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.

Since 2020, Thai boys’ love (BL) TV series have widely accepted by Japanese BL fan. The one of origins of Thai BL are recognized as Japanese BL culture, which is transferred with Japanese cultural products such as female manga or movies. This paper aims at analyzing writing strategies of Thai amateur BL fan fiction writers on Johnny’s groups, Japanese male idol groups, from two perspectives.

Thai BL fan gradually accepted Japanese BL culture through mild essences in female manga and educated themselves to enjoy gazing the affinity or love between males. Furthermore, they localized and developed BL works in Thai style. Thai BL fan fictions on Johnny’s groups attempt to satisfy two desires by utilizing physical and cultural distance between Japan and Thailand. One is the desire of “female gaze” to see the love of beautiful males from far away. To satisfy the desires, Thai writers set the story in somewhere far from Thai society such as imaginary Japan where BL relationship are ideally accepted. The other is the desire of attachment to watch over the males closely. They localize BL story in Thai style and give Thai nicknames to Johnny’s members. The conflict between two desires heightens the preciousness of Johnny’s BL story in Thailand.