Discussion
The 293rd Japan Specialist Seminar was held in a hybrid format on April 22, 2025, with around ten in-person and thirty online participants. The speaker, Dr. Park Soo-jung, a senior researcher at the Institute for Japanese Studies at Incheon National University, delivered a presentation titled “A Cultural History of Japanese Male Homosexual Magazines: Between Play and Resistance.”
The seminar began with an introduction to the Kidan Club (1947–1975), a “kasutori” magazine that emerged amid a postwar desire for entertaining reading material. The presenter first explained how, after it evolved into an adult magazine by encompassing various sexual preferences, it also contributed to facilitating communication and networking among minorities through its publication of historical accounts and fiction related to male homosexuality, and establishing reader correspondence sections. Despite state censorship and campaigns to eliminate “harmful” publications, Kidan Club garnered support from individuals engaged in non-normative sexual practices. The discussion on the magazine’s potential and limitations led into an exploration of the emergence of more specialized gay and S&M magazines from the 1960s onward.
Focusing in particular on Sabu (1974–2002), Dr. Park examined how this S&M-themed gay men’s magazine helped construct a distinctively Japanese ‘macho gay’ image. She also analyzed how the magazine served as a site of playful negotiation between self-identified desires and their representations. Over the decades, Sabu took on activist characteristics during the gay liberation movement of the 1970s and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, and also transformed into an information-oriented publication, broadening its appeal and attempting to diversify representations of gay men.
Through this seminar, Dr. Park traced the trajectory of minority media from adult magazines to gay men’s publications, shedding light on the multifaceted aspects of Sabu, which had often been understood through a limited lens. She emphasized the need for a new perspective in examining such magazines.
The presentation concluded with a lively Q&A session. Attendees asked about topics including the distribution and censorship of gay men’s magazines, the existence of lesbian magazines, potential connections between the cultural shifts of the New Left generation and gay media, and broader sociohistorical contexts—from the Occupation period through late-1960s social movements to the deregulation and re-regulation trends of the 1970s. Additional questions delved into the emergence of magazines aimed at female consumers of gay content, and the history of yaoi culture, further enriching the discussion and bringing the session to a close.
