The literary origins of Japanese yuri

The esu is a Japanese literary genre from the beginning of the 20th century dealing with intimate and platonic relationships between adolescent girls. It developed rapidly in pre-war shōjo literature within voluminous magazines. These periodicals from the 1930s counted between 300 and 400 pages and were mainly composed of esu stories, according to Nobuko Yoshiya and Kawabata Yasunari.