Bara 薔薇

Bara (薔薇, “rose”), also known as the wasei-eigo construction “Men’s Love” (メンズラブ menzu rabu) or ML, is a Japanese jargon term for a genre of art and fictional media that focuses on male same-sex love and desire, usually created by and for gay men. The bara genre began in the 1960s with fetish magazines featuring gay art and content. Besides bara manga, also called gei comi (ゲイ コミ, “gay comics”), and illustration, a number of bara erotic games exist, as well as novels and memoirs. Bara is mostly a Japanese phenomenon, with limited western exposure through manga scanlations and online homoerotic art communities. While bara faces difficulties finding western publishers, it has been described as “the next big porn wave coming out of Japan.”

Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to beefcakes, or bears (熊, kuma) in gay culture. While bara usually features adult content (sometimes violent or exploitative) and gay romanticism, it often has more realistic or autobiographical themes, as it acknowledges the taboo nature of homosexuality in Japan.

Western commentators sometimes refer to bara as “yaoi”, but yaoi is largely created by and for women and features idealized bishōnen who frequently conform to the heteronormative formula of the dominant and masculine seme and effeminate uke characters. By contrast, bara is considered a subgenre of seijin (men’s erotica) for gay males and resembles comics for men (seinen) rather than comics for female readers (shōjo/josei).