Barazoku

was Japan's first commercially circulated gay men's magazine. It began publication in July 1971 by Daini Shobō's owner's son and editor , although before that, there had been Adonis and Apollo, its extra issue, around 1960 serving as a members-only magazine. Barazoku was Japan's oldest and longest-running monthly magazine for gay men. However, it halted publication three times due to the publisher's financial hardships. In 2008, Itō announced that the 400th issue would be the final one. The title means "the rose tribe" in Japanese, hinted from King Laius' homosexual episodes in Greek mythology. The magazine was printed in Japanese only. Barazoku's Bungaku Itō coined the term for the Japanese lesbian community as ("lily tribe") which the slang term for lesbian yuri comes from.

==Features== Along with much Japanese gay culture, gay magazines in Japan are segregated by type, aimed at an audience with specific interests. Barazoku, however, attempted to reach a broad audience and thus contained "a little something for everybody". A typical issue of Barazoku had approximately 300 pages, including several pages of glossy color and black and white photographs of younger, fit men in their late teens and twenties (these photographs were censored in accordance with Japan's rules, which require the obscuring of genitals and pubic hair). Despite the inclusion of pornographic pictures, however, Barazoku was not a pornographic magazine.