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Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is a manga that documents the author’s experience with her lesbian identity, family, and mental wellness. LGBTQIA+ womanhood is often portrayed inaccurately by creators who simply aren’t queer or women themselves and therefore misrepresent it in ways that can be harmful to those who are women and/or queer.
This is what makes Nagata Kabi’s work revolutionary in the face of the male gaze that dominates mainstream manga, especially in Japan. Much like TV series like Steven Universe or She-ra (( Examining The History of LGBTQIA+ Representation In Children’s Media )), Nagata Kabi’s work evades the male gaze and normalizes the experience of LGBTQIA+ identity. A warning to readers: This article does feature mentions of self-harm and mental illness.
Nagata Kabi Redefining The Portrayal Of Lesbian Women In Manga
Nagata Kabi’s work is especially important when thinking about it in comparison to portrayals of women loving women in manga. The “yuri” genre of manga and anime often objectifies the relationships of women for men’s viewing pleasure. It is most often written by cisgender men for men. The stories about women in these manga are often focused more or exclusively on the sexual element of lesbian identity; any actual queer woman will tell you that there is much more to their identity than sex and romance with other women.
nagata kabi — blog — the toilet papers
By fetishizing and misrepresenting queer womanhood in Yuri, male authors are harming queer, women readers who see their identity objectified and reduced solely to sex acts. Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is closely based on her own life experience and portrays a lesbian life that is not exclusively defined by sexuality at all. Kabi’s mental health, family life, and feelings of loneliness shape her character just as much as sexuality, if not more.
Nagata never glamorizes her day-to-day life or hero story to make herself sound more exciting. In fact, she depicts the grit and pain of loneliness and desperation in a raw, honest way that is sometimes even unflattering toward her. For instance, her coming to terms with her identity is awkward and difficult for her. Moreover, her lesbian identity is primarily defined by loneliness and lack of romance and sexuality. At the same time, it’s constantly accompanied by her struggles with her mental health including depression, anxiety, and self-harm. This isn’t common in portrayals of lesbian romance in manga. Nagata’s experience of self-discovery was never sexy; her lesbianism initially manifests itself as a longing to be close with an older woman.
Eventually, she makes peace with her identity and ultimately makes an appointment with a sex worker to explore it more thoroughly. Despite this encounter being based around sex, it isn’t focused on sex exclusively. It’s a little awkward and new for Kabi, as to be expected, but the woman she hires is kind and gentle towards her throughout the appointment. Instead, the newness and self-reflective nature of the experience is foregrounded rather than the sexual acts themselves. Moreover, the sex worker is never objectified and is only ever portrayed with the utmost kindness by Nagata.
Nagata Kabi: Normalizing Lesbian Identity, Sex Work, & Mental Illness
Nagata Kabi’s work is especially innovative in the way that it normalizes the experience of some of Japan’s most frowned upon taboos surrounding lesbian identity, sex work, and mental illness. Lesbian identity, especially in the wake of the popularity of the yuri genre, is greatly misunderstood by the public. By telling her story, even when it’s abject and embarrassing, Nagata Kabi gives queer women work to see themselves represented by a queer woman.
She portrays the sex worker that she hires in the final chapter of the manga in a really kind light; never does she frown upon this woman’s livelihood. Sex work is notoriously stigmatized, but Nagata Kabi never portrays her with disrespect and honors the importance of her sex work. The scene itself is also much less sexual as it is reflective and exploratory for her protagonist.
Even then, it’s not romanticized in any way whatsoever. At the beginning of the manga, Nagata immediately addresses the presence of her insecurities about her mental health struggles. She shatters the reader’s schema of an affair with a sex worker by portraying her own nervousness (not to be confused with guilt), as well as illustrating her self harm scars and bald patch.
By portraying symptoms of her mental struggles in an honest, unromanticized light Nagata Kabi normalizes struggles with mental health that are common, especially among queer women (( Why aren’t we talking about queer women’s mental health issues? )) as well as Japanese citizens of all ages (( Japan marginalizes mentally ill )).
Foregrounding Queer Mental Health In Manga Is Essential
Nagata Kabi’s work is comparable to that of graphic novelist Allison Bechdel, the author of an American graphic novel Fun Home (( Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic )) which similarly addresses topics of lesbianism, mental health, and complex family dynamics.
Fun Home is considered a staple in contemporary literature for having created an important space for lesbian narratives in the American literary canon. My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness makes an important queer impact on the Japanese manga industry and culture in a similar way that makes it an essential read for any manga fan.
