EAPC 3 (1) pp.

59–72 Intellect Limited 2017

East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

Volume 3 Number 1
© 2017 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/eapc.3.1. 59_1

Thomas BaudineTTe
Macquarie University

17
20
Japanese gay men’s attitudesn td
tio t L
towards ‘gay manga’ and the
bu ec
tri ll

problem of genre
is nte
rd tI
fo igh

aBsTraCT Keywords
ot r

1. This article critically analyses the concept of ‘gay manga’ to ascertain how fan Boys Love (BL)
N opy

2. ‘produsers’ and casual consumers understand both geikomi (also known as bara) geikomi
3. and Boys Love (BL) manga. Drawing upon interviews with four Japanese gay men, manga
4. one Japanese Korean man and one Japanese Brazilian man, I investigate how ‘gay genre
C

5. manga’ is understood as a locus for the construction of gay subjectivity. I argue that affect
6. the informants understand BL and geikomi as two aspects of the same meta-genre, produsage
7. revealing how attitudes to the term ‘gay’ have evolved in Japan. For the inform-
8. ants, geikomi and BL are interconnected and they are both understood as legiti-
9. mate expressions of gay subjectivity that play a crucial role in their understandings
10. of gay desire. Importantly, by focusing upon readers’ subjective relationships with
11. texts, this article demonstrates how ‘gay manga’ is understood through an affec-
12. tive lens, with consumers locating their understandings of ‘gay manga’ within their
13. overall patterns of ‘gay media’ consumption. Throughout the article, I reflect upon
14. the necessity for scholars to engage with genre in a more nuanced fashion in order
15. to better understand how individual consumers engage with media texts in their
16. everyday lives.

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 Thomas Baudinette

1. Throughout this article, inTroduCTion 1.

I place the phrases ‘gay
media’ and ‘gay manga’ One afternoon, I sat down with Shōtarō in a cafe in Shinjuku, Tokyo, for what 2.
within quotation marks was to be the first of many interviews I conducted about his consumption 3.
to visibly highlight the 4.
nature of these terms of ‘gay media’.1 Conventional wisdom defines ‘gay media’ as that which is
as highly constructed produced for, and often by, gay men (GLAAD 2015). However, the meanings 5.
and historically
that individual consumers attach to media texts often defy such common-sense 6.
defined. 7.
definitions based on market genre and normative audience. Furthermore,
2. All translations of
what is understood as ‘gay’ within a particular society may change over time 8.
Japanese language 9.
interview data are my (McLelland 2005: 177). This was certainly the case for Shōtarō, a young self-
own, unless noted. identified gay/gei Japanese man who listed ‘the most important’ media plat- 10.
form to his life as a gay man as gay manga/gei manga, further elaborating that 11.
3. This naming practice
derives from the this category of media included ‘stuff like Boys Love/bōizu rabu and geikomi’.2 12.
fact that some
Boys Love (or BL) is an umbrella term that emerged in the 1990s to refer 13.
geikomi were initially
serialized within a to a genre of manga and other related products, produced primarily for 14.
1970s’ magazine titled heterosexual female consumers, that depict romantic and sexual relation- 15.
Barazoku (The Rose 16.

17
Tribe) (Tagame 2015: ships between beautiful boys (McLelland and Welker 2015: 3). On the other
116). It should be hand, geikomi (also known as bara)3 refers to a diverse range of manga that 17.
noted that the term 18.

20
bara is perhaps more
are produced for and by male homosexuals (Baudinette 2016; Lunsing 2006;
Tagame 2015). That Shōtarō linked BL and geikomi together as ‘gay media’ 19.
commonly utilized
within western fandom in his narrative was particularly interesting, for much scholarly literature on 20.
(see Kolbeins 2015).
James Welker (personal
n td
homoerotic manga in Japan has emphasized a sharp division between the two 21.
22.
tio t L
communication) genres, with BL products not traditionally being viewed as ‘gay texts’ (Ishida
has highlighted that 2015; Kolbeins 2015: 32). Shōtarō’s comments seem to suggest that attitudes 23.
geikomi are also 24.
bu ec

referred to as yaro–kei towards what constitutes a gay text in Japan may be changing, signalling a
(beast-style) comics in shift in understandings of BL since critical scholarship on the genre was first 25.
tri ll

certain Japanese fan

conducted in the 1990s (Nagaike and Aoyama 2015). 26.
is nte

conventions. 27.
Due to the separate developmental histories of BL and geikomi, the term
gay manga/gei manga is today usually utilized only within the emerging disci- 28.
29.
rd tI

pline of manga studies to specifically refer to geikomi as manga produced for

and by gay men, distinguishing it both stylistically and theoretically from BL 30.
fo igh

(see Baudinette 2016). This use of ‘gay manga’ in manga studies discourse 31.
also reflects how the term gay/gei is understood in contemporary Japanese 32.
ot r

society as an identity category tied to an inherent and unchanging same-sex 33.

