Bádi, from which the data for the present study is drawn, is the most popular gay magazine in Japan, with a monthly nationwide circulation of approximately 80,000 copies (Abe, 2011). Bádi targets a diverse audience of gay men, including young and older men, students and professionals, niche markets such as SM and bondage enthusiasts, and transgendered and transvestite gay males (Abe, 2011). Within its pages, Bádi contains erotic fiction, HIV/AIDS information, news articles, reviews of pornographic films, photography of nude men (known
as gravure imagery), numerous advertisements for clothing, beauty services and brothels, and, of course, manga – all of which are explicitly labelled as bara.
Indeed, bara amounts to roughly 20 to 30 per cent of an average issue’s content.
As it contains diverse content and targets a plurality of gay subjectivities, Bádi may itself be typified as diverse.
It is due, in part, to this diversity that bara manga featured within Bádi were selected for analysis, as this study focuses upon the construction of diverse gay subjectivities. Furthermore, very few scholars have previously examined Bádi and its contents (see Abe, 2011) and it appears that no study to date has explicitly examined the bara manga appearing within Bádi magazine.
Within this study, 24 issues of Bádi magazine published from 2010 to 2011 were selected for quantitative analysis. The page space afforded to the contents of the magazine in each issue was tallied so as to understand the importance and frequency of bara manga within the overall structure of the magazine.
Following this, a critical reading of every bara manga episode in each issue was undertaken in order to understand their common themes and stylistic elements. This critical reading resulted in the formulation of three ‘clusters’ of bara to categorise the three different overarching narrative structures, themes and artistic styles identified. Each of these thematic clusters present highly distinct constructions of gay subjectivity and, thus, demonstrate that bara contain diverse representations of gay subjectivity, which are explored below.
Findings
Thematic Clusters
Through close reading of the bara in Bádi magazine, it became apparent that traditional descriptions of bara as hyper-masculine did not necessarily fit all the depictions of gay subjectivity. Indeed, exploratory analysis demonstrated that hyper-masculine characters represented only a fraction, although a significant one, of the characters appearing within these manga. Three major themes, and related stylistic elements, emerged, each containing common plot devices, narrative themes, character tropes, artistic styles and instances of gendered language. These clusters – slice-of-life, humorous and erotic – are detailed below.
The thematic cluster slice-of-life [nichijō seikatsu] is a popular genre of manga and anime dealing with mundane, everyday events and circumstances, often within institutional settings such as the workplace or school. Although the term ‘slice-of-life’ is not utilised within Bádi itself, it appears to be an appropriate title for the bara manga grouped within this cluster, as they portray the mundane, ‘normal’ lives of Japanese gay men, with the presentation of normality being a traditional plot device found within other slice-of-life manga.
Furthermore, as Rivera Rusca (see chapter three) has indicated, slice-of-life manga is becoming increasingly visible within Japanese manga magazines, and Bádi is no different. The narrative themes of bara manga belonging to the slice-of-life cluster typically revolve around a character’s (usually the protagonist’s) blossoming homosexual desires and their resulting romantic entanglements, as well as how Japanese gay men negotiate heteronormative Japanese society.
Slice-of-life bara manga differ substantially from the stereotypically hyper-masculine bara analysed in previous scholarship, as there is less of an emphasis on eroticism and intercourse and more of a focus on character development and romance, suggesting potential commonalities between this cluster and yaoi/
BL manga. However, the depictions of the male body within slice-of-life bara do not draw upon the androgynous tropes of shōjo manga and instead utilise a somewhat more masculine physicality to construct gay subjectivity. Indeed, characters within slice-of-life bara are typically depicted with short, almost military style, hair, broad shoulders, muscular torsos and rounded, somewhat plump faces with stubby noses. These stylistic tropes are referred to in Japanese as gachimuchi [muscular-chubby] and are indicative of a gay masculinity distinct to that of the hard masculinity found within hyper-masculine presentations of the male body, and the androgynous depictions of masculinity found in shōjo (see Baudinette, 2011; Suganuma, 2012). Representative examples of these tropes can be found in the works of one of the authors in the corpus, Nohara Kuro (2011). The dialogue in slice-of-life bara promotes a ‘normative’
gay subjectivity, as characters draw upon lexical items indexing a diverse range of masculinities, such as the mildly masculine boku, the strongly masculine ore, and the gender-neutral watashi, all of which mean ‘I’ or ‘me’. Interestingly, the SFPs found within the majority of these bara manga are also only mildly masculine, with strongly masculine emphatic SFPs such as zo and ze being utilised less frequently than their mildly masculine counterpart yo.
