CHAPTER 1

On 
Twittering Birds Never Fly 

: Analysing the Narratives of Love, Sex, Relationships, and Ways of Life in this Work,
and in Japanese Yaoi and BL Comics

Twittering Birds Never Fly [Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai] (2011-ongoing, published by Taiyotosho, Tokyo) is a magnificent Manga series created by Kou YONEDA, widely considered to be one of the most outstanding, truly exceptional masterpieces of Japanese Yaoi and BL comics in its just over half-century history. (‘Boys’ Love’, or more properly, ‘Love, sex and relationship romances between males’, mostly created by female comic artists for passionate, predominantly female, readers, are generally considered to have been born from certain pioneering works focused on ‘Shounen-ai’ [admiration toward beautiful boys] and ‘Tanbi teki naru mono eno shoukei’ [longing for what is aesthetic and decadent] in the field of ‘Shoujo Manga’ [Japanese Manga for Girls] in the 1970s).

Firstly, it is important to note that one of the reasons for the huge success of Saezuru (for short) is that the story, the language, the panels, and the pictures unfold like a very well-made epic play, film or novel – or even better. It is a very mature work, exquisitely and thoroughly composed, crafted like the finest orchestral composition. Each chapter is rich and dense with numerous episodes, subtle as well as dynamic, drawn and narrated with very high-quality, beautiful cinematic sequences of images that trigger the readers’ deepest sentiments and sensuality. It is almost impossible to find any insignificant or superfluous pages, either visually or in terms of the narrative. It has complex, multi-layered storylines, running mainly on two levels, that are intertwined with each another: one is a story of love, sex and the relationship between the two main male characters, and of their individual ways of living; the other is a story of the Tokyo Yakuza underworld.

The series began with two precursory short stories: ‘Don’t stay gold’, published in 2008, and ‘Though They Drift, They Don’t Sink, But Nor Do They Sing’, published in 2009. Both these stories are now included in Volume 1 of Saezuru. Following these two releases, the series began a regular appearance in the bi-monthly BL comic magazine, HertZ (which later changed its name to ihr HertZ) in 2011, and is ongoing as of Spring 2023. *1

The sales of the first six volumes of the Japanese edition reached over 1.5 million in February 2020, which is a truly exceptional number for this genre of Japanese comic.*2 The work has been translated into many languages and published worldwide since a very early stage. It is an extremely popular work both inside Japan and abroad. To give an example, the work has been voted No. 1 in the popular ‘BL Award’ in Japan many times: the first volume won No. 1 in its ‘Best Comic’ section in 2014; the second volume won No. 1 in its ‘Best Cover Section’ also in 2014; the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh volumes won No. 1 in its ‘Best Series’ section in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2022. *3 In February 2020, the first animated theatrical film was premiered, and fans are waiting for the second and third films to appear (though no one knows yet how many films are to be made in total). All this testifies to the series’ extraordinary success and popularity over many years.

Secondly, another crucial reason for its success is that the work has two unique and powerful main characters with an extremely strong, magnetic appeal to readers worldwide.

The principal character, the hero (and ‘heroine’) of the story, is a man named Yashiro (his surname – his first name has not been revealed). He is a successful Yakuza in Tokyo, thirty-six years-old, working as the Young Leader (Deputy Head) of a Yakuza Group called Shinsei-kai, which is the direct branch group under the main family organisation, Doushin-kai. He is also a front man of their corporation, Shinsei Kougyou. Sharper and smarter than anyone else, very good at making tons of cash, always acting cool and quite tough, while having a stunningly elegant look on his face as well as brass balls, he has forged his path in the Tokyo underworld. Yet, at the same time, he is notorious for being ‘a lecherous Neko’ (literally ‘a cat’ in Japanese: a ‘receiver’ or ‘bottom’ in a homosexual relationship), ‘a serious masochist and a pervert’, and ‘a public toilet’ for executives of his organisation and for many other men – basically any men around him.*4 Other Yakuza and those near him either ‘fear him or make fool of him’. As ambivalent and intriguing as he appears to others, so is he to himself in his own heart. Just as, in his own words, ‘human beings are made full of contradictions’, he is no exception. Rather, he is an extreme example of us. He says he ‘wants to be fucked by tons of men’, although he also says he ‘doesn’t like men’. He says that he has long been a masochist since he was young, while he also admits that he has a ‘sadistic touch’ at the same time. You cannot stereotype such a person into an easy, clear-cut category. He is just him. Having been raised by a neglectful mother, and been raped by his stepfather from age eight or nine years until Junior High School, he has become a rather solitary, ‘broken’ yet proud, strong and highly resilient individual in nature. He ‘opens his legs to anyone’ except his own subordinates, but never forgets to keep a distance, from others as well as himself, as if watching everyone from above – because, to borrow his own words, he has ‘kept steady by making even myself a bystander’, and is aware of ‘acting out’ the role he imposes on himself, like a professional actor. He has only ever fallen in love once with ‘a person’, who happened to be a man, a guy called Kageyama, who has been his only friend from his late teens until now. As that experience of love was unrequited, he is, literally, a 100 percent pure ‘virgin’ who has never experienced any romantic relationship, and who has never made love with anyone who he has fallen for.

