Coming of age as a queer teen in Okazaki Kyoko’s River’s Edge

Content warning: discussion of historical homophobia, bullying, disordered eating

Spoilers for River’s Edge

On a chilly winter night, Wakakusa Haruna is led to a field of goldenrod near her highschool by her classmate, Yamada Ichiro. As a show of thanks and friendship after she rescued him from bullying, he promises to show her his “treasure.” The two teens trek through the tall grass until they reach this treasure: a dead body. 

This scene serves as the symbolic center to Okazaki Kyoko’s River’s Edge (1993-1994), where, despite its morbid and nihilistic undertones, the body is a source of connection and possible community between three young people all disenfranchised for their own reasons: “normal” and seemingly popular girl Haruna, closeted gay teenager Yamada, and their underclassmen, young model Yoshikawa Kozue. The body and the secret of its existence can be interpreted as a symbol of their outsiderness, and more specifically their queerness. Though this series is not primarily discussed as a queer manga, it does explore and reflect Japan’s “gay boom” in the early 1990s, both skewing and addressing contemporary media tropes. River’s Edge features a range of queer representations within its central cast, from frank depictions of closeted life and homophobia to more ambiguous depictions of attraction, making it a layered piece of LGBTQIA+ media and a powerful time capsule of the state of queer representation and queer life in Japan during this period. 

Representation versus Product: Queer Media in 1990s Japan

As defined by Mark J. McLelland, the gay boom in Japan was a rise in public accessibility of queer characters and stories across different media, from television, film, and, in particular, comics. Despite the rise in queer characters or television specials, many were exaggerated portrayals disconnected from the actual realities of queer life and community. The gay boom set up larger access to knowledge, but it also led to an “increased number of discourses” and not “[an] increased visibility” beyond media consumption (33). 

The gay boom also coincides with what Mari Nishihara argues is a shift between male-male romance in shoujo manga in the 1970s to the advent of “boys’ love” in the early 1990s as a commercial genre itself. This line of male/male romance manga for girls also aligned with young women’s fashionable consumption of media (73-74). River’s Edge ran in a magazine under the publisher Takarajimasha, which had several fashion and entertainment magazines that likely coincided with the BL market readership. Though there were many manga series that began or were ongoing through the 1990s that centered around queer relationships, specifically in BL it was common to situate plots at a distance in genres like fantasy, sci-fi, or the supernatural like CLAMP’s Tokyo Babylon or Kouga Yun’s Earthian, both published in Wings; or set them outside of Japan, such as Matoh Sanami’s FAKE in Magazine Be x Boy or Ragawa Marimo’s New York, New York in Hana to Yume.

The 1990s brought stand out works still discussed to this day like Takeuchi Naoko’s Sailor Moon and Be-Papas’ Revolutionary Girl Utena (with its manga by Be-Papas member Saito Chiho) that portrayed queer, romantic relationships between girls, but magazines centered around yuri or “girl’s love” in particular were limited until the late 1990s and early 2000s. These works still offered complexity within their depictions of same-sex relationships, but they did not always acknowledge the realities of being queer during that time period. 

River’s Edge aligns with some of the expectations of shoujo publications of its day. It focuses on the teen girls’ point of view and emphasizes what would be considered appealing: characters wear trendy fashion styles, reference popular cosmetic brands and television shows, and the story follows teen lives with very little “adult” presence or influence. However, its frank depictions of sex, bullying, and how teens felt disconnected to each other represents a less romantic, more grounded reflection of modern life that continues to resonate. Specifically, how queer characters are represented beyond their romantic or sexual relationships, and how the manga commits to depicting the struggles they might face in their day-to-day lives. 

“When I look at it, it gives me courage.”

River’s Edge plays with standard queer media tropes of the time and turns them on their head. Rather than immediately fitting an exaggerated archetype of a gay man, Yamada, in some ways, fits the image of an idealized teenage boy. He is handsome and desired by many girls at his school and bullied for it by jealous classmates. Haruna initially bonds with him over taking care of a litter of kittens. The reality of Yamada’s situation, however, is then provided: he is rumored to have been seen holding hands with a boy coming out of Ni-chome (Tokyo’s predominantly LGBTQ district) and is implied to do sex work, and he dates classmate Tajima Kanna as a way to conceal his sexuality without telling her his true feelings, growing more embittered and cruel to her as the story progresses. While this depiction of the closet and the association of a gay character with sex scandal may seem like cliches today, in context these elements are noteworthy for their nuance. Yamada is not an exaggerated television caricature of a gay man, nor is he a romanticized love interest—he is written as a complicated coming-of-age protagonist.