The second thematic cluster, humorous [yūmoa] bara, contains similar plot devices to those found within slice-of-life, as humorous bara also generally depict the day-to-day lives of Japanese gay men. Humorous bara differ in two important ways. Firstly, there is less emphasis on character development and romantic themes and more emphasis on parodying stereotypical tropes of gay subjectivity drawn from the broader Japanese gay subculture. For this reason, humorous bara generally include a more diverse cast of characters than the gachimuchi characters typically found within slice-of-life. Thus, stereotypically hyper-masculine men, foreigners and effeminate, often transvestite, Japanese gay men, known as okama, can be found within humorous bara. Secondly, humorous bara differ stylistically and structurally to slice-of-life as they utilise an artistic style in which characters are presented with grossly oversized heads, small bodies and exaggerated facial features. This artistic style is colloquially referred to as ‘super-deformed’ style, and representative examples from the corpus may be found in Niji’iro sanraizu [Rainbow Surprise] (Maeda, 2011).
Humorous bara are usually in yonkoma format, traditionally used for humorous/
parodic manga, wherein each narrative arc is presented as a collection of four panels, typically as a vertical comic strip. Each page of humorous bara will typically include two ‘collections’ of yonkoma panels.
Humorous bara is typified by the portrayal of a diverse range of gay subjectivities, perhaps due to the fact that including as many stereotypical gay characters as possible allows for greater flexibility in the portrayal of humorous circumstances, with the super-deformed artistic style indexing the parody of these stereotypical gay subjectivities. Of particular interest is the image of the transvestite okama, only found within humorous bara. As sympathetic representations of okama appear in other sections of the magazine, it appears the parody of okama in humorous bara is intended to be affectionate and tongue-in-cheek. This is further supported by the fact that gay men identifying as okama are prominent members of the editorial board of Bádi magazine. More research into the presentation of okama in Bádi appears necessary.
Humorous bara succeed in presenting a diversity of gay subjectivities.
Interestingly, due to the super-deformed nature of the artistic style utilised within humorous bara, the majority of the physical tropes deployed in the construction of gay subjectivities relate to the presentation of the face and hair.
Gachimuchi gay men are presented with short hair, large eyes and with the
stubby nose characteristic of this style of character, okama are presented with long hair, large eyelashes and large pouting lips, whereas hyper-masculine characters are typically depicted with larger bodies than other characters, bald or with incredibly short hairstyles and with smaller, more angular and less rounded heads. Clothing is also utilised in the depiction of gachimuchi and okama characters, with gachimuchi characters typically wearing shorts and okama dressed either flamboyantly (for example, with large collared shirts and jewellery) or in women’s clothing. Linguistically, the gachimuchi characters utilise similar gendered language to that found in slice-of-life bara, whereas okama utilise SFPs, such as wa yo and da ne, and self-referents such as atashi [I], typically considered feminine. Hyper-masculine characters exclusively utilise strongly masculine lexical items such as ore [I], omae [you] and strongly masculine SFPs such as zo, ze and ssu.
The final cluster, erotic [ero] bara, is the closest thematically and stylistically to the hyper-masculine manga about which McLelland (2000), Mackintosh (2010) and Suganuma (2012) have written. Erotic bara are primarily concerned with the explicit depiction of homosexual sex acts to the detriment of character development, although, unlike in the manga referred to in McLelland’s (2000) study, there do appear to be instances where romance is superficially explored (often, however, only as a prelude to hardcore sex). The narrative structures of erotic bara tend to be highly flexible and only sketch in enough detail for the sexual acts to not come across as overly contrived, a phenomena referred to as ‘porn without plot’ by Mowlabocus (2007). Erotic bara in Bádi magazine also draw upon SM plot elements whereby innocent men are captured and tortured by others, or a willing ‘slave’ awakens the frustrated, sadistic desires of a typically older man. Examples of this may be found in Tagame (2014).
This inclusion most likely reflects the fact that the majority of the bara within this cluster were created by Tagame Gengoroh and his disciples, all of whom profess an interest in SM (Armour, 2010; Kolbeins, 2013; Tagame, 2009). It may also be argued that the choice of including such content also allows Bádi to appeal to the niche market of Japanese gay men interested in SM, rather than this inclusion demonstrating something about the discourse of gay subjectivity being promoted by the magazine overall.
Similar to Suganuma (2012), this chapter’s findings indicate that, to a certain extent, the hyper-masculine discourses within erotic bara are not
intended to represent a normative depiction of Japanese gay subjectivity. This is evident when examining the construction of gay subjectivity in erotic bara.
Firstly, characters in these manga are typically depicted with exaggeratedly muscular bodies, often to the point of being anatomically problematic, with a similar emphasis on penis size to that found in the manga analysed by McLelland (2000). Furthermore, the fact that anal and oral penetration is often presented in ‘close-up’, dominating a single frame, suggests that the images found within erotic bara are constructed so as to arouse the reader. The use of strongly masculine language, such as that used by hyper-masculine characters in humorous bara, also seems to be a strategy to increase the arousing nature of these erotic bara. Indeed, as Tanaka asserts (see chapter twelve), there are strong ties between masculine language and roughness/impoliteness, and the choice to use highly masculine language in erotic bara fetishises this rough language to form part of a sado-masochistic discourse of desire (see Armour, 2010).
