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I know that the yuri genre is written with kanji and I was wondering, is katakana ever used to write or refer to the genre when used in a discussion. I myself have never seen it, but I wanted to know if anyone who knows japanese has?

Zain Alleck
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EDIT: Rarely. 百合 is more common. The other two seem to be A) part of people's names or B) Lily flowers.

A few searches on google, amazon or any eshop will give you a rough idea.

Just a language note, any word in Hiragana can be written in Katakana. Katakana can be used for emphasis or italics purposes (often loan words but not necessarily).

nabulator
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  • Note that Google does not differentiate the context. So you can have those searching for the flower vs a person's name amongst other things... So it might not be about the genre itself. There may also be significant overlap – кяαzєя Mar 13 '20 at 15:33
  • FWIW, googling ユリ mostly returns ユリ目 and ユリ科, which is about family and order of Lily plants but not about "yuri" as a genre". – Aki Tanaka Mar 13 '20 at 15:47
  • @кяαzєя True. A search with ゆり　and ガールズラブ(girl's love) seems to yield a 100:1 ratio so maybe yuri isn't the best term to use to find the genre. – nabulator Mar 13 '20 at 15:47
  • @AkiTanaka Google does tailor your search results to your history so anecdotal evidence may not be so useful? – nabulator Mar 13 '20 at 15:49
  • @nabulator true, but the main point is not about the order of the result, but the general result that it's not particularly about yuri genre... just like krazer said... – Aki Tanaka Mar 13 '20 at 16:09
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    okay, after searching the webs for yuri literature, I think it's safe to say most people use the Kanji version simply because it is more specific than using katakana or hiragana, which are apparently just flowers and people's names – nabulator Mar 13 '20 at 16:18
  • @nabulator is Katakana ever used to describe the genre? You said the kanji is more common, so does that katakana can be used or not – Zain Alleck Mar 15 '20 at 00:41
  • @ZainAlleck Of course it can be used, but only in a casual context where the subject (yuri the comic genre) is already understood. – nabulator Mar 15 '20 at 01:50
  • @nabulator Have you seen it used? And what do you mean it can be as when I search with Katakana, I only get the flower, not the genre – Zain Alleck Mar 16 '20 at 20:11