"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Attitudes Change

Sometimes very slowly, but they do change. This would have been unthinkable not all that long ago:

Japan’s national public broadcaster has commissioned a TV show about a married gay couple.

NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, picked up the three-episode series based on manga series My Brother’s Husband, created by gay author Gengoroh Tagame.


Japan seems to have a somewhat schizophrenic attitude toward same-sex relationships, particularly between men. For centuries relationships between older and younger men -- similar to the erastes-eromenos tradition of ancient Greece -- were treated quite matter-of-factly. It seems that the institution fell into disfavor in the mid-nineteenth century, about the time of contact with the West, for some strange reason.

What makes it even odder is that same-sex relationships are the basis of a whole genre of manga: boys' love, a/k/a BL, a genre directed at teenage girls and young women. Supposedly this is a way of presenting sexual and romantic relationships in a "safe" way -- i.e., since it's two boys or young men, it doesn't really affect its target audience. Given the steaminess of some of the scenes in these things, I have to wonder.

At any rate, Japan is coming along, slowly but surely. We'll see how this pans out.



2 comments:

Pieter said...

Tagame is well known for his xxx-rated man-man drawings, so I would expect good craftsmanship in the new manga, although I doubt it will be an x-rated opus.

Hunter said...

From the story, I'm assuming it's going to be live action. (Unfortunately, the link goes to a story in Japanese, and my Japanese reading skills are a few steps short of inadequate.) And since it's slated for national TV, I doubt there's going to be that kind of action.

There is, which I didn't mention, another category of manga, written by men for men, known, amusingly enough, as "gei comi."