N opy

attraction (McLelland 2005: 177). Thus, it is unsurprising that Shōtarō, a fan 34.
of both BL and geikomi, was not the only informant whose notions of ‘gay 35.
media’ and ‘gay manga’ appeared to contradict the definitions of what kinds 36.
C

of texts are appropriate for consumption by gay men reported in previous 37.
literature. All of the six young men I interviewed about their consumption of 38.
‘gay media’ utilized the term ‘gay manga’ as a kind of meta-generic label to 39.
organize their discussions of BL and geikomi, without any prompting from 40.
me as an interviewer. 41.
Forming part of a larger project investigating young Japanese gay men’s 42.
consumption of various ‘gay media’, this article critically analyses the concept 43.
of ‘gay manga’ as a form of meta-genre in discussions with four young 44.
Japanese men, one Japanese-Korean man and one Japanese-Brazilian man. 45.
The article aims to ascertain how both casual readers of homoerotic manga 46.
and fan ‘produsers’ (Bruns 2008) may understand both geikomi and BL manga 47.
as fundamentally linked within their overall consumption of ‘gay media’. As 48.
such, this article addresses recent research trends that seek to move the focus 49.
of discussion away from BL texts towards readers of BL (Galbraith 2015: 153). 50.
Furthermore, this article reveals how changing attitudes towards the term 51.
gay/gei have led contemporary gay male consumers in Japan to view both BL 52.

60 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

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 Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ …

1. and geikomi as inherently connected. The article thus also contributes to BL 4. ‘Fannish’ reading in this
context refers to an
2. scholarship by elucidating how self-identified gay men read BL, a phenom- affective engagement
3. enon that is yet to receive adequate scholarly attention. with cultural
4. products typified by
hyper-consumption.
5. meThods and inFormanTs Importantly, fans view
6. this consumption as an
In this article, I draw upon in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted integral aspect of their
7.
during 2013 with six individuals concerning their consumption of ‘gay media’ identity (Stevens 2010:
8. 208). This contrasts
to answer how manga, in conjunction with other media, is utilized to inform
9. with ‘casual’ reading,
their understandings of their gay desires and identities. The informants all where the engagement
10. may be affective, but
indicated during interviews that BL and geikomi played a significant role in
11. sporadic.
their lives as gay men. Rather than asking about which particular manga series
12.
the informants read, the interviews focused upon broader attitudes towards
13.
BL and geikomi, as well as asking informants to critically reflect on how and
14.
why they consumed such manga. The interviews were audio-recorded and
15.
transcribed, and then coded for the purposes of qualitative, discursive analy-
16.

17
sis as is consistent with a cultural studies approach to media consumption
17.
(Hartley 2012: 76–77). The coding privileged the vocabulary and concepts
18.

20
that the informants themselves utilized to make sense of their ‘gay media’
19.
consumption. The analysis employed theories arising from the ‘uses and grat-
20.
ifications’ approach to media studies (Rubin and Rubin 1985), as well as ‘new
21.
22. n td
media’ studies (Bruns 2008; Jenkins 2006), both of which are defined below.
tio t L
The participants’ demographic details are presented in Table 1. Of these
23.
six informants, three identified as casual readers of ‘gay manga’ (Junho, Yōichi
24.
bu ec

and Kensuke) and three could be described as ‘fannish’ readers (Shōtarō,

25.
Haruma and Márcio).4 The article explores the highly subjective ways in which
tri ll

26.
individuals engage with media texts, arguing that the six informants’ concep-
is nte

27.
tualizations of ‘gay manga’ were derived from how they used and consumed
28.
BL and geikomi. It must be noted that such a small sample is not necessarily
29.
rd tI

representative of the experiences of all gay male consumers in Japan. However,

30.
fo igh

31.
32.
ot r

33. Informant Age Ethnicity Education Employment Type of

N opy

34. Pseudonyms consumer

35.
Junho 20 Japanese Enrolled at a vocational At his parents’ Korean Casual
36.
C

Korean school (Japan) restaurant

37.
38. Yōichi 21 Japanese Enrolled at a university At a gay bar and clothes Casual
39. (Japan) store
40. Haruma 24 Japanese Postgraduate student Tutor at a juku/cram Fannish
41. (Japan) school, research assistant
42. at a university
43. Shōtarō 24 Japanese University graduate Research assistant at a Fannish
44. (Japan) university
45. Kensuke 25 Japanese Compulsory high school Unemployed Casual
46. (Japan); enrolled at a
47. language school (England)
48.
Márcio 27 Japanese University graduate Unemployed (student) Fannish
49.
Brazilian (Brazil), enrolled at a
50.
language school (Japan)
51.
52. Table 1: Informants’ demographic details.

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 Thomas Baudinette

their ethnic diversity and distinct and varied patterns of media consumption 1.
are perhaps representative of the idealized target of the Japanese ‘gay media’ 2.
landscape, which is increasingly seeking to appeal to a highly diverse audi- 3.
ence of gay men who engage with a wide variety of different media platforms 4.
and content (see Baudinette 2016: 119–22). 5.
6.
7.
Genre and The hisTory oF BL and GeiKomi in JaPan 8.
Throughout this article, I critically reflect upon the relationships between an 9.
individual’s consumption of media texts and the concept of genre. Following 10.
Ryall, I loosely define genre as ‘patterns/forms/styles/structures which tran- 11.
scend individual art products and which supervise their construction by artists 12.
and their reading by audiences’ (1975: 28). Thus, genres represent paradigms 13.
that consumers access to make sense of texts (Lacey 2000: 134). However, it 14.
is important to note that genres are not static as they ‘continually change, 15.
modulate, and redefine themselves’ over time (Turner 1993: 38). Thus, genres 16.

17
are historically situated phenomena that cannot be approached without taking 17.
into account discursive changes in the society within which they are embed- 18.

