Abstract

Don-in-nyo and Hujyosi are expressions for women readers who enjoy BL(Boys’ Love) enthusiastically, the genre drawing upon male homosexuality. BL started as Syonenai, a genre of Syojyomanga in the mid-1970s. The BL genre first appeared as Dojinshi(Coterie Magazine) by amateur writers and readers, and was commercialized thereafter. However, it was drastically excluded from the mainstream. This was common in South Korea and Japan. This paper analyzes Yamaoka Shigeyuki’s book, The Psychology of Hujyosi. He carried out a survey targeting college students, and analyzed the results. He studied the psychological features of Hujyosi and the characteristics of BL. BL is a resistance against the passive women’s representation of Syojyomanga, and a momentum in which women readers are liberated from sexual oppression. Yamaoka analyses Hujyosi objectively. As a result, he discovered that Hujyosi hope to gain close connections with the features of BL. In addition, he explained that Hujyosi felt happiness through their passionate interests over BL. This study on Hujyosi has a value as a major preceding research on the women readers who emerged as new consumers of BL and webtoon platforms of the same genre in South Korea.