 | This article needs to be updated.(September 2021) |
Anne Ishii is an American writer, editor, translator, and producer based in Philadelphia. Ishii is the host of WHYY's Movers & Makers, and the Executive Director of Philadelphia's Asian Arts Initiative, an arts non-profit. [1] [2]
Ishii is a producer of bara manga. Her work includes The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame: Master of Gay Erotic Manga, [3] and Massive: Gay Japanese Manga and the Men Who Make It, edited alongside Graham Kolbeins, featuring manga artists Gengoroh Tagame, Jiraiya, Seizoh Ebisubashi, Kazuhide Ichikawa, Inu Yoshi, Takeshi Matsu, Gai Mizuki and Poosukeh Kumada, with artwork by Chip Kidd. In 2013, Ishii founded Massive Goods [1] with Graham Kolbeins, a line of Bara Japanese manga and paraphernalia tied to their graphic novel of the same name. She was a co-executive producer and writer on Kolbeins's 2019 documentary Queer Japan. [4] [5]
She is the translator of the English version of Tagame's manga My Brother's Husband . [6]
Ishii's translation credits include the Aranzi Machine Gun series, Aranzi Aronzo Fun Dolls (Let's Make Cute Stuff), The Cute Book, The Bad Book, Gunji, and Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan .
Formerly with Vertical, [7] she is the editor-in-chief of They're All So Beautiful [8] and Paperhouses. As a writer, Ishii has been published by The Village Voice , [7] Slate , [9] Publishers Weekly , [10] Guernica , [11] Giant Robot , [8] and Asian American Writers' Workshop. [12]
Yaoi, also known as boys' love and its abbreviation BL, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for women and is thus distinct from bara, a genre of homoerotic media marketed to gay men, though yaoi does also attract a male audience and can be produced by male creators. Yaoi spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works. While "yaoi" is commonly used in the west as an umbrella term for Japanese-influenced media with male-male relationships, "boys' love" and "BL" are the generic terms for this kind of media in Japan and much of Asia.
G-men is a Japanese gay lifestyle brand, and formerly a monthly magazine.
Gengoroh Tagame is a pseudonymous Japanese manga artist. He is regarded as the most prolific and influential creator in the gay manga genre. Tagame began contributing manga and prose fiction to Japanese gay men's magazines in the 1980s, after making his debut as a manga artist in the yaoi manga magazine June while in high school. As a student he studied graphic design at Tama Art University, and worked as a commercial graphic designer and art director to support his career as a manga artist. His manga series The Toyed Man, originally serialized in the gay men's magazine Badi from 1992 to 1993, enjoyed breakout success after it was published as a book in 1994. After co-founding the gay men's magazine G-men in 1995, Tagame began working as a gay manga artist full-time.
Kuso Miso Technique is a Japanese gay manga one-shot written and illustrated by Junichi Yamakawa. It was originally published in 1987 in Bara-Komi, a manga supplement of the gay men's magazine Barazoku. The manga depicts a sexual encounter between two men in a public restroom that is complicated by the need of one of the men to relieve himself. Published in Bara-Komi to relative obscurity, Kuso Miso Technique gained notoriety as an Internet meme in the early 2000s after scanned copies of the manga were posted on Japanese imageboards and online forums.
Sadao Hasegawa was a Japanese graphic artist known for creating homoerotic fetish art. His works are noted for their extensive detail, elaborate fantasy settings, and for their juxtaposition of elements from Japanese, Balinese, Thai, Tibetan Buddhist, African, and Indian art. While Hasegawa focused primarily on depictions of muscular male physique, he often incorporated extreme sexual themes in his works, including bondage and sadomasochism. His art is noted for strong mystical and spiritual overtones.
Bara is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga (ゲイ漫画) or gei komi. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience. 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 bear or bodybuilding culture. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan.
My Brother's Husband is a manga series by Gengoroh Tagame. Serialized in Monthly Action from 2014 to 2017, and adapted into a live-action television drama by NHK in 2018, the series follows the relationship between single father Yaichi, his daughter Kana, and Mike Flanagan, the Canadian husband of Yaichi's estranged and recently deceased twin brother.
Graham Kolbeins is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, and fashion designer.
Massive Goods is a fashion brand and manga publisher. The company works with LGBTQ and feminist comic artists in Japan, particularly gay manga (bara) artists, to create products featuring their artwork, and English-language translations of their works.
Jiraiya is a pseudonymous Japanese gay manga artist and illustrator. He is noted for his homoerotic, hyperreal drawings of gachimuchi men, and for his use of digital illustration in his artwork.
Tsuyoshi Yoshida, known by the pen name Go Mishima, was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist and founder of the magazine Sabu. He is noted for his illustrations of "macho-type" men, often with yakuza-inspired irezumi tattoos. Mishima, along with Tatsuji Okawa, Sanshi Funayama, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Sanshi Funayama was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Funayama, along with Go Mishima, Tatsuji Okawa, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Tatsuji Okawa was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Tatsuji, along with Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, and Go Hirano, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Go Hirano (平野剛) was a Japanese homoerotic fetish artist. Hirano, along with Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, and Tatsuji Okawa, is regarded by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan.
Queer Japan is a 2019 documentary film directed, edited, and co-written by Graham Kolbeins. The documentary profiles a range of individuals in Japan who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). Queer Japan is produced by Hiromi Iida with Anne Ishii, written by Ishii and Kolbeins, and features an original score composed by Geotic.
Ben Kimura was a Japanese gay erotic artist. Kimura, along with George Takeuchi and Sadao Hasegawa, is noted by artist and historian Gengoroh Tagame as a central figure in the second wave of contemporary gay artists that emerged in Japan in the 1970s.
Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is a 2014 manga anthology edited by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, and Graham Kolbeins, and published by Fantagraphics Books. Collecting works from Gengoroh Tagame, Jiraiya, and numerous other artists, it is the first English-language anthology of gay manga.
Takeshi Matsu is a Japanese gay manga artist.
Gai Mizuki, also known as Rycanthropy, is a Japanese gay manga artist and dōjin soft producer.