20
ded (McLelland and Welker 2015: 6). 19.
Genres ‘are often utilised as marketing tools’ that appeal to an audience’s 20.

n td
preconceived notions of what they expect to see (Lacey 2000: 169). This is
particularly true of the Japanese context where genres are often explicitly
21.
22.
tio t L
defined via their relationship to a gendered audience (Clammer 1997: 110). 23.
Some of the most common generic distinctions made between different 24.
bu ec

manga are based on gender, with sharp stylistic and thematic distinctions 25.
tri ll

made between shōjo manga/girls’ comics and shōnen manga/boys’ comics 26.
is nte

(Unser-Schutz 2015: 135). Of course, this is not to say that women do not read 27.
shōnen manga and that men do not read shōjo manga, because they clearly 28.
do (Welker 2015: 62). Indeed, BL partly developed through young women’s 29.
rd tI

subversive readings of popular shōnen texts from the 1980s onwards, inspir- 30.
fo igh

ing them to produce parody manga with homoerotic overtones (Welker 2015: 31.
55). Nevertheless, at the discursive level, female readers of shōnen manga and 32.
ot r

male readers of shōjo manga are not normative consumers, as recent attempts 33.
N opy

by the largest shōnen manga magazine, Weekly Shōnen Jump, to discourage 34.
female readership attest (Nikkei Entertainment 2013). 35.
The generic distinctions between shōnen and shōjo manga have influ- 36.
C

enced whether or not BL and geikomi are considered ‘gay texts’. Indeed, 37.
previous scholarship has tended to emphasize the fact that BL should not be 38.
considered as depicting gay/gei relationships or desires because BL emerged 39.
from 1970s’ shōjo manga (McLelland and Welker 2015: 3). The origins of 40.
BL can be said to be the work of members of the Fabulous Year 24 Group/ 41.
Hana no nijūyonnen-gumi, an influential group of female manga authors 42.
born in or around 1949 (Shōwa 24) (Welker 2015: 44). Some members of this 43.
group, including the seminal shōjo auteurs Takemiya Keiko and Hagio Moto, 44.
began to write so-called shōnen’ai/the love of boys series within which the 45.
love between beautiful boys was developed as a site to explore female sexual- 46.
ity (Welker 2015: 46). BL eventually emerged as the preferred term for such 47.
works as the genre became increasingly commercialized during the late 1980s 48.
and early 1990s through the publication of shōjo manga magazines specifi- 49.
cally dedicated to BL, such as Gust, b-Boy and Image (Welker 2015: 63). 50.
On the other hand, geikomi had its birth in the late-1970s magazines that 51.
targeted the homo sub-culture of same-sex-desiring men (Lunsing 2006). 52.

62 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

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 Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ …

1. According to Tagame’s history of Japanese gay erotic art, the manga appear- 5. As I will discuss below,
2. ing in these homo magazines, which were then known as homo art/homo āto Tagame’s reading of
these works as both
3. or bara, had important precedents within the works of artists active during the queer (kuia) and gay
4. 1960s, such as Mishima Go and Oda Toshimi (2003: 10, 2015: 115). Tagame (gei) is somewhat
problematic.
5. notes that these artists’ valorization of ‘rough’ and ‘hard’ depictions of mascu-
6. linity played an important role in setting the tone of geikomi, which he explic- 6. Fushimi Noriaki’s
memoir Puraibe–to
7. itly situates in opposition to BL (2015: 116).5 The homo sub-culture from gei raifu (Private
8. which geikomi emerged developed during a time when the loanword gay/gei Gay Life) (1991) was
9. was typically utilized in Japan to refer to same-sex-desiring men who cross- especially influential
in promoting the
10. dressed and performed a stereotypically hyper-feminine identity (McLelland understanding of
11. 2005: 110). Homo represented a subjectivity that specifically valorized hyper- gay/gei as an identity
category for same-sex-
12. masculinity so as to avoid the somewhat transgendered understandings attracted men.
13. attached to the term gay/gei at the time (Mackintosh 2010: 18). Three homo
14. magazines were particularly influential in the development of the geikomi
15. genre: Barazoku (The Rose Tribe), Japan’s first mainstream commercial maga-
16. zine for same-sex-desiring men (Lunsing 2006); its manga supplement Bara-

17
17. kei (Bara Style) (Kolbeins 2015: 32; Tagame 2015: 115); and the BDSM-themed
18. magazine Sabu (Welker 2015: 62).

20
19. Later, during the so-called gay boom/gei būmu of the 1990s, gay iden-
20. tity politics derived from the North American queer rights movement
21.
22. n td
received widespread recognition throughout Japan’s mainstream media,
and the transgendered nuance attached to the term gay/gei began to lessen
tio t L
23. (McLelland 2005: 177). Due to these shifts, as well as the work of gay/gei
24. activists and writers such as Fushimi Noriaki and Ōtsuka Takashi,6 many
bu ec

25. same-sex-attracted Japanese men began to explicitly identify themselves as

tri ll

26. gay/gei, particularly as the term was popularized via the Internet (McLelland
is nte

27. 2005: 184). During this time, Terra Publications, the publishers of the popular
28. gay/gei magazine Bádi, began to publish manga that were explicitly labelled
29. geikomi to differentiate their work from BL (Baudinette 2016: 107–08). Today,
rd tI

30. both semi-professional and amateur geikomi artists have continued to label
fo igh

31. their work as geikomi, with many choosing to primarily promote their work
32. online (Baudinette 2016: 110).
ot r

