Talk:Bishōnen

Needs to update to a modern context
Reading through this article, I honestly find the article quite problematic and sometimes inaccurate, especially concerning content about whether shonen manga/anime tend to have side characters that are bishie or whether the entire style can be bishie.

There has to be a clearer delineation of what it means to be bishie, and the article needs to use more up-dated and modern examples than manga from the 80s that a public audience may be more familiar with, nor is it very well-representative of bishonen as an art movement and development and how it's depicted and stylized over time, since the 80s, and to a degree, 90s style, is extremely different and unrelatable to modern-day manga that is being produced and it is extremely difficult to do stylistic comparisons between modern mangaka to how manga looked like back then. For one thing, the overall style was much more clunky and there was a clearer difference between bishonen and non-bishonen in how males were drawn and depicted and individual style and flair of each mangaka was not nearly as distinct and prominent as it is now.

Take a modern manga such as Bleach that began being serialized in the early 00s that began as a strict shonen and had no elements of bishonen, though Kubo Tite over time, began to develop a style that moved closer and closer to bishonen which was true for almost every character he draws/drew, even though he initially introduced stereotype bishonen side characters such as Yumichika. It's extremely difficult to argue that very few male characters do not to one degree or another, nowadays, fall into a bishonen category, and his overall personal style is that of emphasis on slender limbs and effeminate faces. Similarly, the "new" generic baseline of how males look like in most modern produced anime tends to lean closer to bishonen than it does other styles, especially if it's a non-seinen. Case in point would be the Final Fantasy franchise and while neither manga or explicit anime in that it's computer- as opposed to "traditional" animation, men are primarily stylized according to bishonen aesthetics, even though Final Fantasy as a video game franchise tends to adopt shonen story tropes and values over shojo and has, historically speaking, appealed more and meant to appeal more to a young male (shonen) audience.

Contrast this with the bara manga scene that tries to de-emphasize how modern-day depiction of men in Japanese media has moved further and further towards effeminization, which isn't just a thing in anime/manga but Japanes youth society as a whole (see Iida Yumiko's works here, can provide sources later if needed.) This needs to be addressed somehow in this article, or it feels quite disingenuous and inaccurate given the current social context that exists in Japan, especially concerning youth culture that bishonen has as a target audience. Bishonen isn't just a thing for girls anymore, but has slowly become adopted as an overall social ideal and standard for male youth in general and one can theorize it is so as an attempt to backlash the otherwise rigid patriarchal values that are set in place. /Rant over. (I should add that the more traditional bishonen style is retained in more typical shojo works such as yaoi, perhaps a bit ironically.)

--Entr0pic08 (talk) 13:15, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Biseinen definition?
I was under the impression that 'biseinen' meant a man who was attractive in a masculine way, as opposed to the bishonen, beautiful in a feminine way.
 * Literally, it would mean beautiful group of manga aimed at a demographic group of 18-25 (look up meaning of prefix bi and seinen, so I'm even more confused than you are. &mdash; Ambush Commander (Talk) 20:53, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Seriously, the whole 'biseinen' and 'bishota' is a product of people who haven't lived in the Japanese language. Native Japanese SPEAKERS do NOT use the terms, as they violate the integral aesthetic context, and the Japanese women I've talked with insist on only using 'bishonen'. Age is important here--the concept that a bishonen is sexually viable but still a youth, not a married man with the responsibilities of manhood. Once a man moves into that sphere, literally with full societal manhood (producing children is part of this), different descriptions apply, even if that man is supremely attractive.

Case in point: It would be highly innappropriate to refer to Johnny Depp as bishonen, despite his popularity. There is another Japanese term for someone who is physically attractive, rather than the prefix, "bi".

