The Container

AAAI was welcomed by Durk and his team upon arrival into a dining room that is best described as a cross between my grandma’s and a gay porn star’s: heavy wooden table and chairs with old-school charm, decorated with dicks and muscle-boys. Some of the Foundation’s team members were cladded with full leather gear: trousers, boots and all, on a Tuesday morning, and all I kept thinking was how universal gay aesthetics is. You can be in Europe, America, or Asia, in a gay club, cafe, or indeed, a homely dining room, and it doesn’t really matter, as a particular aesthetic language binds all the locations and settings.

AAAIt is the hypermasculinity-charged environments and depictions that became synonymous with Tom of Finland’s works—exaggerated muscles, enlarged penises, and a gaze full of lust. Of course, this is hardly what homosexuality is all about, but the visual language it has developed, the fashion it created and inspired: from the Castro-clone man, to the policeman and leather-cladded biker, to the village-people, and the ubiquitous mustache and sideburns—are all gay. “Very gay.”

AAATom of Finland, his art, and his tireless activist work for the rights of LGBTQ people, have inspired a couple of generations. It is easy to credit him for impact and awareness in the US and Europe, but important to highlight that his reach was much wider, and even here, in Japan, artists and LGBTQ people were inspired by him and his works.

AAAJapan’s attitude towards homosexuality and artistic depictions of such are a bit complex and culturally layered, but it wasn’t always this way. Unlike the west, which gradually experienced over the last 50 years more and more tolerance towards homosexuality and acceptance of LGBTQ people, Japan seemingly almost had gone in the opposite direction—from a commonplace and acceptable practice during the Edo period, to a more discreet and not so acceptable choice of living nowadays (although some positive progression has taken place during the last decade).

AAANanshoku, a term used in Japan to refer to male-to-male sexual relationship in the pre modern era (up to the Meiji period), became less and less encouraged and acceptable with the westernization process of Japan during the twentieth century, and rendered even hostile and illegal (sodomy) at some point, as western ideas of sexology became more prevalent and adapted by Japanese lawmakers and society. An entire history of tolerance—represented in the popularity of male-to-male relationships in monastic settings, in Kabuki theatre, and in male prostitution—lasting many hundreds of years, fell out of fashion and became taboo.

AAASo have the ubiquitous and beloved artistic depictions (mainly prints) of homosexual acts and homoerotic art. Nonetheless, with pioneering western homoerotic artists such as Bill Ward and Tom of Finland, a new generation of contemporary Japanese homoerotic artists has slowly started to emerge from mid twentieth century, taking inspiration from their western compeers, and producing works motivated by their aesthetic and ideological ideas, with a culturally appropriate Japanese overtone. 

AAAThe exhibition at The Container, An Ode to Tom, was initially roused by some conversations I had with Durk Dehner, and features artworks by three Japanese homoerotic artists that evolved to be pivotal in the representation of homosexuality in contemporary Japanese art: Goh Mishima, Gengoroh Tagame, and Jiraiya. All three artists have spoken openly in the past about drawing inspiration from Tom of Finland’s imagery and political activist works, and represent also two generations of homoerotic artists in Japan.

AAAGoh Mishima (1924-1988) was one of the central figures of the first wave of contemporary gay artists in Japan (as defined by Gengoroh Tagame’s art history reference). Similarly to Tom of Finland, he had started his adult life with a military career and had his first homosexual experiences in the military. His service in many ways defined his aesthetics and appreciation for the male body and masculinity, as well as direct influence from the works of Tom of Finland after he discovered his drawings in the late 50’s. 

AAAMishima’s earlier works are typified by illustration-like depictions of athletic men, often fashioning crewcut hairstyles and adorned by Japanese-styled tattoos (irezumi). Mishima’s interest with this style of tattoos may derive from his fascination with the yakuza, who coincidentally, also operated at the time many of the gay bars and clubs in Tokyo’s gay area, Shinjuku Ni-chome. The drawings are clean and reminiscent of classical artistic nudes, with added sexually-charged compositions. Most of them do not reveal the body in full or the genitals.

AAALater works, following the death of his good friend Yukio Mishima, turned more morbid, where compositions of violence, shibari (Japanese bondage), and torture became more commonplace. These later drawings also featured genitals more frequently, and have a more aggressive and more pornographic nature. In the exhibition we are featuring both types of works to give a well-rounded insight into Mishima’s practice.

AAAGengoroh Tagame (1964-present) is Japan’s most celebrated and internationally renowned contemporary gay artist. In addition to his prolific practice as a manga artist, he is also a well respected academic, art historian, a published writer, and an archivist of Japanese homoerotic art. Indeed, most of the pieces by Mishima we are showcasing in this exhibition are kindly borrowed from Tagame’s private collection (with the exception of one, which we received from the collection of the Tom of Finland Foundation.)

