The populary of gay manga Japan: What are ‘Bara’ and ‘Yaoi’ and who are s fans? - Japan Today

Contents:

• TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED
• 'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY
• JAPAN'S 'LOVE HOTELS' ACCED OF ANTI-GAY DISCRIMATN
• GAY JAPAN, EROTIC FICTN AND THE IMPERIAL IMAGATN
• THE POPULARY OF GAY MANGA JAPAN: WHAT ARE ‘BARA’ AND ‘YAOI’ AND WHO ARE S FANS?
• GAY MEN AND HIV JAPAN
• HOW DO JAPAN TREAT GAY PEOPLE?
• WHY GAY-IENDLY TAIWAN IS A CREATIVE HAVEN FOR LGBTQ ART

TURNS OUT, BARBIELAND ISN'T AS GAY AS S QUEER FANS HAD HOPED

"Alex AvilaAnd Gay Tim, a Brish LGBTQ news se, celebrated Friday, the day of the film’s official release, as “Barbie day“ and lled the world-renowned doll a “queer cultural phenomenon. PicturIn an terview wh Fandango, actor Kate McKnon, who is openly gay and plays “Weird Barbie” the film, said Barbie is about “imagatn. Many also flagged the teased scene which Barbie, now the real world, exchang a longg look wh Ameri Ferrera’s Gloria character; though, the relatnship between the two turns out to be a tribute to motherhood and the tradnal, nuclear before the film’s release, Robbie all but squashed the mors that some or any of the Barbi and Kens would be gay, tellg the Brish LGBTQ magaze Attu: The dolls don’t “actually have sexual orientatns.

There are brief appearanc by Earrg Magic Ken and Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken, both of which Mattel has always nied were tentnally gay-d.

'PASSAG' DIRECTOR NOUNC 'DANGERO' NC-17 RATG ON A FILM PICTG A GAY LOVE STORY

”As far as the queer-d trailers and promotnal clips for the new “Barbie” film, Rand poted to a phenomenon known as “gay wdow advertisg, ” or the practice of advertisers gturg to queer dienc a way that will go over the heads of those who would disapprove. But to actually be lockg ey wh Ellen and hold her, shakg hands as she said, "I'm gay, " on natnal televisn and for the first time, as she has shared outloud that way publicly, was such a profoundly extraordary and timate gift to that moment that I will forever be grateful for. In other words, where Bud Light has buckled unr prsure as bigotry grows agast the LGBTQ+ muny, Gay Water’s creator Spencer Hodson wants his new boozy brand to be the anthis of that.

“The key issue that Bud Light tapped to was the fact that they didn’t unrstand their re dience and know enough about them,” Hodson, a gay man, told CNN about the ntroversy that began when the Anhser-Bch beer brand sent fluencer Dylan Mulvaney a n of beer. “Puttg a product wh the word gay the tle is reprentatn self,” which he hop reclaims the word om the negativy ’s sometim associated wh. The two chatted about the limed amount of gay people wh , and wh Hodson burnt out om his tradnal day job tech, started the nned cktail.

Hodson built up a strong social media followg on TikTok and Instagram durg Covid-19 and is g some of the money om that (as well as om iends and fay) to help fund Gay Water. “Gay is an umbrella term and the ia behd the brand is to be as clive as possible, which means we want alli, we want straight people to be part of this muny we’re buildg.”. For now, Gay Water is sold largely onle (wh a few retailers) and four sugar-ee flavors — watermelon, lime, peach and grapeu — at lnch.

JAPAN'S 'LOVE HOTELS' ACCED OF ANTI-GAY DISCRIMATN

Gay Water might not have the ep pockets pared to s petors, like Whe Claw, but “even at small sle, pani of many siz are havg succs makg spir-based seltzers and premixed cktails,” Bryan Roth, an analyst for Feel Goods Company and edor of the alhol beverage newsletter, Sightl+, told CNN. “There’s lots of space the spir-based seltzer tegory which Gay Water n play, pecially if the brand n offer a cultural or emotnal nnectn that will feel more excg than the prospect of another peapple-flavored vodka seltzer om natnal or ternatnal rporatns,” Roth said.

GAY JAPAN, EROTIC FICTN AND THE IMPERIAL IMAGATN

Of urse, other drks e the word “gay,” too, cludg Gay Beer and So Gay Rosé, Hodson noted, which are also tryg to reach the queer muny and offer them an alternative the straight-domated space. In May this year, at the height of the ronavis’s first wave, two gay men livg together Amagasaki, wtern Japan, thought they would ease the boredom of the untry’s soft lockdown wh a vis to a love hotel, where upl pay for short stays to have rather than the reee time they had anticipated, the uple, their mid-30s, did not even get as far as the door to their room.