33.
N opy

34.
35. BL, GeiKomi and The PoLiTiCs oF rePresenTaTion
36. Influenced by their understanding of gay/gei as an identity category explicitly
C

37. tied to their experiences of same-sex attraction, the six informants understood
38. BL and geikomi as interconnected and argued that they both represent equally
39. valid yet fantastic depictions of gay/gei subjectivity. For this reason, the six
40. men saw no need to sharply disassociate BL from geikomi when discussing
41. their consumption of ‘gay media’.
42. Stylistically, BL and geikomi differ greatly, although it is important to note
43. that both BL and geikomi are not monolithic and contain great stylistic varia-
44. tion across artists working in either genre (Baudinette 2016: 115; Welker 2015:
45. 66). During interviews, the informants did raise particular stylistic differences
46. between BL and geikomi essential to their understanding of both genres. For
47. the informants, BL is typified by a depiction of its male characters known as
48. the bishōnen/beautiful boy aesthetic and a focus on romantic escapism (see
49. McLelland 2000: 64), although they recognized that some BL also contains
50. highly explicit (and often violent) depictions of sex (see McLelland and Welker
51. 2015: 4). A focus on bishōnen is typical of shōjo manga, where the image of
52. the beautiful boy has been argued to represent a ‘softer’ masculinity that is

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 Thomas Baudinette

7. This was particularly ‘safer’ for female consumption compared to typical depictions of masculin- 1.
true of Sabu and
Adon but less true of
ity found in Japan (McLelland 2000: 69). On the other hand, the informants 2.
Barazoku, which often viewed geikomi as depicting gay men having wild, rough and uncontrollable 3.
contained images of urges, which previous scholarship suggests may be due to their emergence 4.
bishōnen (McLelland
2000: 130). from the 1970s homo magazines, such as Sabu, which promoted ‘hyper- 5.
masculine’ visions of gay desire (Mackintosh 2010: 18).7 These depictions 6.
8. This narrative is also
common in BL, as contrast quite significantly with the bishōnen aesthetic, although recent years 7.
demonstrated by have seen the appearance of a significant minority of geikomi artists such as 8.
Mizoguchi’s (2000) Nohara Kuro and Maeda Poketto who do include bishōnen within their work 9.
analysis of BL texts
produced in the 1990s. (Baudinette 2016: 116). 10.
Another important distinction between the two genres, which the inform- 11.
9. Tagame’s argument,
which assumes that ants did not mention, is that there is a tendency within BL for the characters 12.
all men who possess to not identify themselves as homosexual but rather as heterosexual men who 13.
same-sex desire should
act in specific ways,
are somehow attracted to other men (Ishida 2015: 221). That is, their identities 14.
fails to take into are not presented as linked to an inherent and unchanging same-sex desire 15.
account the fact that but rather represent a contextualized attraction to a specific individual (who 16.

17
geikomi is likewise
highly stylized and happens to be of the same sex) (Ishida 2015: 221–22). This is in distinction to 17.
unrealistic. For a geikomi, where at least one of the characters is often explicitly identified as 18.

20
critique of this view, either homo (during the 1970s) or gay/gei (since the 1990s) (Tagame 2015: 19.
see Baudinette (2016).
116), although it is not uncommon for one partner to be a fetishized hetero- 20.

n td
sexual man (who is often a victim of rape) (Baudinette 2016: 118).8 As will
be discussed in the following section, the fact that the informants discounted
21.
22.
tio t L
such a crucial generic distinction between BL and geikomi is firmly rooted in 23.
their contemporary experience of identifying as gay/gei in Japan. 24.
bu ec

Since BL contains such representational practices, a debate emerged in 25.

tri ll

previous scholarship concerning whether or not BL can be viewed as ‘authen- 26.

is nte

tically’ gay (see McLelland 2000; Mizoguchi 2000; Tagame 2003). These 27.
debates had their genesis within the so-called yaoi ronsō/yaoi dispute of the 28.
early 1990s (Lunsing 2006), with yaoi being a term for BL texts, produced at an 29.
rd tI

amateur level by fans, that was dominant in the 1980s (Galbraith 2015: 154). 30.
fo igh

Writing in the feminist coterie magazine Choisir, self-professed gay man and 31.
activist Satō Masaki argued that the depictions of gay men found in BL were 32.
ot r

‘effeminate’, linking this to the discriminatory tendency of Japanese society 33.

N opy

to understand male homosexuality as transgendered (Ishida 2015: 214). Satō 34.

(1996) claimed that such representations differed greatly to the lived experi- 35.
ence of gay men and were ultimately reinforcing harmful mainstream ideas 36.
C

about gay life in Japan. Satō’s position was echoed by Tagame Gengoroh, a 37.
prominent geikomi artist, who argued that geikomi represents a more ‘real- 38.
istic’ example of ‘gay erotic art’ that challenges normative understandings of 39.
gay men as transgendered by focusing on the hyper-masculine and rough 40.
nature of gay men’s desires (Tagame 2003: 13).9 41.
In response to these arguments, female authors and BL fans such as 42.
Fujimoto Yukari (1998) and Mizuma Midory (2005) emphasized that BL 43.
instead functioned as a ‘fantasy’ that allowed young women to explore their 44.
own sexuality in a non-threatening manner. Crucial to their argument was 45.
the fact that the men depicted in BL were not traditionally expected to be 46.
understood as gay/gei (Ishida 2015: 221). Thus, for these authors, whether 47.
or not BL accurately reflected the lived experience of gay men was immate- 48.
rial. Fujimoto (1998) and Mizuma (2005) argued that, because BL texts were 49.
essentially women’s texts, all that was important was the fact that BL provided 50.
women with the sexual agency to explore their identities and desires (see 51.
Ishida 2015: 216). Such arguments, Ishida suggests, can be summed up as 52.