AAATagame’s works are characterized by his fascination with fetishism, in particular sadomasochism, torture, and bondage and an aesthetic sensibility that is detached from reality and rooted in a newly constructed fictional actuality. His interest in fetishism had evolved already in his childhood and teenage years, while realizing his sexual orientation and coming to terms with it. His particular style and interests had broadened after his graduation from “Tamabi” (Tama University of the Arts) and following extensive international travels, that enabled him not only to expand his personal sexual horizon, but also to be introduced to many types of decorative and religious art elements that found themselves influential in the aesthetic language that he developed. 

AAAMuch of Tagame’s artistic and activist ideology has matured in the mid 90’s with the realization that Japan’s conservative attitude towards homosexuality lacked any kind of representation of gay culture or LGBTQ awareness. This cognizance encouraged Tagame to reevaluate his own position as an artist and led him to redefine his role exclusively as a contemporary Japanese gay artist, hand-in-hand with political activism to bring attention and recognition to LGBTQ issues in Japan. His artistic contributions as a manga artist, as well as his activist work and academic work, are integral of the progress LGBTQ people have made in Japan in the last few decades. Tagame is one of the most open and vocal forces in Japan about homosexuality, and has been indispensable to contemporary efforts to bring awareness and acceptance to LGBTQ people. In the last 15 years Tagame’s work also became recognized and influential in the international arena with exhibitions and publications worldwide, and forced its way even into the mainstream in Japan, with commissions from the national broadcaster (NHK).

AAAIn the exhibition at The Container we showcase a selection of works that explore the many faces and influences of Tagame’s works—from his pencil and acrylic clean and stylized pin ups, to the torturous pen and ink compositions of Ginjiroh, his graphic depictions of fetishism, and the mythology-inspired painting “Ikigimo”, showcasing yōkai (monsters) eating the organs of a living man (ikigimo is the Japanese term for the act of eating a living human’s liver in order to gain power, based on an old myth from China).

AAALastly, the exhibition also features a number of digital drawings of the reclusive Japanese illustrator and gay manga artist Jiraiya (1967-present). He is the most playful selection for this exhibition and represents a lighter and more joyful perspective of the Japanese LGBTQ community. His drawings usually portray Japanese beefcake pinups / couples (gachimuchi, a term used to describe chubby-muscular men), often fashioning traditional Japanese accessories or paraphernalia. They are frolicsome and merry, a high contrast to the loaded and dark imagery of Tagame and Mishima. 

AAAJiraiya was introduced to gay culture in his twenties, after discovering Japan’s gay magazine Sabu, the same magazine that inspired Tagame in his youth and by late 80’s featured his work heavily. Indeed, Jiraiya points out that he was profoundly influenced by Tagame’s work, and later, also by the works of Tom of Finland. His professional work, however, as a gay manga artist did not unfold till late 90’s, when he was already in his thirties, after publishing works in the Japanese gay lifestyle magazine G-Men, where Tagame served as the resident cover artist. By 2001, after Tagame’s retirement from the magazine, Jiraiya took over to become G-Men’s cover artist, as well as manga contributor. 

AAAJiraiya’s works reflect his personal relationship to homosexuality—closeted and reclusive he evades political or activist confrontations and focuses more on social aspects of gayness: drinking, romance, group sex, and playing sports. His, almost exclusively digital, illustrations of effervescent men have a commercial and affable quality which found their way also to clothing and brand collaborations worldwide. While he did not position himself to consciously create awareness to LGBTQ people in Japan, his joyous and masculine Asian men, helped to challenge the perception of the western notion that Asian men are effeminate and androgynous, and indeed, define in many ways, the fashion and demeanor of contemporary gay men in Japan.

AAASimilarly to the impact Tom of Finland’s works have made in Europe and the US on LGBTQ lifestyle, aesthetics, and rights, these selection of three Japanese homoerotic artists contributed to increased awareness and change of attitudes in Japan towards LGBTQ people. While much work still needs to be done to recognizing the rights of LGBTQ people in Japan, there is a slow and gradual social transformation that pushes for equality and acceptance. Mishima, Tagame, and Jiraiya are some of the catalysts that promoted these social changes, and are credited through their relentless artistic efforts to bring a change for the next generation of gay people in Japan.

AAAThe Container is proud to give a platform to these efforts to make a positive change, and to create an opportunity for discourse in Japan, through artworks, for social equality and the rights and inclusion of social minorities.