June (manga magazine)

JUNE

Cover of the last February 2013 issue of June
Editor	Toshihiko Sagawa
Categories	fiction, essays, yaoi, shōjo, josei
Frequency	Bimonthly
Circulation	80,000-100,000 (1995)
Publisher	Magazine Magazine
Year founded	1978
Final issue — Number	December 28, 2012 February 2013
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

June (Japanese: ジュネ^?) [d͡ʑu͍ ne] is yaoi magazine published by Magazine Magazine.

June magazine is a toko zasshi, a magazine which mainly publishes unsolicited manuscripts with a small honorarium.

In June, stories are not required to include a "love scene".

June is the earliest yaoi (BL) magazine, which began in 1978 as a response to the success of commercially published manga such as the works of female artists Keiko Takemiya, Moto Hagio and Yumiko Ōshima. Other factors that influenced the founding of June were the rising popularity of depictions of bishōnen in the dōjinshi market and ambiguous musicians such as David Bowie and Queen.June was meant to have an underground, "cultish, guerilla-style" feeling – most of its manga artists were new talent. Frederik L. Schodt describes June as "a kind of 'readers' magazine, created by and for the readers." Very early on, Keiko Takemiya became the editor of a section called "Manga School", which instructed readers and amateur manga authors.June magazine ceased operations in 1979, but was relaunched in 1981. Azusa Nakajima ran a contest in the magazine for readers called "Shosetsu dojo" ("Novel School") which was an important platform for aspiring writers.

June magazine was named after the French author Jean Genet, with "june" being a play on the Japanese pronunciation of his name. Digital Manga Publishing has an unrelated BL imprint which is also called June. The magazine's name became an early name for what is now the BL genre, as June published male/male tanbi 耽美 ("aesthetic") romances, stories written for and about the worship of beauty, and romance between older men and beautiful youths using particularly flowery language and unusual kanji. Essays about the characteristics of the June genre were published with the manga in June. In 1982, Shōsetsu June ("Novel June"), a sister magazine to June began publication. Its content is text-only stories with male romance.