The Elaborately Forged Yaoi: Structural Absence as Design Principle in Cosmic Princess Kaguya!

This paper reactivates the etymological definition of yaoi (やおい)—theacronym yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (山なし・落ちなし・意味なし, “no climax,no resolution, no meaning”)—as a structural‑analytic tool rather than a histori‑cal genre label, and applies it to the 2026 anime film Cosmic Princess Kaguya!(超かぐや姫!, dir. Yamashita Seigo). The paper argues that the film deploys load‑freenarrative facades (SF mechanisms that appear operative but carry no causal weight)over a relational core (the 8,000‑year yuri devotion), coinciding with each term ofthe yaoi definition: dismantled climax, withheld resolution, and causal mechanismsthat do not converge. It introduces two new analytic categories: “structural yaoi”(kōzō‑teki yaoi), a portable measure of void‑maximization through narrative facadesapplicable across genres, and “nijisōsaku as grammar” (nijisōsaku no bunpō), namingworks that activate the reading posture of secondary creation toward a source textwithout depending on it for characters, plot, or operative machinery. The paper fur‑ther theorizes the coexistence of maximal referential density and maximal structuralvoid as a layered architecture that generates differentiated fan discourse througha prior‑knowledge mosaic, and identifies the structural‑yaoi property as inherentlyanti‑testimonial: authorial verification would fill the voids and thereby destroy theproperty it sought to confirm.