The manga also acknowledges the media context surrounding these characters and how that might inform people’s assumptions about queerness, taking the chance to rebut some common refrains along the way. Haruna asks personal questions about Yamada’s sexual preferences, including if he uses lube “like the books say,” possibly referring to BL or other erotic male/male work she’d read. This prompts Yamada to counter with similarly invasive sexual questions. Yamada calls out her treatment of him, retorting that “It’s rude of you to go directly into sex stuff just because I’m gay. You wouldn’t want someone springing these questions on you, right?”. It can be implied such an exchange would also be directed to readers, inviting them to question the possible objectification they commit when talking to queer people. 

This hidden side mirrors the underclassman Yoshikawa: she is also seemingly perfect and idealized, yet despite being a famous model and child actor building up her career, she has an eating disorder and—in a queer parallel with Yamada—develops feelings for Haruna once the latter comes into her orbit. Similar to Yamada, Yoshikawa holds no attraction to the opposite sex. She’s unimpressed and irritated when she sees a boy and girl have sex while in her hiding place at school. The comradery she has with Yamada, a boy, is strictly through the dead body, the joint object of projection and their shared “treasure.” Unlike Yamada, who only watches the boy he likes from afar, Yoshikawa uses the body as a way of getting closer to Haruna both emotionally and physically. There is a clear affection in how she interacts with the other girl, with Yoshikawa putting on a cute demeanor in front of Haruna that directly contrasts the emotions of the scene. 

However, unlike the shy admiration or innocent sensuality portrayed in popular yuri manga of the time period, Yoshikawa is more complex. She keeps Haruna’s lighter for herself when it ends up in her possession, invites Haruna to her house and orders food in a way similar to how Haruna’s boyfriend Kannozaki piles her with gifts; but she also crosses physical barriers and licks the tears off Haruna’s face when she’s attempting to console the other girl. Yoshikawa is far more complicated than the “predatory lesbian” trope, nor does she fit the archetype of a naive and bubbly high school girl with a crush on her female upperclassman, both most likely to appear in single-gender schools instead of River’s Edge’s public school setting. Compared with Yamada’s passive observation of his crush, Yoshikawa takes charge and pursues Haruna romantically, providing a range of depictions of queer attraction and romance. 

“Something Mysterious. <Desire>”

Haruna herself is interesting in her ambiguous queerness: she befriends and bonds on a deeper level with Yamada and Yoshikawa than her regular school friends, and holds ambivalence and disdain for her boyfriend, Kannonzaki (who in turn bullies Yamada more because he is threatened by Haruna’s relationship with him). Despite the attempts Kannonzaki makes to get her affection, by the manga’s present, Haruna has little to no romantic feelings for him. There is a similar lack of desire in their sexual relationship as well: after they have sex, Haruna rushes to go watch a TV show she was looking forward to, only to then be faced with an advertisement starring Yoshikawa. 

River’s Edge has multiple moments of subtext regarding Haruna’s desire towards Yoshikawa. One is Haruna’s first encounter with Yoshikawa, where she overhears the latter having a conversation with the school nurse. There is a near full page of panels portraying Yoshikawa and her different body parts/features: her legs, her neck, her eyelashes, etc. There isn’t any direct text expressing her attraction, but if readers are meant to take these snapshots as Haruna’s perspective, there is an underlying charge in her gaze, even before they have spoken to each other. 

The second is when Haruna and Yoshikawa share a bed in the nurse’s office. While Yoshikawa is sleeping peacefully beside her, Haruna is left sweating and looking up at the ceiling. She describes the sensation as being “mildly aroused (in a childish, whimsical, sleeping with-a-kitten kind of way)” before immediately saying they’ll “never have a sexual connection” because they are “two straight lines [that] do not intersect.” The scene takes place before Yoshikawa confesses to Haruna, making it unclear if Haruna is commenting on her own feelings, or the assumptions she makes about Yoshikawa’s own desires. Is Haruna as much of a “straight line” as she claims, or is it that she has no point of reference as to what queer desire could be for her in her social and historical context?

