Below is a link to the first part of Khursten Santos’s Fujojocast in which I was interviewed about my research on “gay manga” in Japan. This first part discusses the history of geikomi in Japan, explores the term “bara” and its transnationalisation, discussing Japanese gay men’s consumption of Boys Love and geikomi, the work of Tagame Gengoroh and some other issues related to my research on young gay men’s media consumption in contemporary Japan.

Even when my life since last year has been moving forward like a jet plane, I always make an effort to do something special for Yaoi no Hi! That’s August 1, and that is today!

 

For this Yaoi no Hi, I decided to upload a podcast featuring my awesome friend and colleague, Thomas Baudinette (or Tom, as I call him in the show) about gay manga in Japan and its place in gay and women’s culture. We brushed on various related topics to gay manga such as gei komi and, of course, boys love.

Thomas Baudinette is an anthropologist and Japanese Studies scholar who is currently teaching at Macquarie University in Sydney.  We’ve worked together for a couple of conferences and often found ourselves talking about our research which looks at people’s consumption of boys love texts. Finally, I had a chance to invite him on a podcast!

 

In this show, we talked about so many things about gay manga and BL that I had to divide the show into two parts. The first part deals with Tom’s research on gay manga and how Japanese gay men are defining and consuming this comic genre. We also talked about the subgenres within gay manga, some of which are beyond what I perceive as aesthetically gei komi. Of course, we also brushed upon “bara” and how  English discourse packages gay manga through English-translated texts such as Massive and other gay-translated titles.

 

It was a fun first hour, and hopefully, you learned so much from Tom about Japan’s vibrant gay manga culture.

NOTE: The actual recording and interview is accessible only via Khursten’s blog! (you can access it via the link below)

via Fujojocast #11 – Gay Manga Dialogues with Thomas Baudinette (Part 1) — Otaku Champloo