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 Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ …

1. centring on women readers’ use of gay men as surrogates for their own sexual
2. selves, a practice that he terms ‘the appropriation of representation (hyōshō no
3. ōdatsu)’ (2015: 217).
4. For the six informants, both BL and geikomi are equally fantastic and
5. claims that one is more authentic or real than the other were viewed with
6. derision. They each stated that they believed BL and geikomi depict two
7. different yet ultimately fantastic and complementary discourses of gay desire
8. and identity. This belief in the interrelationship of BL and geikomi repre-
9. sented the basis for the informants’ conceptualization of a meta-genre they
10. termed ‘gay manga’. The stylistic differences found between BL and geikomi
11. were reported as presenting two equally valid depictions of gay/gei subjectiv-
12. ity. In the words of Junho, ‘gay manga… that is BL and geikomi… show the
13. two sides inherent to gay men’. Explaining further, Junho suggested that BL
14. demonstrated gay men’s need for and investment in romantic relationships,
15. whereas geikomi depicted the ‘carnal’ nature of gay desire. A more fannish
16. reader, Haruma, claimed that BL can be understood as promoting ren’ai or

17
17. romansu, which both signify a spiritual or emotional love (Ryang 2006: 13),
18. whereas geikomi was linked to erosu or koi, terms that connote carnal lust

20
19. and bodily desire (Ryang 2006: 14).
20. For the six men, it did not matter that BL was typically written by women.
21.
22. n td
The gender of the author was not an important factor in how the six men
consumed and understood BL and/or geikomi. Rather, it was the content of
tio t L
23. the media, and the ways in which the informants used them, that informed
24. their conceptualization of the meta-genre of ‘gay manga’.
bu ec

25.
tri ll

26.
‘Gay manGa’ as defined throuGh content
is nte

27.
28. For the informants, understandings of BL and geikomi attached to content
29. were more salient than stylistic or market-based definitions. It is here that
rd tI

30. the informants’ historically-situated understandings of what may be consid-

fo igh

31. ered gay/gei play a particularly crucial role. The informants understood both
32. BL and geikomi as depicting ‘gay men’, and this is perhaps because it is now
ot r

33. becoming increasingly common for the characters in BL to self-identify as

N opy

34. gay/gei (Ishida 2015: 221). That both BL and geikomi contained depictions of
35. gay men (which were often sexually explicit) qualified them both for inclusion
36. within the informants’ definition of ‘gay media’. Indeed, the informants’ defi-
C

37. nitions of ‘gay media’ ultimately rested on this presence of, and focus upon,
38. gay men, relationships and sex.
39. The six informants reported that they consumed many kinds of media
40. content, which one would expect to be classified as ‘gay media’ due to their
41. explicit production for a gay male audience. This included gay pornography,
42. magazines, dating sites, gay news sites and geikomi. However, they all also
43. stated that they considered a genre of TV shows called one- variety shows/one-
44. baraeti bangumi as ‘gay media’, and they all consumed such shows with vary-
45. ing levels of frequency. One- variety shows are produced for the consumption
46. of mainstream audiences and star cross-dressing male ‘homosexuals’ known
47. as one-, which literally means ‘older sister’ but could be more idiomatically
48. translated within this context as ‘queen’ (Maree 2013). They are also known as
49. okama, but as discussed below this term is considered somewhat problematic
50. by certain groups. Within these shows, the one- celebrities are often the target
51. of crass and homophobic humour due to their inability to successfully ‘pass’
52. as women (McLelland 2000: 55).

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 Thomas Baudinette

Whether or not onē/okama could truly be considered gay/gei became a 1.

significant point of controversy among many gay activists during the early 2.
2000s (McLelland 2005: 180). Sparked by outrage over the use of the term 3.
okama within the magazine Shūkan Kin’yōbi in a 2001 article about self-iden- 4.
tified okama activist Tōgo Ken (see Fushimi et al. 2002), many gay activists 5.
argued that okama is a discriminatory term due to its implication that gay men 6.
are ‘transgendered’ or ‘failed men’ (McLelland 2005: 181). While okama was 7.
considered by both mainstream society and the gay community to represent a 8.
transgendered subject during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Maree’s insight- 9.
ful analysis of contemporary attitudes to onē/okama suggests that today onē 10.
are widely accepted as being at least potentially gay/gei (2013: 11–12). Indeed, 11.
all of the informants in this study besides Kensuke rated onē positively and 12.
were happy to classify them as gay/gei, hence making onē variety shows a 13.
form of ‘gay media’. This understanding is based on the recognition that onē 14.
were, in Haruma’s words, ‘another kind of gay’. 15.
Under a framework in which onē are recognized as ‘another kind of gay’, 16.

17
it is unsurprising that BL and geikomi were also both considered ‘gay media’, 17.
with Yōichi explaining that to conceptually separate them from each other 18.

