His manga series The Toyed Man (嬲り者, Naburi-Mono), originally serialized in the gay men's magazine Badi from 1992 to 1993, enjoyed breakout success after it was published as a book in 1994.
For much of his career Tagame exclusively created erotic and pornographic manga, works that are distinguished by their graphic depictions of sadomasochism, sexual violence, and hypermasculinity.
[3][4] The younger of two brothers, Tagame was forbidden from reading manga as a child with the exception of the works of Osamu Tezuka, which his parents believed had literary merit.
[11] The magazine featured homoerotic and fetishistic illustrations by western artists such as Tom of Finland, Rex, and Bill Ward, and would heavily influence Tagame's art.
[8] After graduating university he began to work as a commercial graphic designer and later art director, while continuing to write manga and prose fiction.
"[10][18] Beginning in the early 2010s, Tagame noted that while same-sex marriage was rarely covered in the mainstream Japanese press, the issue generated significant interest among his heterosexual fans when he posted about the topic on his Twitter account.
[8] Sex is typically the primary focus of Tagame's manga[22] and his works are almost invariably fetishistic in nature, featuring depictions of bondage, discipline, leather, fisting[23] and sadomasochism.
"[27] Tagame credits both Japanese and Western artists among his influences,[15][3] including Caravaggio, Michelangelo,[10] the Marquis de Sade,[4] Tsukioka Yoshitoshi,[3] Go Mishima, Sanshi Funayama, Oda Toshimi,[29] Suehiro Maruo, Kazuichi Hanawa, Hiromi Hiraguchi,[2] and Bill Ward.
[5][8] The majority of Tagame's works depict men with personal and physical traits associated with hypermasculinity – developed muscles, hirsute bodies, large penises,[30] an exaggerated volume of ejaculate, machismo,[31] and participation in extreme or violent sexual acts.
"[34] Armour identifies Pride, which depicts a dominant university student who is trained into submission by his sadistic professor, and The Gamefowl in Darkness, which is inspired by Yasujirō Ozu's A Hen in the Wind and Edogawa Ranpo's The Caterpillar, as representative examples of hypermasculine themes in Tagame's works.
[35] Tagame's artwork is often associated with bara, a colloquialism used by non-Japanese audiences to refer to Japanese erotic art featuring masculine men.
[4] Designer Chip Kidd has contested this association, arguing that "as delightfully sturdy and game as Tom of Finland’s characters depicted, they never quite seem alive.
"[29] Edmund White argues that the hypermasculine ideal Tagame depicts is more categorically similar to Meiji period literature, specifically the character archetype of a man "who was homosexual because he was uncouth, not refined enough to be heterosexual and to please women, a warrior, a peasant from the south, not fit for decent society.
[4] For example, in his manga Missing, a man frees his kidnapped brother by killing the corrupt military officers who have captured him, though the murderous act is intentionally not directly depicted.
"[29] Examples of these themes include Endless Game, where a man taken as a sex slave comes to enjoy his new status and forces his captors to obey his desires,[34] and Arena, where a Japanese karate champion becomes involved in an American fighting tournament where the winner of each match sodomizes the loser.
[4] This tension between traditionalism and modernism manifests in Tagame's erotic manga through his rendering of hierarchies, such as works that focus on the patriarchal nature of Japanese society,[34] or samurai characters that serve as symbolic representations of an unjust feudal order.
I find the Japanese ideas of beauty and tradition unappealing conceptually, but as an element of fiction, I feel extraordinary Eros in the destruction of those principles.
[34]One of Tagame's earliest long-form serialized works was The Silver Flower, a historical drama set in the Edo period that follows a formerly wealthy businessman who is forced into sexual slavery in order to resolve a debt.
[8] Through the course of the abuse and humiliation he endures at the hands of his male clients, the character comes to realize that he is a masochist;[39] Kolbeins notes that the series "examines a time when male-male sexuality flourished in Japanese society, unfettered by Western notions of sin and 'sodomy'.
"[13] In Country Doctor, which focuses on a pre-modern Japanese village where western-imposed taboos on sex are absent,[40] Tagame states that he seeks to "spin on its head is this idea that we think people were more conservative in the past and are more liberated in the present.
"[5] Themes of traditionalism similarly manifest in Tagame's all-ages manga, albeit in a non-sexual context, through their examination of contemporary Japanese social attitudes towards homosexuality.
[29] Anthropologist Wim Lunsing credits the "bear-type" aesthetic pioneered by Tagame[2] with provoking a major stylistic shift in Shinjuku Ni-chōme, the gay neighborhood of Tokyo.
"[46] Tagame's work in establishing G-men is further credited as providing an incubator for up-and-coming talent in the gay manga genre, and launching the careers of artists such as Jiraiya.