![]() I had a persistent feeling of only having traced the surface of my topic, and of wanting to go deeper. Semi-structured interviews had been transcribed, coded and funnelled into neat findings. My main finding, which I explored through filmmaking, is that some readers use *shota* as a way to relive an alternative version of their own pasts, which had sometimes been traumatic or uneventful. While the answers are sprawling, a few themes have emerged. In these interviews, my research participants have talked about various aspects of their relation to *shota* comics: what kind of *shota* they like, how they see themselves in relation to the story, how they engage with *shota* concretely (how they read or draw it), what *shota* gives them and so on. My methods have included web surveys, participant observation at *dōjinshi* conventions and the above-mentioned semi-structured interviews, both recurring and one-off ones. In my current research, I am asking how fans of *shota* comics in Japan think about desire and identity. Untangling this largely unresearched knot of desires for fictional boy characters will give us a better understanding of human sexuality and provide a more solid basis for policymaking. This ‘complicated mix of male and female producers and consumers’ ((): 236) of *shota* is reflected in its many subgenres, differing in style, themes, the age of the characters and the explicitness of the sex, as well as in the readers’ views on whether or how sexual desire for fictional boys is connected to sexual attraction to actual children. Yet other male readers positioned themselves against the *lolicon* reading *shota* fans (()). Male readers discovered *shota* through *lolicon*, a genre that features young girl characters in a sexually explicit way. *Shota* was first an offspring of the male homoerotic genre *yaoi*, which is read and produced mainly by women. The genre emerged in the amateur culture of self-published comics – *dōjinshi* – in Japan in the 1980s, which is centred around huge conventions that have come to attract hundreds of thousands of participants ((): 295–96). *Shota*, or *shotacon*, is a Japanese genre of comics and illustrations that feature young boy characters in a cute or, most often, sexually explicit way. ![]() A short introduction is called for before we move on. Semi-structured interviews (()) can only take you so far, especially when the topic is sensitive (()), which mine is. ![]() Sensory ethnography, sexuality, masturbation, comics, queer studies, shota, experimental methods, manga In this research note, I will recount how I set up an experimental method of masturbating to *shota* comics, and how this participant observation of my own desire not only gave me a more embodied understanding of the topic for my research but also made me think about loneliness and ways to combat it as driving forces of the culture of self-published erotic comics. I therefore started reading the comics in the same way as my research participants had told me that they did it: while masturbating. I wanted to understand how my research participants experience sexual pleasure when reading *shota*, a Japanese genre of self-published erotic comics that features young boy characters. School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
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