(The first few covers also feature extracts from the lyrics of Bridge Over Troubled Water…) Some of the men who provided covers or interior art have appeared here in the past, among them Ben Kimura, Go Mishima and Sadao Hasegawa. This isn’t entirely unprecedented- Physique Pictorial and Fizeek in the US used drawn covers from time to time-but making artwork a consistent cover feature is very unusual. Use of “bara” today is confused by its application in the West to almost any form of gay manga that isn’t yaoi, a utilization that some Japanese artists take issue with.įor Western viewers, the most immediately striking thing about the covers of Barazoku is their reliance on drawings or paintings rather than photographs. As with many slang terms, not least “gay”, the meaning and application has evolved over time. I wasn’t aware until I started reading about the history of this magazine that bara (“rose”) was originally a pejorative term like “pansy”. 400 issues were published from 1971 to 2008. Barazoku ( “The rose tribe”) wasn’t the first Japanese magazine for gay men but it was the first such title with a general circulation, as well as the longest running.