Okazaki leaves Haruna’s sexuality up to interpretation—the climax of River’s Edge cuts her off before she can decide whether or not she reciprocates Yoshikawa’s feelings—but in doing so opens the idea for more fluid interpretations of queerness than manga of the time often considered. River’s Edge makes room for both direct, textual depictions of queer identity and more subtextual, nuanced ones that do not provide clear answers but do reflect the messiness of the adolescent experience. You can still be a teen and not be sure what you desire, after all. 

“I imagined those idiots at school never would have had the guts to dig as deep as we did.”

Haruna is able to connect with Yamada and Yoshikawa on a level she can’t with her regular friends through the secret of the body, the taboo horror of death allowing them an unexpected space outside of mainstream, polite society. Perhaps the body itself becomes a symbol of their shared experience as outsiders: despite how they appear to the rest of the world, they cannot deny their difference. Yoshikawa is seemingly perfect, but casually brings up with Haruna that she’ll have to leave school to do work full-time, even though she wanted to go to college (and based on her appearance in Okazaki’s Helter Skelter, she likely never gets the chance to). Her inner anger at the lack of control in her life is best shown with what she thinks when she looks at the body: “Serves you right.” Yoshikawa is able to vent all of her frustrations with the world into the body, the fact that it’s dead in a world that tries so hard to keep up false appearances, and in some ways might mirror her own hatred of herself for doing the same thing.

The draw that Yamada and Yoshikawa have to the body is built on the lack of control both of them have in their everyday lives and their inability to openly express their desires, save for when they’re with each other and, later, with Haruna. Shih-Shan Chen and Sho Ogawa argue their obsession with the body creates an anti-consumerist message against then-present day Japan. “As a group of outcasts, they manage to resist compliance with the consumer culture of the 1990s that tells them what to desire, what to devour, and what to discard” (198). That pushes another point: if Yamada as a gay boy and Yoshikawa as a young model become the product, then what can they consume?

“How We Survive in the Flat Field.”

Okazaki sets up a cast of several teenagers with intersecting paths that connect with or disregard each other, sometimes with fatal consequences. Despite, or perhaps because there is no romantic or sexual desire between Yamada and Haruna, the pair develop a genuine bond. The two ramble throughout the city at night, talking and imagining the scent of the nearby ocean, even if neither of them can see it. They take care of kittens together, play video games and just talk. In the oddness of their relationship, a closeted boy and a “normal” girl are able to build community. The reason why the two survive, be it physically through Haruna getting Yamada out of a locker he was trapped in, or emotionally with their final walk together before Haruna moves away, is by knowing each other. In their final conversation, compared with Yamada’s obsession with death, he tells Haruna that he “likes her alive.” Haruna never discloses her undefined desires for Yoshikawa, but their friendship could be built on recognizing and accepting each other’s queerness, implicitly and explicitly. 

But Okazaki cannot imagine this solidarity and community as lasting, with the ever present pressure of society hanging over the pair. Despite the extended absence of adults in this story, as teenagers they are still forced to follow their whims. There is no argument or confrontation, Haruna simply accepts her mother’s decision to move and helps her pack. There is also no sense that Haruna and Yamada will remain in touch after Haruna moves. Though it is common that queer teens can only live “authentically” once they are adults, Okazaki seems to be pessimistic about the future based on the tone of this ending. The appropriative and exoticizing gaze on queer people in 1990s Japan reflects how the two can only bond when they are hidden from observation. Such bonds can only be temporary in this story, in this place, in the flat field by the river’s edge.

Today, manga has pushed beyond stories of fantasy and/or melancholy for queer characters, especially teens. Kamatani Yuhki’s Our Dreams at Dusk is able to expand on and discuss queer community building and intergenerational friendships that River’s Edge does not. Tasuku and Misora talk openly with each other about their questions regarding sexuality and gender compared with the single conversation Yamada and Haruna have. Nakatani Nio’s Bloom into You is a manga that centers around the complex and developing feelings between high school girls, centered around a girl who is unsure about exploring her desires (or possible lack thereof). There are many more available manga that are able to imagine brighter futures for their queer characters alongside the realities of struggling with societal expectations and your identity as an adolescent. However, River’s Edge is still a work that shined a light on the complexities of queer experience that most manga of its time could not show, and remains an important part of the history of queer manga.