--sazynska 16:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Biseinen is a legitimate Japanese word, at least in internet communities, though I doubt bishouta is. From the Japanese wikipedia article for a video game, describing the main character, a college student: 容姿は美青年であるが (Although he is an attractive young man...). The main distinction here is between shounen and seinen, boys and youths. The "bi" prefix can, in modern Japanese, go before pretty much any description (I've seen 美父美娘, a beautiful father and daughter pair, and similar usages). I'm going to edit the relevant section to reflect this.

Aesshen (talk) 07:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Edits needed
This article is skewed to a western perspective, and shows a lack of knowledge of Japanese culture relative to the rest of Asia and of Japanese/Asian aesthetics. The original writer was quite thorough with what s/he had, but lacking background for the topic beyond pop culture and sources typically available in the west.

This is an old concept, although I am not sure how long the word 'bishounen' itself has been in use.

Transliteration with a 'u' is quite proper under the Hepbern system, although in American English we tend to simplify the spellings; the 'u' letter is actually in the word in Japanese, which translates in letters to "bi sho u ne n"; however, the 'u' simply marks a long vowel, when following 'o'.

All things considered, I'm going in for an edit, here. This is my thesis topic. --sazynska 16:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Seconded, for what it's worth. Not only does the author use some improper definitions (a rather creative misdifining of the word which the article is about, actually, borne of American Manga pop culture more than the definition of the words in question and their meaning) but also there are some really, really bizarre editions. Ie: The Master Chief from Halo being included in the list of Bishounen. 68.96.255.13 22:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Wrong meaning of 'fetish'?
I'm thinking the original author was intending to link to Sexual Fetishism with the reference to fetish.

Checking with the others before I edit it myself.

Book by Beckjord
Why can't he list it? Or anyone list it?

Also, why do Japanese cartoons show non-Japanese people most of the time?

Puzzled.

207.200.116.67 03:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

homo and hetero problems
I'm not sure most of them in reality are heterosexual is an accurate or appropriate statement capable of citation. I would say that most often the characters of shonen-ai and yaoi, the predominant areas in which bishonen appear, are in male/male relationships. Whether or not someone wants to refer to these characters' sexual identities as "homosexual" can go under dispute, but the relationships they are in are certainly not "heterosexual" in nature either.

Is this statement saying that bishonen appear most often in heterosexual situations? Can this be qualiified a little--maybe with an academic source? There has been plenty on bishonen representation.

Also, the phrase "in reality" is a little problematic, as bishonen characters exist predominantly in works of fiction.

I'm going to go ahead and rephrase the sentence, but if these questions can be accurately answered please feel free to re-alter.

List of bishonen characters
As is right now, the list is way, way too long to be useful to readers of this article. If someone wants to spin it off into its own article, a List of bishonen characters or something, that might not be a bad idea. I think for the purposes of this article, the list here should be cut down to ten or so very typical and paradigmatic examples of bishonen characters that everyone can agree are bishonen. We're not keeping a scorecard of all the bishonen characters, we're trying to give readers an accurate and succint explanation of what bishonen actually is. Ford MF 13:18, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that half aren't really bishounen. They're just cute characters drawn in the anime style. I'm going to take out a lot of them. Clevomon 9:41 EST, 23 December 2006
 * I've moved the list to List of bishonen characters. The page is still in a very crude form, so any help there would be appreciated. Also, if anyone wants to take out the list here, feel free, but I didn't want to be presumptuous by doing it myself. Jediserra 20:29, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Concidering how many women disagree on which characers are bishounen & that almost all anime & manga have them, it's best the list not exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.77.255 (talk) 07:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also it may be considered original research. That's why we're not doing it at bara (genre) for the bara character type unless there's a reference. --SykoSilver (talk) 02:02, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Contradiction in article content
There's an apparent contradiction in the article regarding the term "biseinen". The "Origin" section says that the terms "biseinen and "bishota""do not appear in Japanese, but are conjunctions created by Western fans from Japanese loan-words." But the Usage section states that: "In the original Japanese, however, 'bishōnen' applies only to boys under 18. For those older, the word 'biseinen' or 'bidanshi', literally 'good-looking man' is used." According the term Usage section, "biseinen" used in Japanese, but according to the Origin section, "biseinen" was created by Western fans and doesn't appear in Japanese. Can someone with knowledge of the subject matter resolve this and correct the article?  Kuribosshoe 07:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Similarly, while the article states that bishonen goes back to the Tale of Genji (which I believe is fanciful OR), why are there no examples except manga, and why do they date back not more than about 15 years?  This article needs a serious rewrite.MSJapan 16:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I can address the biseinen thing, at least. I'll try to fix this up a bit. Aesshen (talk) 07:36, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

