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Ben Kimura (January 1947 - February 18, 2003) was the “face” of Japanese gay magazines (Tagame’s encomium) from the early 1970s through 2002. He provided the covers and story illustrations for virtually all the issues of Barazoku and Sabu magazines during that time. Kimura’ style is unique among contemporary Japanese homoerotic artists. The bodies are idealized yet alluringly masculine. The faces are boyish yet with realistic expressions; petulant, moody, brooding, soulful, or pouty yet always sensuous.
According to Tagame’s biography of Ben Kimura in Gay Erotic Art in Japan , Kimura also produced stories and comics for those two publications but I have never seen any of these reproduced in what manga are available in the west.
The representative works of Ben Kimura presented here are from a tribute edition of Tan Pan Body published shortly after his sudden and unexpected death from a heart attack in 2003. Tan Pan Body is primarily a collection of covers done for Sabu magazine prior to 1997. Kimura’s total canon is huge and now in the hands of his partner and artistic executor Kihira Kai. Works from this collection are still being published in G-Men magazine.
Kimura also had a hand in early YAOI publications of June and Allan in illustrations he provided for these magazines. Tan Pan Body is available at:
http://www.gproject.com/ and
http://www.rainbow-shoppers.com/en/index.html/
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