20
made little sense. He stated, ‘they are both manga, two sides of the same 19.
coin… they have gay guys in them, even if they look different… so they’re 20.

n td
gay manga, right?’ This view was shared by the other five informants. While it
could be argued that such a definition of ‘gay manga’ is somewhat simplistic,
21.
22.
tio t L
this does not delegitimize the fact that the presence of what the six informants 23.
viewed as gay/gei men within manga was crucial to make consumption of 24.
bu ec

this media meaningful to them. The presence of gay men within ‘gay manga’ 25.
tri ll

allowed for an affective engagement with the texts, empowering the inform- 26.
is nte

ants to ‘use their imaginations to interact differently with media… and the 27.
world around them’ in a way analogous to the female fans of BL (Galbraith 28.
2015: 164). The informants were able to access a variety of different fantasies 29.
rd tI

concerning gay experience and relate these to their own everyday lives, sexual 30.
fo igh

desires and personal aspirations. 31.

For the six men, the idea that something called ‘gay manga’ existed was 32.
ot r

empowering. As Haruma explained, ‘both kinds of gay manga have played 33.
N opy

an important part in teaching me about myself’. The ability to utilize media 34.
according to their own needs and wants instilled the men with a sense of 35.
sexual agency. Kensuke, who was perhaps the least frequent consumer of BL, 36.
C

claimed that he occasionally read such manga so as to ‘explore how young 37.
women understand the way guys like me live’. He believed that, although the 38.
depictions of gay men found within BL did not specifically resonate with him, 39.
they still had a legitimate place within the Japanese ‘gay media’ landscape. 40.
41.
42.
‘Gay manGa’ as deFined ThrouGh use 43.
The six informants also appeared to reflect upon the way they utilized BL and 44.
geikomi to classify them as ‘gay manga’. The subjective meanings that derive 45.
from how the men utilize ‘gay manga’ form the basis of their understand- 46.
ing of these texts rather than their apparent market-based genres. Indeed, 47.
the ways in which the informants drew upon their understandings of the 48.
purposes to which they put ‘gay manga’ resonates strongly with the ‘uses and 49.
gratifications approach’ to the study of media consumption (Rubin and Rubin 50.
1985). This approach ‘seeks to explain the role of mass media for individuals 51.
and society from the perspective of the consumer’ (Rubin and Rubin 1985: 36) 52.

66 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

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 Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ …

1. by focusing the discussion upon ‘the social and psychological origins of [a 10. An investigation of
this claim would be
2. consumer’s] needs, which generate [their] expectations of mass media’ (Katz an interesting and
3. et al. 1973: 510). useful direction for
4. In a statement that correlated with the experiences of the five other future research,
particularly since some
5. informants, Kensuke explained that, as both BL and geikomi typically contain scholars have argued
6. depictions of (what he considered to be) gay/gei sex, he would utilize both BL that heterosexual
7. and geikomi as an aid to masturbation. Such a statement clearly demonstrates women’s consumption
of BL could also
8. how the informants have internalized an understanding of all same-sex activ- be considered
9. ity between men as gay/gei, showing how they consciously disregard the fact pornographic (see Mori
2010).
10. that within BL in particular many characters explicitly reject identifying them-
11. selves as gay/gei (Ishida 2015: 217). All six informants quite candidly admitted 11. This is in
contradistinction
12. that they would often masturbate over the pictures found within both BL and to ‘Western’ (North
13. geikomi. Márcio and Haruma claimed that geikomi were more ‘exciting’ for American and
14. the purposes of masturbation. However, this was not because they personally European) gay media,
which McLelland (2000:
15. found these texts ‘more authentic’ but rather because the physical appear- 123–24) suggests also
16. ances of the characters in geikomi resonated with the physical appearances of serve an important

17
17. the men they found attractive ‘in real life’ (that is, large, bulky and rough, an community-building
function, which seems
18. aesthetic called gacchimuchi; see Baudinette 2016).

20
somewhat absent
19. ‘Gay manga’, referring to both BL and geikomi, were accessed by the six within Japanese gay
media. However, see
20. men online through the massive public access forum 2-channel (commonly Mackintosh (2010:
21.
22. n td
called Ni-chan) where they were often labelled as onani-yō okazu gazō/side-
dish pictures used for masturbation. Threads on 2-channel that are labelled
43–93) for a persuasive
counter-claim.
tio t L
23. ‘side-dish pictures’ also typically include images from Japanese and western
24. gay pornography, and the inclusion of ‘gay manga’ with pornographic texts,
bu ec

25. coupled with the informants’ use of ‘gay manga’ as a masturbatory aid, led the
tri ll

26. six men to view ‘gay manga’ as primarily pornographic content. Importantly,
is nte

27. the informants stated that it was just as likely for BL to be presented as a ‘side
28. dish picture used for masturbation’ as geikomi, perhaps suggesting that there
29. is a tendency for gay men to view BL as pornographic texts.10
rd tI

30. Here, yet again, the importance of an affective (and, perhaps, an ‘auto-
fo igh

31. erotic’) relationship with the text is important to the informants’ understand-
32. ing of the texts. Although there was a shared belief among the informants
ot r

33. that BL was ‘romantic’ whereas geikomi was ‘erotic’, the six men’s consump-
N opy

34. tion of both kinds of text was quite similar to their consumption of porno-
35. graphic videos and ‘gay media’ content, which they all consumed extremely
36. frequently. As Yōichi, a casual consumer, explained, ‘as a guy, I am horny all
C

37. the time… gay manga is useful and I can cum quickly [when I consume it]/
38. otoko toshite, itsumo muramura suru… gei manga wa benri de, hayaku ikeru
39. yo’. The informants made no distinction between BL and geikomi when they
40. were approached for the purposes of masturbation, since the immediate aim
41. of consumption was sexual gratification.
42. The fact that both BL and geikomi are put to masturbatory purposes by
43. the informants demonstrates how these six men have incorporated their
44. consumption of these manga into their wider consumption of ‘gay media’,
45. since comments made during interviews indicated that masturbation was
46. a prime motivator for the informants’ ‘gay media’ consumption. This is
47. unsurprising since McLelland (2000: 123) has argued through his sociologi-
48. cal survey of 1990s’ Japanese ‘gay media’ that the majority of such media is
49. designed to cater to masturbatory uses.11 This demonstrates how the need to
50. experience sexual gratification through masturbation motivates consumption
51. and how this need forms the basis for an understanding of BL and geikomi
52. as ‘gay media’.

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 Thomas Baudinette

‘Gay manGa’ as deFined ThrouGh ‘ProdusaGe’ 1.

To investigate consumer and use-based definitions of ‘gay manga’ in more 2.
depth, I present brief case studies of how Shōtarō and Márcio both produce 3.
and consume ‘gay manga’ as fan ‘produsers’. The concept of produsage was 4.
developed by new media scholar Axel Bruns (2008) to emphasize the agency 5.
of the consumer within a media marketplace that is becoming typified by 6.
high levels of ‘convergence’. According to Jenkins, convergence refers to ‘the 7.
flow of content across media platforms, the cooperations between multiple 8.
media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who will 9.
go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment they want’ (2006: 10.
2). Thus, a produser is a fan who not only consumes a particular commodity 11.
but also creates it at an amateur level (Bruns 2008). Through their produs- 12.
age, a fan has the agency to redefine and re-interpret media content in ways 13.
that may challenge and subvert the way media were intended to be norma- 14.
tively consumed and understood. Produsage has particular salience among 15.
16.

17
Japanese fans of manga and anime who are well known for their production
of unofficial fan texts (Welker 2015). Indeed, the production of homoerotic 17.
18.

20
dōjinshi, or fan-published magazines where fans depict their favourite char-
acters within parodic or erotic/pornographic situations, is an important aspect 19.
of BL fandom in Japan (Welker 2015: 55). 20.

n td
Shōtarō has been consuming BL manga since his early teens, and began 21.
22.
tio t L
supplementing this consumption with geikomi after encountering such manga
in Bádi in his 20s. Shōtarō is an amateur mangaka/manga artist who dreams 23.
24.
bu ec

of one day working within Japan’s creative industries to produce his own ‘gay
manga’. Shōtarō spends much of his time drawing original homoerotic illus- 25.
tri ll

trations as well as BL dōjinshi of his favourite manga series, all of which he 26.
is nte

uploads onto his Pixiv account. Pixiv (www.pixiv.net) is a personal portfolio 27.
website popular with amateur artists that allows members to upload their 28.
29.
rd tI

images online so that other members of the website may view and comment
on their work. Shōtarō is part of a large community of both BL and geikomi 30.
fo igh

artists on the site, including professional geikomi artists such as Kumada 31.
Pūsuke, Tagame Gengoroh and Murata Poko. 32.
ot r

On his Pixiv account, Shōtarō uploads his art and tags them as gei 33.
N opy

manga/gay manga, rejecting the more common gei-muke/for gay men tag for 34.
geikomi and fu-muke/for fujoshi or ‘rotten female fans of BL’ tag typically 35.
utilized for BL. Indeed, Shōtarō, drawing upon his failed romantic adven- 36.
C

tures in Tokyo’s gay town of Shinjuku Ni-chōme, hopes to create a ‘truly gay 37.
manga’ that synthesizes the stylistic and thematic aspects of BL and geikomi. 38.
As a produser, Shōtarō is representative of a movement among amateur 39.
mangaka seeking to bring BL and geikomi into dialogue. This movement has 40.
gained prominence in recent years due to high-profile support from estab- 41.
lished artists such as the geikomi author and self-identified gay man Takeshi 42.
Matsu and the prolific (female) mangaka Yoshinaga Fumi, whose innovative 43.
and genre-defying work often plays with gender and sexuality. Ultimately, 44.
through his amateur works, Shōtarō challenges and subverts the normative 45.
view of BL and geikomi as incompatible and oppositional. His decision to 46.
label his works ‘gay manga’, rather than geikomi or BL, represented a deliber- 47.
ate strategy that sought to deconstruct or even ‘queer’ normative conceptual- 48.
izations of these texts. 49.
Márcio’s case is somewhat different. Rather than identifying himself as an 50.
amateur creator, he is instead an amateur curator who runs an English and 51.
52.

68 East Asian Journal of Popular Culture

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 Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards ‘gay manga’ …

1. Portuguese language Tumblr fan page upon which he shares BL and geikomi 12. This, and subsequent
quotes from interviews
2. images. Originally conceived as a BL fan page where he could share images about Márcio’s use
3. by his favourite BL artists, Márcio began uploading geikomi onto his site after of Tumblr, is from
4. moving to Japan and coming into contact with such manga. He explained interviews conducted
in English.
5. that his decision to include geikomi on what was originally a BL fan page was
6. motivated by his desire to ‘show-off the wide range of gay manga available in
7. Japan’.12 Importantly, Márcio’s Tumblr fan page also acts as an archive of his
8. favourite ‘gay manga’ to be used for masturbatory purposes, and he invites
9. other users of the fan page to similarly use his site to ‘get off’.
10. Throughout the site, Márcio utilizes the term ‘gay manga’ to discuss his
11. decision to create an archive that contains both BL and geikomi. Like Shōtarō,
12. Márcio is seeking to bring BL and geikomi into dialogue, and he thus rejects
13. the use of the term ‘gay manga’ to refer only to geikomi. Instead, he believes
14. that treating ‘gay manga’ as an overarching category or meta-genre within
15. which BL and geikomi are located represents a more useful way to express the
16. numerous ways male homosexuality is represented in Japanese popular culture

17
17. texts to foreign audiences, as well as a more suitable way to label a collection
18. of ‘pics to jerk off to’. Márcio’s desire to encourage his readers to masturbate

20
19. (virtually) together over ‘gay manga’ appears to represent his attempt to create
20. a community of ‘auto-erotic’ affect where the act of sexually pleasuring the
21.
22. n td
self becomes the basis for the interconnected consumption of BL and geikomi.
Through their produsage, both Shōtarō and Márcio set themselves up in
tio t L
23. deliberate opposition to the conventional wisdom that seeks to disassociate
24. BL from geikomi. Their decision to engage in such subversion represents an
bu ec

25. instance where their agency as producers and curators of homoerotic content
tri ll

26. allowed them to fashion conceptual worlds in which their own personal
is nte

27. understandings of media destabilized market-based approaches to under-

28. standing BL and geikomi. Indeed, Shōtarō’s attempts to synthesize aspects of
29. the two genres within his dōjinshi indicates his investment in reconceptualiz-
rd tI

30. ing what is and is not appropriate for a gay man to produce and consume. As
fo igh

31. he eloquently explained, ‘the gay manga I create provides me with a frame-
32. work to explore my feelings of loneliness in the gay scene’, and he feels that it
ot r

33. is this personal and emotional attachment to ‘gay manga’ that is most impor-
N opy

34. tant for him. Márcio, seeking to ‘educate’ Brazilian fans of BL about the exist-
35. ence of geikomi, likewise finds ‘gay manga’ a useful meta-generic label to
36. destabilize the normative assumptions of these fans.
C

37. Within these two case studies, as well as the patterns of ‘gay media’
38. consumption of all six informants, we can see instances where fannish and
39. casual consumers create meaningful frameworks for their relationships with
40. media that are quite distinct from the frameworks that have been offered up
41. in previous scholarly and activist literature. Furthermore, much like female
42. fans of BL (Galbraith 2015), the informants are seeking to make affective
43. communities based on exploring homoerotic manga, regardless of the gender
44. of the authors who produced them.
45.
46. ConCLudinG remarKs
47.
Focusing on the specific attitudes and consumer practices of individual
48.
gay readers of BL and geikomi, this article provides an important explora-
49.
tive impression of an under-studied population of consumers in Japan.
50.
Paying close attention to how gay/gei consumers of both BL and geikomi
51.
have mobilized the term ‘gay manga’ within their discussions of ‘gay media’
52.

www.intellectbooks.com 69

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 Thomas Baudinette

consumption, this article has shifted the focus of discussion away from 1.
conventional, market-based definitions of ‘gay media’ to a definition based 2.
more on consumer attitudes and experiences. 3.
Consuming BL and geikomi provided the six informants with two different 4.
yet equally valid understandings of same-sex desire, which they made relevant 5.
through the various ways they used the texts. As such, this article demonstrates 6.
how attitudes to what constitutes ‘gay media’ in Japan have shifted since much 7.
of the work on BL was initially conducted during the 1990s, paving the way 8.
for larger surveys of contemporary gay men’s attitudes towards both BL and 9.
geikomi. In particular, there is a need to investigate which kinds of BL and 10.
geikomi gay men in Japan enjoy consuming, as well as how they consume it, 11.
to further understand how BL informs Japanese gay men’s understandings of 12.
their gay desires and identities. Furthermore, work that explicitly compares the 13.
attitudes of gay/gei BL consumers with those of heterosexual female consum- 14.
ers also appears to be a fruitful avenue for future research. 15.
Genre is becoming an increasingly important topic within the emerging 16.

17
field of manga studies (Baudinette 2016; Unser-Schutz 2015). Thus, scholars 17.
must continue to engage with genre from the perspectives of actual consum- 18.

20
ers to critically investigate the relevance of such classifications to individuals’ 19.
understandings of manga. This article represents a first step towards such an 20.

n td
analysis, augmenting previous studies of manga fans’ reading practices and
laying the groundwork for more critical studies of casual and fannish readers’
21.
22.
tio t L
affective engagements with, and understandings of, manga as media texts. 23.
24.
bu ec

25.
reFerenCes
tri ll

26.
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59–72, doi: 10.1386/eapc.3.1.59_1

30.
fo igh

31.
ConTriBuTor deTaiLs 32.
ot r

Thomas Baudinette is a Lecturer of Japanese Studies in the Department of 33.

N opy

International Studies, Macquarie University. His research investigates how 34.

consuming media informs young Japanese gay men’s understandings of their 35.
desires and identities. He also writes on the experiences of Chinese gay men 36.
C

living in Japan and has a broad interest in Japanese popular culture. Thomas 37.
welcomes questions and comments on this article and may be contacted at 38.
[email protected]. 39.
40.
Contact: Department of International Studies, Building W6A, Room 337, 41.
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia. 42.
E-mail: [email protected] 43.
44.
Thomas Baudinette has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and 45.
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that 46.
was submitted to Intellect Ltd. 47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.

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