Tagame was born on February 3, 1964 into a family descended from samurai. He studied graphic design at Tama Art University, and after graduating in 1982, worked as a commercial art director. On a trip to Europe, Tagame discovered the Americanleather magazine Drummer. The magazine, which featured drawings by Bill Ward, would make strong impression on Tagame's art. He began publishing erotica under the pen name Gengoroh Tagame in 1986, and since 1994 he has lived off the profits of his art and writings. Tagame's works have been published in several Japanese gay magazines, including Sabu, G-men and SM-Z. His works contain "virile males, or youths, and their apprenticeship of physical and mental submission". Notable works include Jujitsu Kyoshi at B Product; Emono, Shirogane no Hana and Pride at G-Project. Pride focuses on a masculine power top who is discovered by his even more masculine professor to harbor masochistic tendencies, and trains him to be submissive through harsh domination. Naburi mono, serialised in G-Men in 1994, is about a yakuza strongman who falls in love with a wrestler he has been ordered to kidnap, ending with their ritualistic suicide together. Tagame is additionally noted as an art historian and archivist of gay Japanese erotica, and has edited a two volume artbook series about the history of gay erotic art in Japan from the 1950s to the present, 日本のゲイ・エロティック・アート. In the mid-2010s, Tagame began creating all-ages manga in addition to his erotic works. His first all-ages work was Otouto no Otto, serialized in Futabasha's Monthly Action magazine in Japan and published in English by Pantheon Books. The series received universal acclaim, and has been awarded excellence awards at the 19thJapan Media Arts Festival in 2015, and the Japan Cartoonists Association Award in 2018. In March 2018, Monthly Action began serialization of Our Colors, Tagame's second all-ages manga.
Influence
Tagame has been called the most influential creator of gay manga in Japan to date, and "the most talented and most famous author of sado-masochistic gay manga". His depiction of men as muscular and hairy has been cited as a catalyst for a shift in fashion amongst gay men in 1995, away from the clean-shaven and slender bishōnen stereotypes and towards a tendency for masculinity and chubbiness. Tagame's work has been criticised by gay manga writer Susumu Hirosegawa as "SM gekijō" for its violence and lack of complex storylines.
Translations
His manga Gunji was translated into French in 2005, followed by Arena in 2006 and Goku in 2009. An artbook of his works has also been published in France by H&O Editions. An exhibition of his works was held in France in May 2009. A small amount of Tagame's work has been published in English; a short story, "Standing Ovations", was included in the third issue of the erotic comics anthology Thickness, and in July 2012, Picturebox announced a short story collection, The Passion of Gengoroh Tagame, for 2013 release. The latter was the author's first North American and English-language collection and the first completely bara work published in English in a print format. The book collects short works spanning 15 years of Tagame's career, including a new story commissioned for the book by book designerChip Kidd. Endless Games was published in 2013 in an English translation by the German publisher the Bruno Gmünder Verlag. Gunji, Fisherman's Lodge and The Contracts of the Fall were published in English by the same publisher. His work has also been featured in Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, "the first English-language overview of gay manga as a genre" according to Graham Kolbeins, who edited the graphic novel from Fantagraphics Books along with Anne Ishii.
