1687 — Japan’s booming seventeenth century print culture creates space for literatrue [sic] devoted to shudo (“the way of [male] youths”), a lifestyle with elaborate codes of conduct. Saikaku Ihara’s short story collection The Great Mirror of Male Love is one of the genre’s most important literary achievements. Its dozens of epic, oft-tragic tales of nanshoku (male-male love) feature a diverse array of characters: samurai (for whom male-male bonds were a part of the lifestyle), Buddhist clergy, merchants, lords, and peasants alike.

1717 — Hagakure, a guidebook on bushido—the samurai code of conduct—advises samurai on the proper pursuit of shudo relationships.

1730 — Nankai no Sanjin’s short story collection, Nanshoku Dew on a Mountain Path, characterizes nanshoku as “the flower of the military class.”

1750 — Spring Pastimes, a shunga (erotic) handscroll by Issho Miyagawa, illustrates relations between samurai and onnagata—male actors in the kabuki theater who performed female roles onstage and offered their professional sexual services to men backstage.

1802 — Illustration by the widely influential ukiyo-e woodblock artist Utamaro Kitagawa (1753–1806), from his 1802 shunga series, On the Road, Love Songs for the Thick-Necked Shamisen. Many respected ukiyo-e artists of the era produce shunga prints, in which male-male sexuality was not unusual. Erotic artwork was part of everyday life and lacked the “sinful” stigma associated with pornography in Western cultures.

1868 — The forcible opening of Japan to the West during the Meiji Restoration ushers in an era of “civilized morality” inspired by Western social policies. Public nudity and erotic imagery are prohibited. Male-male sexuality becomes marginalized and repositioned in discourse as an “immoral” behavior belonging to Japan’s “barbarous” past.

1871 — Festival Mask, a shunga print by Kyosai, depicts a woman making love to a male performer in a large festival mask next to a male-male coupling.

1873 — Amid a newly centralized and “modernized” Japanese legal system, anal intercourse is criminalized for nine years. In 1882, a new penal code influenced by the Napoleonic code effectively legalizes consensual anal sex.

1887 — Obscenity laws put a damper on discussions and depictions of male-male sexuality. Phallic art and erotic texts from the Edo period, including Saikaku’s work, are banned or expurgated.

1904 — In this rare example of Meiji-period homoerotic shunga, a propaganda image from the Russo-Japanese War depicts a Japanese fighter “finishing off” a dying Russian soldier.

1909 — Moral panic arises over Japan’s sexually “decadent” male students. They are dichotomized as koha (roughnecks) and nanpa (softies)—terms from Ogai Mori’s 1909 novel, Vita Sexualis. “Softies” are womanizers presenting as dandies, while their macho “roughneck” counterparts prefer sex with males, inspired by traditional samurai virtues. Newspapers sensationalize roughnecks as “barbarous” hooligans roaming the streets in packs hunting for bishonen (beautiful boys).

1926 — The early Taisho period sees an influx of journals devoted to sexological knowledge, inspired by European psychoanalysis, frankly discussing a variety of hentai (perverse) desires.

1930 — Junichi Iwata writes Study of Nanshoku in Our Realm, a detailed history of Japanese male-male eroticism.

1937 — Wartime policies of ideological control prohibit the publication of “sexual and frivolous” texts.

1945 — The end of the Pacific War ushers in a wave of progressive artistic and sexual expression. US occupation soldiers introduce the term gei (gay) into the popular consciousness.

1949 — Yukio Mishima’s autobiographical novel Confessions of a Mask deals with a young boy coming of age and discovering his sexuality. The frank portrayal catapults Mishima into literary stardom. The author’s bodybuilding helps popularize the sport in Japan.

1951 — Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy helps shape the conventions and aesthestics of modern manga.

1952 — Adonis becomes the first private-circulation “homo” magazine in Japan. Its American equivalent, ONE, also starts publication this year.

1958 — A “gay boom” in the popular press results in widespread coverage of the contemporary gei ba (gay bar) and its constituent, the gei boi—a term associated with effeminate gay men and transgender performers.

1962 — Fuzoku Kitan, a polymorphously “perverse magazine” (hentai zasshi) prints everything from heterosexual BDSM to lesbian erotica to beefcake photography and the artwork of Tom of Finland and George Quaintance, bootlegged from the American Physique Pictorial. Male nudes frequently appear on the magazine’s cover.

1963 — The first appearance of Go Hirano’s artwork in Fuzoku Kitan magazine. In the following deade, his name will become closely associated with Barazoku magazine (1971–2004). Tagame writes that “the act” and the entanglement of male bodies occupies the central focus of Hirano’s erotica: “The flesh of men fills the whole frame. Their massive flesh is all there is.”

1964 — A longtime contributor to Adonis and Fuzoku Kitan, Go Mishima switches to drawing for the new members-only magazine Bara (Rose). Bara‘s title is a radical reappropriation of a gay slur comparable to the English term “pansy.” Go Mishima (whose pen name pays homage to his gym budy, Yukio Mishima) portrays the sexuality of rough-hewn masculine Japanese men, including sailors and tattooed yakuza.

Gengoroh Tagame is born.

1969 — One of Japan’s first feature films to explicitly deal with gay subject matter is Toshio Matsumoto’s experimental masterpiece, Funeral Parade of Roses. Famous transvestite performer Peter stars as Eddie, a modern gei boi locked in Oedipal rivalry with the old-fashioned mamasan of a Shinjuku gay bar. The area is depicted as an urban melting pot of marginalized communities—artists, queers, hippies, and revolutionaries—which Eddie and her fellow queens navigate with bold self-assurance.

