Paper short abstract:

I will analyze the ways in which pain and blood participate in gay erotic self-representation in post-war Japan. I will look back into Yukio Mishima's work touching eroticism as well as how violence is depicted in more recent gay erotic manga.

Paper long abstract:

When thinking of erotic works, there are a number of different ways of representing what is sexually arousing: the revelation of a scantily clad body, a full-frontal nude, or the depiction of sex as it is happening; but one might not immediately associate pain to eroticism. Of course, "pain" as associated with sexual practices is often mentioned in the context of marginal practices but remains still at a distance from typical conceptions of what makes a publication arousing.

In the case of post-war gay publications in Japan, it seems however that the aesthetics of pain and physical violence come to the forefront, and present themselves not simply as a marginal occasion, but rather as part of what makes the male body truly special and alluring. Pain, then, participates in the masculine beauty that is promoted in gay milieus in the second half of the 20th century.

I wish to focus on short extracts from different sources, from Yukio Mishima's graphic descriptions of sexual fantasies, to drawings published in early gay magazines, up to the point of more recent bara manga. Those references may seem disconnected, but my point is precisely to gather them as part of a tradition of depicting the male body in violence, passed on from one to the other throughout the years. I also want to examine the peculiar choice of drawing as a preferred medium for erotica: is it not part of a broader statement on the kinds of bodies that become alluring? Or rather, does it not reveal a specific understanding of visuality when it comes to sexual contemplation?