Cultural Hybridity in the Context of Boys’ Love Culture: The History of Thai Boys’ Love Reimported to Japan

Abstract

Since March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thai Boys’ Love (BL) drama fever or “Thai Numa” has become one of the emerging phenomena in Japanese social media. The boom started from a single tweet on Twitter, which persuaded “Fujoshi” (BL fangirls) to watch them. Currently, in 2023, it is easy to find Thai BL drama in several Japanese streaming media as well as to participate in the fan meetings or events all year round.

However, BL culture began in Japan in 1970s. How did it permeate from Japan to Thailand? This paper examines the historical events that led to the penetration of BL culture from Japan to Thailand, and it reimport to Japan, between 1970s and 2020s by categorizing them into four periods: Japan in 1970s, Thailand in 1990s, Thailand in 2010s, and Japan in 2020s. Thereafter, under each category, the study analyzes the contexts of media and society at that time to investigate how the BL culture was exported from Japan; imported, localized, hybridized in Thailand; and finally, repackaged and reimported to Japan as the Thai BL drama. This paper found that the Thai BL drama is the cultural product of the hybridization of Japanese BL culture and Thai popular culture, especially the imported otaku culture. In Thailand, the BL culture used to be a taboo in society; however, it has now become a soft power through the exported contents. Moreover, this paper also shows the power of fans and social media in expanding a reimported culture into the original culture in a country like Japan.