While homosexuality has a history in Japan dating to ancient times, the country shifted away from a tolerance of homosexuality amid Westernization during the Meiji era (1868–1912), and forms of gay expression that were once accepted became pathologized and criminalized. 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, or samurai characters that serve as symbolic representations of an unjust feudal order. Tagame has stated that he is "fascinated by how these hierarchies fail," describing his simultaneous frustration and attraction to hierarchies associated with Japanese traditionalism thusly: 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. 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; Kolbeins notes that the series "examines a time when male-male sexuality flourished in Japanese society, unfettered by Western notions of sin and 'sodomy'." In Country Doctor, which focuses on a pre-modern Japanese village where western-imposed taboos on sex are absent, 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." 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. In My Brother's Husband, protagonist Yaichi is forced to examine his own preconceived notions about gay people after meeting the husband of his deceased twin brother, with his initial homophobia mirroring the prevalent conservative attitudes towards LGBT rights in Japan. Tagame notes that Yaichi's character arc towards tolerance and acceptance further mirrors themes in his BDSM manga, where characters are faced with a choice between acceptance of reality or the denial of their own desires and happiness. Works Manga The following is a list of Tagame's serialized and one-shot manga works. Serializations refer to multi-chapter works that are typically later published as collected editions (tankōbon), while one-shots refer to single-chapter works that are sometimes later collected in anthologies. , 1994, B Product; republished October 12, 2017, Pot Publishing () , 2001, G-Project; republished by Pot Publishing