WIP. Entry dedicated to Mr.J, Twenty-One and Chris “PimpAbra”, the biggest bara lovers on KYM<3
I don’t actually like bara ok – Mr. J
About
Bara (also known as Men’s Love) is a genre of fictional media that depicts homosexuality between hypersexualized men, though characters can range from “ripped” to “burly” to “bear” and beyond.
Origins
The origin of the word itself is not clear. It was first used in a mainstream setting in the title of a semi-nude photobook featuring gay author Yukio Mihima, Bara kei, published in 1961[1]. In 1971, the magazine Barazoku became the first gay men’s magazine to be sold in mainstream bookshops in Asia, where it and the shortened form “bara” quickly grew to prominence. In contrast with Yaoi, bara is predominantly authored by gay men for gay men, while yaoi is largely marketed towards women and features more traditional dominant and effeminate roles.
History
Gengoroh Tagame, considered the most influential creator of gay manga[2], credits the beginning of modern gay erotic art to the fetish magazine Fuzokukitan which ran from 1960 to 1974. Though it included heterosexuals and lesbians, the magazine gradually increased its gay content and articles, and featured mostly male erotic cover art. It also featured American physique magazines and artists, such as Tom of Finland[3]. Fuzokukitan’s editor, Mamiya Hiroshi, went on to contribute to the magazine Barazoku, and many artists who debuted in Fuzokukitan eventually ended up working for a privately published, limited circulation magazine, Bara.