The only members of the Tokugawa ruling family to survive are female, so the position of shōgun is filled by a woman. In Yoshinaga’s historical revision, a plague has struck early seventeenth century Japan, decimating the male population but leaving women untouched. So far, two of the series’ five volumes have been released in America, and Viz Media has put an extraordinary deal of effort into their publication of the title, making sure that the books themselves are as elegant as their subject matter.

Ōoku is an ongoing series that Yoshinaga first stared publishing in 2005. Antique Bakery (西洋骨董洋菓子店), one of Yoshinaga’s more recent series released in America by Digital Manga Publishing in 2005, eschews both heteronormativity and pornography in favor of character development and an engrossing and surprisingly sophisticated narrative.

Gerard & Jacques is undeniably porn, but it is porn for adults. Mixing homosexuality with heterosexuality, masters with servants, and sex with philosophy, Yoshinaga delivers romance and intrigue on the eve of the French Revolution. Gerard & Jacques distinguishes itself from the vast body of boys’ love stories by allowing the personalities of its characters to gradually develop and by acknowledging that openly homosexual relationships have not been tolerated in most societies. I have been a huge fan of Fumi Yoshinaga ever since her two-volume series Gerard & Jacques (ジェラールとジャック) was released in translation by the boy’s love manga publisher Blu in 2006. But the world beyond the safety of the Inner Chambers is a cruel one, and the risk of discovery is not the only danger that threatens them.Publication Year: 2005-2009 (Japan) 2009 (America) And despite her initial distaste for Edo and everything about it, Prince Kazu finds herself warming to her spouse. Prince Kazu is not the consort shogun Iemochi was expecting, but the young ruler is determined to make their relationship a good one. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the shogun's Inner Chamber. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the shogun. Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. In Edo period Japan, a strange new disease called the Redface Pox has begun to prey on the country's men. In Eisner-nominated Fumi Yoshinaga's alternative history of Edo-era Japan, the men of Japan are dying out, and the women have taken up the reigns of power-including the shogun's seat!

Ōoku by Fumi Yoshinaga