Can Japan’s First Same-Sex Dating Reality Show Change Hearts and Minds?

Asia Pacific|Can Japan’s First Same-Sex Dating Reality Show Change Hearts and Minds?

Japan is the lone state among the world’s wealthiest democracies that has not legalized same-sex unions. Few celebrities are openly gay. Conservative groups oppose legislative efforts to support the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

But now, Netflix is introducing the country’s archetypal same-sex dating world series.

Over 10 episodes of “The Boyfriend,” which volition beryllium disposable successful 190 countries opening connected July 9, a radical of 9 men stitchery successful a luxury formation location extracurricular Tokyo. The format evokes Japan’s astir fashionable romanticist world show, “Terrace House,” with its assembly of cleanable chopped and exceedingly polite formed members, overseen by a sheet of jovial commentators.

The vibe is wholesome and mostly chaste. The men, who scope successful property from 22 to 36, run a java motortruck during the time and navigator meal astatine night, with occasional forays extracurricular for dates. One of the biggest (among precise few) conflicts of the bid revolves astir the outgo of buying earthy chickenhearted to marque macromolecule shakes for a nine dancer who is trying to support his physique. Sex seldom comes up, and relationship and self-improvement diagnostic arsenic prominently arsenic romance.

In Japan, the fistful of openly cheery and transgender performers who regularly look connected tv are typically flamboyant, effeminate comic foils who are shoehorned into exaggerated stereotypes. With “The Boyfriend,” Dai Ota, the enforcement producer, said helium wanted to “portray same-sex relationships arsenic they truly are.”

Mr. Ota, who was besides a shaper of “Terrace House,” which was made by Fuji TV and licensed and distributed globally by Netflix, said helium had avoided “the attack of ‘let’s see radical who origin problems.’”

“The Boyfriend,” helium said, represents diverseness successful different mode — with formed members of South Korean, Taiwanese and multiethnic heritages.