List
The list of examples is far too lengthy. Can it be chopped down a bit, using only the most important examples and no WP:OR? YuanchosaanSalutations! 06:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely please. I've seen it grow and grow and grow, as random people drop by and add their favorite bishounen character to the list. But I haven't found the time to seek out a few authoritative external resources on the characters we should label as such. &mdash; Edward Z. Yang (Talk) 22:37, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

A little advice?
Hello Bishonen. I am fairly new here and have been working on the LGAT articles. I would like to know how best to encourage whole the group of editors to work together with NPOV policies. I see that there are some very constructive efforts from some of them but they seem to either fall on deaf ears, be ignored, or simply be ineffectual. Well you can imagine with the LGAT subject there will always be resistance to certain facts which leads to fairly obvious censorship and they claim consensus in order to ignore NPOV - I'll not name names but some editors really do have that tendency in the extreme. When I supply all editors with encouragement to comment it often gets ignored. I even supply templates for people with complaints to fill in and again nothing happens. Could you suggest any other way that might help? Jeffrire 02:21, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

good link
Here is a really good link someone should post as an external link http://www.bishoneninfo.curvedspaces.com/

intro
What does this mean a young man "whose beauty (and sexual appeal) transcends the boundary of sex"? Does his beauty lie in non-sexual motives? Is he an androgynous charakter? Or are the boundaries of traditional sexual orientation the point? I think this should be expressed in a more straightforward way. -- 790 (talk) 09:54, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Intro help needed
The last paragraph/sentence in the intro - "Typically, bishōnen are depicted with either outright homosexual content or some level of sexual ambiguity in their relationships and sexual identity, though in increasing instances in anime and manga, such as Saint Seiya, Fruits Basket, Trinity Blood, Weiss Kreuz, Gravitation and Naruto to name a few." makes no sense. Something is obviously missing. --198.88.216.104 (talk) 01:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Junmatsumoto.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 12:38, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Bishounen, crossdressing, moe, & femenists.
Many femenist artists notably prefur bishounen for mysandristic reasons; their male characters are not athletic or "kakkoii" at all, but either have completely androgynous or femanine personalities. Another thing I've noticed in many mangas: the more femanine boys are smarter while the more masculine boys are depicted as idiots, villains, & nieve foreigners. & we can't forget the popularity of bishounen crossdressers. Oh yes, & the "moe" that comes with "reverse harem" shoujo series. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.77.255 (talk) 07:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * So what? How can this contribute to the article? And please, I'm not even a native speaker, but try to improve your spelling, if possible. Thank you.--189.122.16.187 (talk) 22:30, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Ambiguous image description


What exactly does this caption mean by companion. Are they sexual lovers or friends? I would edit this myself, but I am note sure. Is companion a euphemism for sex partner? Wikipedia is supposed to avoid terms such as that when they become ambiguous see WP:EUPHEMISM.Wikiposter0123 (talk) 20:43, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Edited. - JRBrown (talk) 22:37, 19 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I seem to recall that in the Buruma book, it was considered an ambiguous relationship between Yoshitsune and Benkei... like 'are they or aren't they' or something, or they're companions, wink wink nudge nudge. Buruma's book may have more information on this. --Malkinann (talk) 13:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

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