Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/75963

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of love stories in gay manga and to discuss the identity of gay men in today' s Japan. Since gay manga are created by and for gay men, they can be regarded as representing and constructing a gay identity which reflects their authors' and consumers' real desires and concerns. Focusing on love stories, which have long been the main theme of gay manga, the analysis shows that stories before the 1990s and after the 2000s differ in the contents and causes of gay men' s suffering, their depiction of the heteronormative society, and the types of communities they are located in. Recent works do not deal with heteronormative society and instead reveal gay men' s ambivalent feeling with belonging to and keeping distance from the gay community.