The Development of Boys Love in Vietnam

The Development of Boys Love in VietnamFrom Manga and Danmei Fiction to the Football Turf Trịnh Minh Đỗ Uyên (bio) and Nguyễn Quốc Bình (bio) Boys love (BL) was first created by fans in Vietnam around the mid-1990s, a time that also saw the emergence of LGBT fiction, and at first the two overlapped significantly. Vietnamese BL has been based by turns on its primary foreign influences: Japanese BL, from its emergence to around 2008, and Chinese danmei, since that time. In addition to "boys love" and "BL," some fans use Vietnamese terms for the genre, most notably tình trai, meaning boys love, and tình yêu nam nam, meaning male-male love, both of which evoke for fans a sense of pure Vietnameseness (thuần Việt). The former is derived from the title of a poem depicting romantic love between the French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine by Xuān Diệu, known as "the king of Vietnamese love poetry" and widely believed to have been homosexual.1 The latter is sometimes abbreviated to nam-nam, that is, "male-male." While the genre originates abroad, some fans have increasingly turned their gazes inward. As case studies of Vietnameseness in BL fan culture, this piece will examine the history of BL publishing and translation in Vietnam, as well as the more recent social phenomenon of BL-based fandom for the Vietnam Under-23 football (soccer) team. A Brief History of BL in Vietnam In the late 1990s, the first BL manga from Japan were published by local publishers, unlicensed—and uncensored—but without being labeled BL, such as Amagi Sayuri's Đōi bạn thiên thần (Matendō sonata) and Morimoto Shuu's Đōi bạn chān tình, also called Đối tượng trái tim (Jinjū hōretsuden; sometimes called "The mighty legends of the man-beast" in English). The internet circulation of a Vietnamese-language version of Kaori Yuki's manga Boy's Next Door (Shōnen zanzō) in 2002 is thought to be the first BL work in Vietnamese openly described as "yaoi," a label for BL used in Japan at the time. A large number of [End Page 148] BL works of fiction were translated or composed during this stage of BL using the images of Korean and Japanese male idol groups and actors, as well as characters from Japanese manga and Western fiction. In 2004, a debate about the supposed sexual depravity of yaoi led to forums such as "Tú sách mini" on Animation and Comic Club (accvn.net) (known as ACC) and Veno (veno.net) to delete everything related to BL. This, in turn, led to the establishment of many other forums allowing BL, such as Yaoiland (YAL), Writers' Sanctuary (WS), and Vnsharing (VNS), most of which are now defunct. In 2008, the first works of BL fiction from China, called danmei in Chinese and đam mỹ in Vietnamese, were translated and posted on online forums, influencing local BL authors. One of the most notable translations released that year was Võ lâm oai hiệp truyện (Wu lin wai xia chuan; My own swordsman) by Tiêu Đường Đōng Qua (known in Chinese as Jiaotang Donggua as well as by the handle "donggua1986"), translated by Lão Miêu and Lão Hồ. In 2009, another important Chinese BL work was Lãng đãng giang hồchi dược sư (Lang dang jiang hu zhi yao shi; The apothecary in the land of degenerate warriors) by Tự Từ (Xu Ci), translated by Orezon. In 2011, Điệp Chi Linh's first original Vietnamese đam mỹ fiction, Tình yêu đau dạ dày (The stomachache love), was published in print, opening the way for many other local BL works.2 These titles found favor among hủ nữ, the Vietnamese term for fujoshi, borrowed from Japanese via the Chinese derivation funü.3 While hủ nữ have been criticized for their interest in danmei and government efforts have arisen to stop its publication,4 translated and local danmei has continued to circulate in the print market, and continues to

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