http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2010/Nagaike.html "This paper discusses a popular Japanese manga (comics) genre, directed mainly at female readers, which deals with female-female romantic and erotic relationships; this genre is commonly called yuri (lily) manga. After an historiographic analysis of Japanese lesbianism (especially the concept of girls' romantic bonding that originated in Japanese literature during the modernization era), I explore the ways in which an analysis of contemporary popular lesbian texts, produced by and for Japanese girls/women, can provide new theoretical perspectives on the discourse of lesbian gender/sexuality, including issues of female homosociality, the lesbian continuum, and female corporeal desire."