Gengoroh Tagame has an English blog, and is not averse to English-language publications of his work! (NSFW)

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised this week to discover that the insanely talented gay manga artist Gengoroh Tagame has a blog, and one in English at that! You can find it online at http://www.tagame.org/enews/. This is pretty great as it’s a rare thing for a mangaka to have an English language blog, and Tagame is one of the most talented and easily the most famous mangaka producing gay-themed work (real gay, as opposed to yaoi-gay).

For those of you who not in the know, Tagame is best recognized for the muscular physique he gives his characters, which echoes the North American “Bear” gay subculture and the Japanese “Gachi Muchi” gay subculture, and is generally referred to as “Bara”. The majority of Tagame’s work is marked by strong themes of B&D and S&M, even leading into some verrrrry extreme situations. I heartily recommend checking out his website at http://www.tagame.org/frame_new.html and for the strong-willed and strong-stomached, check out his galleries.

Tagame is a bit of a trailblazer in that his web-presence has been English-friendly for years and years now, much moreso than any other gay manga artist (or almost any manga artist in general). While one of these days I’m really going to have to learn Japanese, for now I’m very happy that Tagame-san has made himself more accessible to his English-speaking fans.

On that note, one of the most interesting posts about his accessibility came a few months back on his English-language blog, entitled “The Groundless Rumour About Publishing of English version of my comics:”

A little while ago, my friend told me the groundless rumor about me and my works.
It was a big surprise for me, so I think that I must correct them officially.

[the rumor]
Tagame does not want to publish his works in English.
In fact, he had refused the offer to publish his book from Tom of Finland foundation.

[the truth]
The rumor is false. I’ve been always wanting that my comics will be translated into English and will be published on magazines or books.And I’ve never been proposed such publishing program directory from Tom of Finland foundation.

Then, why my books have not been published in English? The reason is simple. If a proven publisher offers to me to publish my books in English, I welcome it. In fact, until now, French, Italian and Spanish publishers had contacted to me to publish my comic book in their language. I welcomed them, so my books in these three languages are being published now. But I’ve never been contacted from American, UK’s and Canadian publishers who want to publish my book in English. That is an only reason of why my comic books in English have been never published before.

For your more questions about that, I open the comment form of this post.
(But please write with very plain and easy English! I’m not so good at your language!)

– Gengoroh Tagame [link]

So there you go folks. Which one of you forward-thinking publishers is going to step up to the plate?

– Chris