Kaze to Ki no Uta

Kaze to Ki no Uta (風と木の詩, lit. "The Poem of Wind and Trees" or "The Song of Wind and Trees") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Keiko Takemiya. It was serialized in Shogakukan's shōjo manga magazines Weekly Shōjo Comic and then Petit Flower from February 1976 to June 1984. One of the earliest works of shōnen-ai (a genre of male-male romance fiction aimed at a female audience), Kaze to Ki no Uta follows the tragic romance between Gilbert Cocteau and Serge Battour, two students at an all-boys boarding school in late 19th-century France.

The series was developed and published amid a significant transitional period for shōjo manga (manga for girls), as the medium shifted from an audience composed primarily of children to an audience of adolescents and young adults. This shift was characterized by the emergence of narratively more complex stories focused on politics, psychology, and sexuality, and came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Takemiya was a member. The mature subject material of Kaze to Ki no Uta and its focus on themes of sadomasochism, incest, and rape were controversial for shōjo manga of the 1970s; it took nearly seven years from Takemiya's initial conceptualization of the story for her editors at Shogakukan to agree to publish it.

Upon its eventual release, Kaze to Ki no Uta achieved significant critical and commercial success, with Takemiya winning the 1979 Shogakukan Manga Award in both the shōjo and shōnen (manga for boys) categories for Kaze to Ki no Uta and Toward the Terra, respectively. It is regarded as a pioneering work of shōnen-ai, and is credited by critics with widely popularizing the genre. An anime film adaptation of the series, Kaze to Ki no Uta Sanctus: Sei Naru Kana (風と木の詩 SANCTUS－聖なるかな－, lit. "The Poem of Wind and Trees Sanctus: Is It Holy?"), was released as an original video animation (home video) in 1987.