Works from the late Japanese artist who was a pioneer of homoerotic art ❤️🔥
. Deeply immersed in Tokyo’s flourishing nightlife culture, Hasegawa created luminous magazine covers and illustrations for erotic stories that swept readers away into a fantastical world; one that effortlessly combined the delectable machismo of Tom of Finland with Southeast Asian religious iconography.
“Hasegawa was responding to 1950s postwar Japanese culture, where there was both a flourishing of homoerotic because of the lifting of censorship with a heteronormative reaction partly installed through the US occupation,” says Dr Baudinette.
Focused on challenging the bourgeois patriarchal constructs of Bubby Era Japan, Hasegawa developed his own style that drew upon pre-war Japan’s decadent tradition of “erotic grotesque nonsense.” He also maintained his nation’s spirit of isolationism, refusing his work to be shown in international galleries. Throughout his career, Hasegawa was committed to exploring Asian masculinity through a queer gaze to reclaim its power from a culture that framed homosexuality as failed manhood.
By working in niche magazines, rather than trying to infiltrate the art world, Hasegawa established legitimacy on his own terms – and eventually the art world caught up. “The magazines provided a much-needed space, motivated in part by economics but also taking inspiration from similar moves in the United States and Europe that created spaces where men could connect with each other,” says Dr Baudinette.
Although Hasegawa is no longer with us to see his work celebrated, but his extraordinary art lives on, providing inspiration for a new generation of young queer artists working today. “What is most exciting about Hasegawa’s work is that it is so hybrid – Japanese erotic art embedded in a transnational space that responds to western beefcake and Southeast Asian religious imagery,” Dr Baudinette says.
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