As the intended audience for the majority of these manga are, presumably, those interested in SM, the use of highly muscular bodies and language is not necessarily indicative of the promotion of a hyper-masculine gay subjectivity, but perhaps merely a strategy to sell magazines.
The discussion of the three thematic clusters presented here is limited due to the scope of this chapter and does not take into account the fact that there is considerable overlap between these clusters and that certain episodes of bara manga found within Bádi magazine could be mapped onto more than one (or even all three) of the clusters. However, it is argued that taking bara as a homogenous genre that presents a uniformly hyper-masculine discourse of gay subjectivity is problematic, as the above discussion illustrates wider diversity than previously acknowledged by scholars. Some bara attempt to depict a gay subjectivity based upon the tropes of gachimuchi, others attempt to parody stereotypical depictions of recognisable gay subjectivities such as the okama, and others that may seem to present hyper-masculine discourses may be best approached as objects of arousal rather than an endorsement of a specific gay subjectivity.
The Place of Bara Manga within Bádi
To further contextualise the above discussion of the presentation of gay sub-jectivities, Table 6.1 illustrates the results of quantitative analysis of the content of
each issue of Bádi from 2010 to 2011. As the results indicate, bara was afforded the second highest amount of page space of the top five sections in the magazine, occupying on average 21.6 per cent of the total available page space per issue in 2010, and 30.5 per cent in 2011. Interestingly, although the total average number of pages per issue decreased between 2010 and 2011 (from 278 pages to 249 pages), the number of pages afforded to bara actually increased during this same period. This is despite the fact that certain other content, namely reviews of porno graphy and gravure imagery, decreased during this period.
2010 (average no. of pages) 2011 (average no. of pages)
Total number of pages 278 249
1. Advertisements 114 (41%) 105 (42.2%)
2. Bara manga 60 (21.6) 76 (30.5%)
3. Reviews of pornography 27 (9.7%) 21 (8.4%)
4. Gravure imagery 16 (5.8%) 12 (4.8%)
5. Erotic stories 10 (3.6%) 11 (4.4%)
Table 6.1. Average page space afforded the top five types of content within Bádi magazine.
Numbers in parentheses represent the average number of pages afforded each section as a percentage of the whole.
As the editors of Bádi were required to reduce the overall number of pages per issue in 2011, it appears that they chose to reduce certain content such as pornography and gravure imagery and mitigate this loss through the inclusion of more bara manga. Indeed, as is evident in Table 6.2, between 2010 and 2011 there was an increase in the page space allocated to slice-of-life and erotic bara.
Slice-of-life bara once occupied 8.6 per cent of the overall page space in 2010, whereas in 2011 it occupied 14.5 per cent and erotic bara likewise increased from 7.2 per cent to 10.8 per cent. Although humorous bara also increased in page space allocated in the overall magazine (from 5.8 per cent to 6.8 per cent), it decreased within the overall pages the magazine afforded bara manga in general – from 26.7 per cent to 17.1 per cent – whereas slice-of-life and erotic increased from 40 per cent and 33.3 per cent to 47.4 per cent and 35.5 per cent, respectively. As earlier discussion demonstrated, slice-of-life and erotic bara features gachimuchi and hyper-masculine discourses of gay subjectivity, whereas humorous bara produces not only these two discourses, but also the
okama discourse. Thus, between 2010 and 2011, the page space afforded manga that promoted more ‘normatively’ masculine understandings of gay subjectivity appears to have increased.
2010 (average no. of pages) 2011 (average no. of pages)
Total number of pages 278 249
Total no. of pages of bara manga 60 [21.6%] 76 [30.5%]
1. Slice-of-life 24 (40%) [8.6%] 36 (47.4%) [14.5%]
2. Erotic 20 (33.3%) [7.2%] 27 (35.5%) [10.8%]
3. Humorous 16 (26.7%) [5.8%] 13 (17.1%) [6.8%]
Table 6.2. Page space afforded each thematic cluster of bara within Bádi
Numbers in parentheses represent the average number of pages afforded each thematic cluster as a percentage of the number of pages afforded bara manga, whereas numbers in square brackets represent the average number of pages afforded each thematic cluster as a percentage of the whole.
It would be naive to interpret this change as suggesting that in 2011 Bádi magazine came to conform to the theory that bara as a homogenous genre promotes hyper-masculine understandings of gay subjectivity. The increase in page space afforded slice-of-life and erotic bara, however small it may appear, may instead be read as a strategy the magazine adopted to increase its overall erotic content as a result of the decrease in gravure image and pornographic reviews, which traditionally fulfilled these roles. This argument is further supported by the fact that, as shown in Table 6.1, the page space afforded erotic stories also increased slightly in 2011. More research into these editorial strategies will be needed to further investigate these trends.
Looking at trends over time demonstrates that the discourses of gay subjectivity promoted within Bádi magazine through its bara must always be understood contextually, and researchers should examine bara as it is situated in order to avoid overgeneralising the ‘features’ of the ‘genre’ of bara. Bara manga in other media, such as online media and within self-published dōjinshi, also appear worthy of further investigation.