Futanari

Futanari (ふたなり, seldom: 二形, 双形, literally: dual form; 二成, 双成, literally: [to be of] two kinds), is the Japanese word for hermaphroditism, which is also used in a broader sense for androgyny.

Beyond Japan the term is used to describe a commonly pornographic genre of eroge, comics and anime, which includes characters that show both primary sexual characteristics. In today's language it refers almost exclusively to characters who have an overall feminine appearance. In that case the term is also often abbreviated as futa(s), which is occasionally also used as a generalized term for the works itself.

Historic origins

Japanese folk religion created diverse fantasies related to sexual characteristics. Traditional vocal pieces that date back hundreds of years deliver rough evidence that a change of gender was not ruled out and that the representation of the gender was used to worship deities such as dōsojin which sometimes had ambiguous gender, being neither male nor female. Leupp adds that the origins might even reach back to the origins of Buddhism, since the deities would not necessarily have a fixed or determinable gender.