Barazoku (薔薇族) 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 Bungaku Itō , 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 which the slang term for lesbian yuri comes from.

Yuri , also known by the wasei-eigo construction girls' love , is a genre of Japanese media focusing on intimate relationships between female characters. While lesbian relationships are a commonly associated theme, the genre is also inclusive of works depicting emotional and spiritual relationships between women that are not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature. Yuri is most commonly associated with anime and manga, though the term has also been used to describe video games, light novels, and literature.