1970 — Yukio Mishima infamously commits ritual suicide in a meticulously planned spectacle staged during an attempted coup of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.

1971 — Founded by heterosexual publisher Bungaku Ito, Barazoku (Rose Tribe) becomes the first mass market magazine aimed at a homosexual male audience. To distinguish its masculinist identity from the transgender associations of the term gei, Barazoku opts to identify as a homo magazine.

1972 — Photographer Tamotsu Yato releases Otoko, dedicated to Yukio Mishima, Yato’s close friend and mentor. The hugely influential book of male nudes uses traditional Japanese symbols to root male-male desire within Japan’s unique historical context. Without a traditional publisher, Yato self-distributes Otoko through Shinjuku gay bars.

1974 — Inspired by the popularity of Barazoku, two major gay magazines launch: Sabu (known for its “hard” erotic artwork—in large part thanks to the contributions of Go Mishima) and Adon, a former gay tabloid refashioned in the mold of Barazoku.

1975 — The Tokyo Metropolitan Police’s “Public Morals” office bans the April 1975 issue of Barazoku. Bungaku Ito is forced to pay a 200,000-yen fine, and Mansaku Arashi, author of the scandalous Gay Journey to the West, is also fined. Although Go Hirano deliberately refrains from showing the crotches of the men embracing each other in his illustration for Barazoku‘s July issue, the image still provokes the ire of police officials, but sales of Barazoku double.

1976 — Osamu Tezuka’s thriller with homosexual themes, MW, is serialized in the popular Big Comic magazine.

1977 — June (a phonetic nod to Jean Genet) is the first magazine for shonen-ai (boys’ love)—manga drawn by women for women, depicting male-male romance and sexuality. BL had skyrocketed in popularity thanks to classic works such as Keiko Takemiya’s award-winning The Poem of the Wind and the Trees (pictured left) and Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas.

1982 — Samson magazine launches. Originally an all-purpose gay magazine, in the 1990s it will become dedicated to the niche of older and chubby men and an important platform for gay manga.

1985 — Barazoku publishes the first interview with an AIDS patient anywhere in the Japanese press.

1986 — Artist Ben Kimura begins drawing for Sabu, becoming their cover artist in 1989 after Go Hirano passes away. Kimura’s work focuses on atheletes [sic], especially rugby players and swimmers.

Barazoku‘s 1986 special issue Bara-Komi is the first publication devoted exclusively to gay manga, including work by Kotaro Takemoto and Ryu Fujita.

Influential activist group OCCUR spins off from the Japanese International Lesbian and Gay Association.

1987 — Bara-Komi publishes Junichi Yamakawa’s manga “Kuso Miso Technique”—a matter of little consequence in 1987, yet the comic will rise to worldwide notoriety in 2002, when bootleg scans go viral on the Japanese message board 2channel. Consequently, an influx of interest in gay manga inspires an avalanche of piracy and the overseas misappropriation of “bara” as a genre label.

1988 — Three decades after the original, Japanese pop culture experiences a second “gay boom,” driven by the success of gay literature, including Hisao Hiruma’s novel Yes, Yes, Yes, as well as the increased visibility of transgender personalities on television and a growing interest in foreign gay artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Edmund White.

1990 — Sadao Hasegawa: Paintings and Drawings is published in England, collecting the artist’s iconic oil paintings and illustrative contributions to gay magazines Barazoku, Sabu, Adon, and Samson. Hasegawa’s work strongly references Japanese iconography but also weaves in a patchwork of symbols and aesthetic techniques derived from Balinese, Thai, and Tibetan Buddhist art.

1991 — OCCUR takes on the “quiet” homophobia of Japanese society by bringing the first lawsuit against the Tokyo Metropolitan Government demanding equal rights for homosexual citizens.

Noriaki Fushimi’s influential book Private Gay Life discusses the intersectionality of gender and sexuality. Eschewing homo/hetero dichotomies, Noriaki identifies as hentai (perverse).

1992 — Gay writer and drag queen Masaki Sato’s comments in the feminist Choisir spark a debate on the ethics of female artists appropriating male-male sexuality in yaoi.

1994 — Gengoroh Tagame’s sadomasochistic tale The Toyed Man, originally serialized in Sabu, becomes the first profitable standalone book of gay manga.

Badi magazine launches, representing a new generation of gay culture.

1995 — Gengoroh Tagame and two editors from Badi create G-men magazine, a powerful platform for gay manga specializing in “macho” representations.

1998 — Barazoku ceases regular publication. Internet dating supplants the magazine’s once-thriving personal ads. Shonen-ai manga flourishes, with more than twelve BL magazines and publishing monthly.

1999 — Jiraiya becomes G-men‘s sole cover artist, taking over for Gengoroh Tagame. Pot Publishing releases Tagame’s 824-page historical epic, The Silver Flower.

Sadao Hasegawa ends his life in Bangkok.

2001 — Kinniku-Otoko (Muscle-Man) magazine helps bridge the gap between shonen-ai and gay manga, printing homoerotic work by both male and female mangaka.

2007 — Furukawa Shobou publishes Seizoh Ebisubashi’s first standalone book of manga, My Hometown Hospitality, based on a novel by Kodama Osamu.

2013 — PictureBox’s The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame marks the first English-language collection of gay manga, followed by three more Gengoroh Tagame translations from Bruno Gmünder Verlag.

2014 — The digital marketplace for gay manga expands through vendors like BOOTH, Digiket, and the Big Gym Data Market.