pornographic gekiga that it represented.[38][42] Erotic manga mostly moved away from combining realistic bodies and cartoony faces towards a wholly-unrealistic style.[38] Lolicon manga played a role in attracting male fans to Comiket, an event originally dominated by women (90 percent of participants were female at its first run in 1975); in 1981, the number of male and female participants was equal.[43] Lolicon, mostly created by and for men, served as a response to yaoi (manga featuring male homoeroticism), mostly created by and for women.[44]

The early 1980s saw a "lolicon boom" in professional and amateur art. The popularity of lolicon within the otaku community would attract the attention of publishers with the creation of specialty publications dedicated to the genre, including Lemon People (1982) and Manga Burikko (1982).[45] Lemon People in particular was one of the first lolicon manga magazines published in Japan, with the first issue's cover stating that it "had the monopoly on lolicon comic content in 1982", expressing the excitement over the word lolicon itself.[46] Other magazines of the boom included Manga Hot Milk [ja], Melon Comic,[m] and Halfliter [ja].[47] The genre's rise was closely linked to the concurrent development of otaku culture and growing fan consciousness;[48] the word otaku itself was coined in Burikko in 1983.[49] Originally founded as an unprofitable gekiga magazine, the publication was transformed into a lolicon magazine in 1983 by editor Eiji Ōtsuka,[50] whose intention was to publish "shōjo manga for boys".[51][n] Artwork in the magazine continued the trend started by Azuma rooted in the soft styles of shōjo manga, with less realism and fewer explicit depictions of sex;[53] in November 1983, Burikko's editors yielded to reader demands by removing photographs of gravure idol models from its opening pages, printing an issue with the subtitle "Totally Bishōjo Comic Magazine".[o][54][p] Lolicon magazines regularly published female artists, such as Kyoko Okazaki and Erika Sakurazawa,[53] and male artists such as Aki Uchiyama [ja], the "King of Lolicon",[q] who produced 160 pages of manga per month to meet demand.[55] Uchiyama's works were published in both niche magazines such as Lemon People and in the mainstream Shōnen Champion.[56] The first-ever pornographic anime series was Lolita Anime, released episodically in 1984–1985.[57]


Eiji Ōtsuka, editor of Manga Burikko, played a key role in the lolicon boom.
Iconic characters of the boom include Clarisse from the film Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro (1979) and Lana from the TV series Future Boy Conan (1978), both directed by Hayao Miyazaki.[58] Clarisse was especially popular, and inspired a series of articles discussing her appeal in the anime specialty magazines Gekkan Out [ja], Animec [ja], and Animage,[59] as well as a trend of fan works (dubbed "Clarisse magazines"[19]) that were not explicitly sexual, but instead "fairytale-esque" and "girly".[45] Many early lolicon works combined mecha and bishōjo elements;[60] Kaoru Nagayama highlights the premiere of the Daicon III Opening Animation at the 1981 Japan SF Convention as a notable example of the link between science fiction and lolicon in the nascent otaku culture of the time.[61] Anime shows targeted at young girls with young girl heroines, such as Magical Princess Minky Momo (1982–1983), gained new viewership from adult male fans, who started fan clubs[62] and were courted by creators.[63] Helen McCarthy suggests that lolicon anime is rooted in magical girl shows such as Minky Momo, where transforming heroines can blur lines between girls and women.[64]

While the lolicon boom in commercial erotic manga only lasted until 1984,[65] it marked the beginning of its now-dominant bishōjo style.[66] Near the end of the boom, because "readers had no attachment to lolicon per se" and "did not take [young girls] as objects of sexual desire",[50] a majority of readers and creators of erotic manga moved towards the diversifying bishōjo works featuring "baby-faced and big-breasted" characters, which were no longer considered lolicon.[67] At Comiket, lolicon manga had declined in popularity by 1989 with developments in erotic dōjinshi, including new genres of fetishism and the growing popularity of softcore eroticism popular among men and women, particularly in yuri (manga with lesbian themes).[43]

1990s–present

In 1989, lolicon and otaku became the subject of a media frenzy and moral panic after the arrest of Tsutomu Miyazaki, a young man who had kidnapped and murdered four girls between the ages of four and seven and committed sexual acts with their corpses.[68] Widely disseminated photos of Miyazaki's room revealed an extensive collection of video tapes, which included horror/slasher films on which he had modelled some of his crimes,[69] and manga, including shōjo and lolicon works.[70][r] In the extended public debates that followed, Miyazaki's crimes were blamed on supposed media effects: namely, a reduction in his inhibitions to crime, and a blurring of the lines between fiction and reality.[72] Miyazaki was labelled as an otaku, and an image of otaku as "socially and sexually immature" men, and for some as "pedophiles and potential predators", was established for much of the public.[73] The decade saw local crackdowns on retailers and publishers of "harmful manga", and the arrests of some dōjinshi artists.[74][75] Despite this, lolicon imagery expanded and became more acceptable within manga in the 1990s,[76] and the early 2000s saw a small boom in the genre sparked by the magazine Comic LO.[77]