I see that the wish to move away from the term "bara" is gaining some ground, and in the interest of helping artists and the community at large I am totally supportive of that, but I find it curious that no alternative terms seem to be readily available... things like "muscle yaoi" are certainly accurate descriptors but they're comparatively cumbersome next to the easily-understood simplicity of "bara." Do you have any suggestions, perhaps, for a word or phrase we could try to use instead?
Thanks for your thoughtful question! I named this blog âgay mangaâ after Anne and I interviewed Gengoroh Tagame in 2012 and he explained to us the complicated history of the term âbara.â
âItâs not a word Japanese people use,â Tagame stated. âThe gays donât use it and itâs definitely a foreignerâs term for us.â He walked us through the termâs many transmutations: its origins as a hetero slur similar to the English âpansyâ; its radical re-appropriation by the Japanese gay media in the 1960s and early â70s, evident in the titles of magazines Bara and Barazoku; its eventual expiration amidst a newly politicized discourse surrounding homosexuality in the â80s and â90s; and its recent misappropriation by Western Internet circles as a term for gay manga.
From the interview transcript:
Tagame: [âŠ] the word has come back to life, unfortunately, and I have to say personally, Iâm sort of against it. I donât call my own work âbaraâ and I donât like it being called âbaraâ because itâs a very negative word that comes with bad connotations.
Me: So then, do you call it just âgay mangaâ or is there anything more specific?
Tagame: No, no, no, just âgay manga.â
While many Japanese artists working in this genre tend to eschew any genre label at all, Iâve noticed some artists using "gay manga" (ăČă€æŒ«ç») as well as the wasei eigo term âgei comi" (ăČă€ăłă), or "gay comics." I prefer the former label because "manga" immediately communicates the workâs Japanese origins. Gay manga artists can and should be considered gay comics artists, but itâs also important to acknowledge that their work belongs to a unique lineage of Japanese homoerotic art stretching back to the woodblock prints of the Edo period and beyondâ a historical trajectory independent from the one Western gay comics have evolved along.
Thatâs not to say Western gay art hasnât influenced gay mangaâ the artwork of Tom of Finland and American artist George Quaintance, for instance, began circulating in Japanese queer magazines more than 50 years ago. But gay manga developed in a context and economic model fairly distinct than the history of gay comics of America and Europe in the 20th century that Justin Hall lays out in his excellent book No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics.Â
P.S. Our new anthology, Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It features a plethora of perspectives on the term âbaraâ from the nine artists included within, and plenty of context on the genealogy of gay manga! Go pre-order! ;)
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