Editing Bishōnen (section)

==Popular culture==

According to Pflugfelder, the bishonen concept can be related to the "smoothie/roughneck" dichotomy of the Edo period. Sophisticated Japanese young men (''smoothies'') competed for hierarchical sexual dominance with so-called "roughneck" (juvenile delinquent) men, with occasional reports of violence between the two groups. By the 1920s the "smoothie" men had won out over the roughnecks in the popular imagination; "''rough was no match for smooth''", writes Pflugfelder.<ref>{{harvnb|Pflugfelder|1999|pp=224–225|ps=: "Echoing Mori, one commentator wrote in 1914 that "juvenile delinquents" of the "rough-neck" stripe saw themselves as "toughs" (soshi) and "swashbucklers" (kyo-kaku), while "smoothies" fancies themselves "high caller dandies" (harikara danji)...With the close of the Meiji period, however, such reports began gradually to diminish, until, by the end of the 1920s, most "juvenile delinquents" had become, according to one authority on the subject, confirmed ''nanpa''. In the popular imagination, "rough" was no match for "smooth"."}}</ref>

In particular, Japan's largest male talent agency, [[Johnny & Associates]] Entertainment Company, specializes only in producing male [[Tarento|Tarento idols]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.japan-zone.com/modern/johnnys.shtml |title=Modern Japan - Entertainment - Johnny's Jimusho |publisher=Japan-zone.com |date=2006-11-16 |access-date=2011-10-31}}</ref> Accepted into Johnny & Associates in their early teens, these boys, collectively known as 'Johnnys', are trained and promoted to become the next leading singing-acting-commercially successful hit sensations. Almost all can be classified as ''bishōnen'', exhibiting the same physically [[Femininity|feminine]] features combined with a sometimes deliberately [[ambivalence|ambivalent]] [[sexual orientation|sexuality]] or at the very least, a lack of any hint of a relationship to maintain their popular availability. Many of the bishōnen stars hired by Johnny & Associates eventually abandoned their princely image, and became stock characters in variety shows and other normal day-to-day programming.<ref>{{cite book | last1=Yoshimoto | first1=M. | last2=Tsai | first2=E. | last3=Choi | first3=J.B. | title=Television, Japan, and Globalization | publisher=University of Michigan Press | series=Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies | year=2016 | isbn=978-1-929280-76-6 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gJpFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98 | access-date=2023-06-05 | page=98}}</ref>