Japan’s pioneer gay magazine Barazoku (Rose Tribe) is to close down after helping homosexual males come out of the closet over three decades, its editor said on Wednesday.
”With the spread of internet sites, they don’t need printed magazines like ours any longer,” said Bungaku Ito, who launched the country’s first magazine for gay men in 1971 when homosexuality was a taboo subject.
”We cannot sell it like we used to do,” the 72-year-old editor said, adding that Barazoku’s circulation has plummeted to about 3 000 from its peak of 30 000.
About 1 000 people used to write personal advertisements in a special section every month but the number has dwindled to only 100 with the advent of matching services through the internet and cellphones, Ito said.
”We have also suffered from the arrival of copycat magazines. But what’s worse is that people don’t read printed words so much as they used to,” he said.
Ito said he had no plans to expand his crusade through other media.
”But I have always counselled gay people that homosexuality is nothing abnormal or perverse and I will keep doing so,” he said. – Sapa-AFP