The other main character is a man called Chikara Doumeki, twenty-five years-old, an ex-police officer, recently released from prison. He was incarcerated for beating his own father almost to death when he witnessed him, by chance, raping his adopted daughter, Doumeki’s little step-sister. One day, Doumeki is taken into Yashiro’s office by his top underling, Nanahara, as he thought, with Doumeki being very well-built, muscular and 190 cm tall, that he would suit the role of Yashiro’s bodyguard.

So, they meet each other for the first time. Quite unlike his usual, careful self, Yashiro is very quick to form a liking for Doumeki. Although he begins by explaining to Doumeki that he has a policy, that is, according to him, ‘his only order’, ‘not to lay a hand on his underlings’, he cannot resist his attraction to this newcomer, and orders Doumeki to let him blow him. Doumeki, however, does not react, as he has become sexually impotent after witnessing his father raping his step-sister. Though surprised by Doumeki’s reaction, Yashiro smiles back to him, and decides to hire him as his bodyguard and attendant on a trial basis. His decision was partly because, as he analyses later on, Doumeki was ‘exactly the type of the guy’ Yashiro was drawn to – a very rare type of guy, honest and very sincere, innocent and ‘pure’, that Yashiro likes to dote on – and partly because the fact that Doumeki would never be able to have sex with Yashiro made him ‘feel the vanity of my efforts, and yet, comfortable’. Doumeki, too, confesses to Yashiro later on, that when he first saw him on the street before they actually met, he ‘thought he was a beautiful person’. That was the reason he decided to come to work at Yashiro’s Yakuza-run company.

As the story develops, they slowly and gradually come to feel increasingly attracted to each other, and their mental, as well as physical, intimacy accelerates as the distance between them closes. Yashiro increasingly feels Doumeki is even sweeter than he thought, whereas Doumeki begins to highly respect and become strongly drawn to Yashiro, thinking him to be ‘a strong, kind, and beautiful person’. Yet, on the other hand, they try never to ‘cross the boundary’ that separates them. Doumeki, sensing that Yashiro would most likely get rid of him, ‘in the same way he throws away a toy he no longer needs’, were he to notice Doumeki’s ever deepening, serious feelings of love and lust toward him, tries hard to restrain himself so as to ‘be allowed to stay by his side all the time, forever’ and to ‘use his own body and life to protect him’. This is especially relevant now that Yashiro’s life has been targeted by his superior Yakuza chief, Hirata, inside his organisation. This happens because a top executive, Misumi, who has the strongest power and influence, and who is most likely to become the next Chairman of the organisation, is a doting father figure to Yashiro, and is secretively planning to appoint him as the Deputy Head of the main Doushin-kai organisation, and thus his his closest underling, instead of Hirata. All these Yakuza episodes and storylines run throughout the work in detailed and quite complex ways, parallel to the story of the love and relationship between the two main characters. Yashiro, on the other hand, is more complicated and self-contradictory. He says he doesn’t want to have sex with Doumeki because he ‘seems like he would have gentle, normal sex’. He feels Doumeki’s sweetness more strongly as the story goes on, feeling almost as if he were a servant, or a baby bird trying hard only to follow its master, or mother – that is, Yashiro – but he does not clearly realise what his own feelings toward Doumeki truly mean.

While the dispute with Hirata precipitates, Yashiro comes to notice that Doumeki has started to feel sexually aroused by Yashiro and that his impotence has been healed. When cornered, Doumeki confesses to Yashiro that he has ‘uncontrollably fallen in love with him’. Yashiro panics on hearing the confession and comes to realise that he, too, has fallen for Doumeki, but he cannot easily accept either Doumeki or his own feelings. His true inner feelings overflow: