Katsuhiko Suganuma

Mark McLelland

James Welker

Kazumi Nagaike

History, Culture, and Community in Japan

Boys Love Manga and Beyond

This book sheds light on 'contact moments' between Japanese male-queer culture and that of the West in the postwar period, and critiques various contemporary examples of persistent Orientalism and nativism. Focusing on a range of Japanese as well as English male-queer materials including magazines, memoirs and cybertexts, Suganuma shows how the interactions of the two cultures affected the subject formation process of queer selves. The instances examined range from the hentai magazines of the 1950s and their depiction of men who had sex with foreign men (mostly American servicemen); the depiction of race in the magazine Barazoku; John Whittier Treat's memoir of his sabbatical in Japan and his depiction of his own Orientalism; the writings and strategies of OCCUR and Fushimi in the 1990s; and the GJN news site. The author sees the depiction of and reaction to Japanese men who had sex with foreigners in the hentai magazines as part of a larger pattern of representation manifesting gender anxieties among Japanese men (both heterosexual and homosexual) who found themselves feminized by defeat in the war. He draws on Dyer's understanding of whiteness as a flexible default position in his discussion of Barazoku, but argues that in this case Japaneseness is the default position and whiteness is othered. In his final chapter, he argues for an understanding of the activities of GJN also as a space of mediation rather than simply as a wholesale importation of American or 'global gay' culture. Suganuma argues that the binaries of cross-cultural comparison (local/global, Japan/West, acts/identities, and us/them) can be generative and productive as well as repressive and reductive.

The Politics of Intercultural Desire in Japanese Male-Queer Cultures

Contact Moments

Boys Love Manga and Beyond looks at a range of literary, artistic and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation. In recent decades, “Boys Love” (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists who went on to establish themselves as major figures in Japan’s manga industry. By the late 1970s many amateur women fans were getting involved in the BL phenomenon by creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these fan-made products, sold and circulated at huge conventions, has led to an increase in the number of commercial titles available. Today, a wide range of products produced both by professionals and amateurs are brought together under the general rubric of “boys love,” and are rapidly gaining an audience throughout Asia and globally. This collection provides the first comprehensive overview in English of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. Some chapters detail the historical and cultural contexts that helped BL emerge as a significant part of girls’ culture in Japan. Others offer important case studies of BL production, consumption, and circulation and explain why BL has become a controversial topic in contemporary Japan.

Katsuhiko Suganuma

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