The world of the doujinshi has long held a lineage of fanwork based not on anime or manga characters but on real-existing celebrities, idols, and athletes. Written “raw plus thing” and read namamono, called RPS (real person slash) in the Anglophone sphere, it is an area known for the delicacy of its handling.

Namamono (生もの, “raw thing”) is the fujoshi-community slang for doujin and fanwork based on real-existing people: celebrities, idols, and athletes. This article covers its formation, the strictness of its handling, its mainstreaming in BL and yaoi contexts, and the contrast with commercial fanwork.

Overview

The typical form of namamono: (1) it combines real-existing people (chiefly idols, actors, athletes) into a pairing; (2) it writes, as fanwork, a story and relationship in which those people are not in fact involved; (3) most of it depicts a same-sex relationship in a BL or yuri context. “Raw” (nama) means a “real-existing person”, not a fictional character. By contrast with calling anime and manga fanwork mizumono (“water thing”), it is termed namamono to stress that it handles a living human being.

The care in handling

Namamono carries risks of defamation and privacy invasion in relation to the person and their agency. In the Japanese fujoshi community, strict tacit rules have formed for handling it: redacting or coding work titles and proper names to evade search; password-protecting or restricting web publication to insiders; thoroughly keeping work from the eyes of the person and those connected to them; and avoiding open distribution at public events. These express a cultural consensus that gives priority to consideration for the person and their agency, functioning as a tacit etiquette transmitted from senior members to newcomers. Violators become the object of strong criticism, and there are cases of exclusion from the community.

Mainstreaming in BL contexts

Namamono has held a part of the mainstream particularly within the BL fanwork of the fujoshi community: pairings between members of male idol groups, pairings between members of K-pop male idol groups, and combinations of athletes and actors have historically formed large genres. These pairings are positioned as imagined relationships that fans construct independent of the actual will of the real person. The accumulation of “reading from a fan’s viewpoint” the moments where the people appear together in photographs as real friends or work colleagues, or share a stage, forms the story of the pairing.

This article treats the ethics of the practice neutrally and does not take any specific real individual as a subject. The defining feature of the namamono tradition is precisely its internal norm of non-disclosure and segregation, intended to keep the fanwork from affecting the depicted person.

Distinction from commercial fanwork

Namamono is clearly distinguished from commercial publication and official products. Sexual depiction of real people in commercial publication has a high probability of a defamation suit without the person’s permission, so open distribution is strictly limited to the bounds of fanwork. Fanwork of fictional characters from manga and games has, in recent years, increasingly seen cases of official tolerance or sanction, but namamono remains a private domain accompanied by no official involvement.

Comparison abroad

In the Anglophone sphere, the same kind of creation is called RPS (real person slash) or RPF (real person fiction). On large fanfiction sites such as FanFiction.net, RPS is separated as a distinct genre with defined publication policies. The strict search-evasion culture of the Japanese namamono community tends to be somewhat weaker in the Anglophone sphere.

Related terms

• Doujinshi
• BL
• Yaoi
• Fujoshi
• Coupling (pairing)
• Derivative fanwork