While Japan’s thoands of love hotels wele lns of heterosexual upl search of the privacy and timacy nied them at home, gay upl say they are routely turned away. Dpe risg awarens of LGBT rights, Japan is the only G7 untry that do not regnise same-sex marriag, and much of the untry’s multibilln-dollar love hotel dtry accepts only heterosexual Ishikawa, Japan’s first openly gay MP, timated that of 143 love hotels Tokyo’s Toshima ward, where he began his reer as an assembly member, 30 refed entry to same-sex expectatn that they will be rejected means many gay men have e to regard love hotels as off-lims, acrdg to one member of Tokyo’s LGBT muny, who told the Guardian: “Nothg dampens the prospect of a romantic eveng out more than a homophobic hotel policy. ”Akira Nishiyama, assistant executive director of the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislatn, said hotel rejectns of same-sex upl were mon, even though is illegal unr a 2018 revisn to the hotel bs law, which stat that hotels “should not reject guts on the basis of their sexual orientatn or genr inty” the rare ocsns that ctomers report a hotel for homophobia, thori simply offer the proprietors “admistrative guidance” – a measure mpaigners say lacks legal love hotels, so named after the first of their kd – Hotel Love – opened Osaka the late 1960s, origally tered to upl sperate to pe their extend fai, who tradnally lived unr one roof, for a few hours of a cle the young populatn, the rise sgle hoeholds, and the pre-panmic boost ternatnal tourism have prompted many to unrgo image makeovers to appeal to travellers, cludg sgle guts lookg for paratively cheap and fortable a rult, the number of hotels wh an overtly sexual theme has dwdled to ls than 10, 000 recent years, pared wh around 30, 000 two s ago.

THE POPULARY OF GAY MANGA JAPAN: WHAT ARE ‘BARA’ AND ‘YAOI’ AND WHO ARE S FANS?

“We uld have people g om all over the world to next year’s Olympics, and if gay upl are nied entry to love hotels will not reflect well on Japan.

”Although some webs have started listg “gay-iendly” love hotels, Matsunaka said Japan’s refal to fully accept the LGBT muny, exemplified by the ban on same-sex marriag, ma homophobia socially acceptable. Samuel Perry's talk explor several works of erotic fictn published gay Japane magaz the 1970s, works which nnect qutns of imperial vlence and s legaci to the experienc of gay men and to gay male sexualy.

He is terted broad qutns about transnatnal sexualy— so far as how Japane gay culture emerg relatn to Wtern and other non-Wtern sexuali—but also unrstandg how the legaci of WWII, specifilly, ndned the emergence of a new gay male subject the new age of perpetual warfare.

GAY MEN AND HIV JAPAN

While many excellent transnatnal studi of Japane gay fictn have examed how early “postwar” Japane texts draw on the whe bodi of US soldiers to nstct Japane gay sexuali, his paper turns to a later moment when Japan’s re-emergence to the Asian marketplace dilat a space which Asian bodi beg to circulate wh the currents of gay male sire, a space that is both problematic and cril for discsns of ter-Asian sexualy.

While the topics vered Japane anime and manga are seemgly endls, if recent hs like "Yuri on Ice" (2016), or "My Brother’s Hband" (2014-2017) are any ditn, gay and homoerotic relatnships fill an extremely popular niche manga plotl. Gay manga has two major subgenr, not to mentn the huge variety of plotl rangg om futuristic dystopian societi to gay ps fightg crime and fdg love. Among Wtern rears, yaoi tends to nnote BL works that have more explic scen, while shonen’ai is still sometim ed to refer to tamer gay manga seri which you watch an entire seri only for the ma uple to kiss.

HOW DO JAPAN TREAT GAY PEOPLE?

” In a 2006 article by scholar Jonathan D Macktosh, he explas that Barazoku “pneered a homo magaze genre and dtry” that helped Japane gay men feel ls isolated. Japan is a relatively homogeneo society that has, by and large, felt vulnerable to AIDS, viewg primarily as a Wtern phenomenon. Cooperatn and llaboratn wh ernmental preventn programs, a new ncept to the gay muny Japan, is provg to be mutually beneficial reachg a high-risk populatn.

But for Asian Amerins who are gay or lbian, their sexual orientatn may make them seem more “Amerin” than those who are prumed straight.

WHY GAY-IENDLY TAIWAN IS A CREATIVE HAVEN FOR LGBTQ ART

In the first study, participants were randomly assigned to read a brief scriptive phrase of a person named John, intified eher as “an Asian Amerin man” or “a gay Asian Amerin man. Rearchers found that the hypothetil “gay Asian Amerin man” was perceived as signifintly more Amerin than the hypothetil “Asian Amerin man, ” whose sexual orientatn wasn’t specified.

The same rults emerged: Asian Amerins intified as gay were perceived to be more Amerin than Asian Amerins whose sexual orientatn was not intified. Though beg gay creased perceptns of Asian Amerins’ ‘Amerinns, ’ was still not nearly enough to close the gap perceptns between Asian Amerins and wh, ” said Lda Zou, a UW graduate stunt and study -thor. Participants rated Asian culture as ls LGBTQ-iendly, and a gay person as more Amerin if they were associated wh a untry of orig that was ls LGBTQ-iendly.

“One possible extensn of this work is that gay Asian Amerins may be ls likely to have their Amerin inti qutned than straight Asian Amerins, ” said Cheryan.