SFPG is a compilation of female dominance and male submission from SFPG
The relationship between Japanese female dominance and male submission is examined in the novel Sekaichi Hatsukoi (SFPG). It reflects the difficulties of women in the workplace. Both women and men are expected to abide by societal obligations. Yet, it reveals that both expectations are a product of Japanese culture.
Sekaichi Hatsukoi focuses on two co-workers, Chiaki and Hotori, who are both women. Their employment is in a publishing firm and the two women have a very different relationship. However, their relationship develops into a romantic one. They have a shared desire to own a white European male. While the two women are quite different in appearance, they share a desire to be submissive and dominate.
Kirino Natsuo, the Naoki Prize winning author of Sekaichi Hatsukoi, uses her characters to examine patriarchal structures and their sexual relations. She also complicates the pornographic formulas of female masochism and submission. This is done in order to subvert the patriarchal culture and to reflect on the ways in which the human body is conceived as a sexual object. Her socially transgressive approach to female sexuality has been highly praised.
In Sekaichi Hatsukoi, the SFPG, two Englishmen are matched with Japanese women. They are initially a pair of uke and seme, but the situation changes and they are forced to meet the fate of subservience. Their eroticized compilation of male submission to female dominance serves as an exploration of a reimagined reality of men as objectified. Although the relationships between the two women are heteronormative, the manga’s depiction of males in a submissive uke position offers a space for women to explore their sexuality.
The narratives of Kirino Natsuo’s novels have been interpreted as validating phallocentric fantasies of female masochism. However, her characters have psychological bonds that are both unsettling and sexually complex. These complex relations offer a window into the ways in which women are constructed by society. With the increasing number of married women in the labour market, a lack of women in traditionally male-dominated areas has not threatened the conventional class assignment in Japan.