yaoi tag
I guess the bara tag covers that.
I've been eyeing this on other sites, kinda interesting premise. Maybe I should take a look as it's been accepted through the RIGID AND VIOLENT QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS of dynasty.
I thought bara tags were just for really masculine men, didn't know that they were in the yaoi genre
Bara came first, stories aimed at gay men usually featuring large gay men with masculine features like in this.
Yaoi came later aimed at heterosexual men and women.
It depends.
The first gay stuffs began in the 50s ans 60s, but they were totally underground and private stuffs, limited to clubs or private circles. The first commercial gay stuffs (and manga) were in the magazine Barazoku, launched in 1971.
Well, more exactly, there were some commercial homoerotic stuffs before Barazoku, like the movie Bara no sōretsu in 1968 or the collection of photos Barakei in 1963.
While the first "yaoi" (or "tanbi" as called at that time) was the novels trilogy of Mari Mori (A Lover's Forest ; I Don't Go on Sundays ; The Bed of Dead Leaves), published from 1961 to 1962. And even the very first "shōnen'ai" manga from the Forty-Niners was In the Sunroom in 1970 by Keiko Takemiya.
So, I'd say they were both born at the same time.
In addition, in Japan they use "men's love" (ML), and not "bara". The bara is the symbol of the japanese gay community and is used for the movies (bara-eiga), but not for the manga. Only the westerners use "bara" to describe gay manga.
As usual the westerners misused the japanese terms, nothing new here, it's like "shōjo-ai" (pedophilia) or "shōnen'ai" (pedophilia OR the very first yaoi manga (during the 70s and 80s), which were as erotic/pornographic as the rest).
EDIT : and anyway, the first "shōnen'ai" from the Forty-Niners were largely read by both gays and lesbians, because even if they were tragic and unrealistic, they were good homosexual manga. The discontent from the gays (but not lesbians) began with the yaoi dōjinshi in the 1980 and 1990, especially with the "yaoi ronsō" (debate of the yaoi) between 1992-1996, were the gays began to become vocal against the yaoi stuffs.
