For the informants, geikomi and BL are interconnected and they are both understood as legitimate expressions of gay subjectivity that play a crucial role in their understandings of gay desire.
I argue that the informants understand BL and geikomi as two aspects of the same meta-genre, revealing how attitudes to the term ‘gay’ have evolved in Japan. One Japanese Korean man and one Japanese Brazilian man, I investigate how ‘gay manga’ is understood as a locus for the construction of gay subjectivity. Drawing upon interviews with four Japanese gay men, This article critically analyses the concept of ‘gay manga’ to ascertain how fan ‘produsers’ and casual consumers understand both geikomi (also known as bara) and Boys Love (BL) manga.
