What does Yaoi Doujinshi mean? As the name suggest, it is a combination of two words also the words are not in English. It is a Japanese term. Let’s first talk about the word Dounshi.
Doujinshi — Expalnation
So, Dounjinshi is a common word used for self-publication. In other words, any word which has been produced by amateurs like magazines, novels or manga. It is usually the work produced by someone novice but professional artists also come under this umbrella when they publish their work outside the regular industry.
The etymology of this word is interesting as it is combination of two words: Dojin and shi. The first literally mean ‘same person’ or the person with whom you share a common interest or goal and shi is a suffix which generally means ‘periodical publications’.
How the trend of Doujinshi started?
So, this started as early as in 1874 in Miji period when Meiroku Zasshi was published. Though it cannot be regarded as an actual magazine but it generated and spread the idea of dojinshi. The first magazine to publish novels was Garakuta Bunko eleven years later to the publication of Meiroku Zasshi.
The writers who contributed to this novel magazine were Ozaki KÅyÅ and Yamada Bimyo. So, there came a period when it reached its pinnacle when it became a representative for the creativity of the youth in Showa period.
Dojinshi can be credit for the development and flourishing of the shishÅsetsu genre. This genre is usually based on the confessional stories of the and events from the author’s life. In other words, it is a biographical type of literature.
The doujinshi is usually created by a small group of author or in a small circle usually consists of small friends. From the competition from different literary schools and new authors, the dojinshi started to loosed its importance during the postwar era.
The dojinshi was almost replaced by some literary journals like Gunzo Bungakukai. Irrespective of this, few dÅjinshi magazines managed to survived with the help of official literary journals. Haiku and Tanka magazines are still published today.
The decade of 1880’s was described as a period when doujinshi saw a shift. Previously the content can be regarded as majorly original but during this era the content mostly became parodic of existing series or some modification in the existing content.
Aniparo is the a special doujinshi where often the romantic relationship among characters was depicted. Male authors showed a more focus on series like Urusei Yatsura, and female authors based their series on characters like Captain Tsubasa. Comiket became the first ever event for the dedicated promotion and distribution of dojinshi in 1975. This event also rose in popularity with time.
There have been incidents when the content creators of Doujinshi sold their work through other means like comic book stores in early 1990’s. But, police arrested three managers of such shops having lolicon dojinshi for sale bringing the practice into public notice.
Read more about crush-of-a-life-time-manhwa
Categories of Doujinshi
Donjinshi has a number genres and types. Some of the themes and genres are very popular among the target audience as compared to other. Th publications can be classified into few major division points. It can be broadly divided into original works and aniparo. Aniparo is the parody of existing anime and manga franchises.
Some of the popular themes according to fanfics is the same-sex pairings of characters given in a show. This is because they mostly get published in the mainstream publications the donjinshi. Some of these are particularly called yaoi or yuri. These stories often portray same-sex romance among the characters. Thus, we can simply call this the main theme of yuri or yaoi.
Thus with its emergence, the Yaoi Doujinshi came into being and gave a new angle to Doujinshi.
Conclusion
We usually observe that Yaoi Doujinshi or Doujinshi in general is more famous among Japanese than in West. Some of the reasons may be the language and the other because western perceive dÅjinshi is to be derivative of existing work, analogous to fan fiction and almost completely pornographic.