Mori Mari (1903-1987) was a Japanese author who, in 1962 with The Lover's Forest, began a movement of women writing about gay male passion. Mori Mari was greatly influenced by her father, Mori Ogai, and in this book, the older man can be seen as imbued with the same virtues and honor as she saw in her father. NYU Professor Keith Vincent has called her a "Japanese Electra," referring to the Electra complex counterpart put forth by Karl Jung to Sigmund Freud's Oedipal complex.

This movement has spawned what is today known as Yaoi, a genre of literature and graphic novels (often, anime) involving gay sex, often written by and for women. An older man and younger boy are trademarks of her work, and often of this genre. The older man is rich, powerful, wise, and spoils the younger boy. In The Lover's Forest, for example, the older man, Guidu, is 38 or so, and Paolo is 17 or 18. (However, he is not yet 19, the age that Mori was when her father died.) Paolo is extraordinarily beautiful, prone to lounge lazily, and has a lack of willpower in all but the field of his pleasure. (Guidu dies when Paolo is 19, and Paolo subsequently falls in love with a man who's been waiting in the wings, another one just like Guidu.)

The Yaoi movement has attracted controversy from feminists, who say that in women's writing and reading of the material, they are rejecting their own femininity.

Mori Mari committed suicide by disembowelment.

External Links

NYU Lecture Page with a summary of Prof. Vincent's lecture (see 10 Feb)
An interview with a Japanese writer who mentions Mori
Includes a brief summary of a paper about Mori Ogai's daughters