In Gengoroh Tagame’s My Brother’s Husband, Volume 2, (Volume 3 and Volume 4 in Japanese) Yaiichi begins to confront other people’s – and his own- homophobia.
Yaiichi, his ex-wife Natsuki, Mike and Kana all visit a hot springs resort together and Yaiichi tells Natsuki about his dream of Kana being a lesbian. Natsuki is delightfully unsympathetic, forcing Yaiichi to see his “concern” for the discomfort it is.
When they come home, while Yaiichi is confronting the “concern” expressed by others, the penny drops that his “concern” and their is the same bias. Mike meets a former classmate of Ryouji’s and learns the justification he uses to stay in the closet. There is a line here that sums it up beautifully; the classmate says he doesn’t want to make any special effort to be out, and Mike thinks, but you’ll make a lot of special efforts to stay hidden. …That’s the glass closet in a nutshell. Instead of letting people in, he uses a complete stranger to dump all his problems on. Mike knows that’s what he was there to do and not surprisingly, he isn’t particularly thrilled.
Yaiichi has to confront the kind of homophobia that takes the form of suffocating “concern” from good people and is able to find a way to thread the needle. As I noted in my review of the Japanese, this scene is a bit of heavy-handed allegory. And then, the story draws to a sweet, emotional ending.
The criticisms I have seen of this volume fascinate me. Queer western readers have objected to it being too preachy and Japanese queer readers have objected to the protagonist being Canadian. Those are of course valid criticisms, but also miss the point they are making.
Since Japan does not have same-sex marriages, it could not have plausibly been a Japanese gay man as a protagonist. Unless you flipped the script and had had Mike die and Ryouji come home, but then, he’d understand that why and how and what of passive homophobia and would not be foreign enough to have no cares about existing outside that. Ryouji might be worried that he’s ruin Yaiichi’s reputation, or Kana would be bullied, where Mike is outside society enough to not think about that. The narrative is a bit heavy-handed because it is openly uncovering things that are never spoken of and forcing a non-unhappy resolution on them.
The intended audience for this book is not LGBTQ folks (although clearly we are going to read it.) It is the straight – mostly clueless about LGBTQ people and issues – Japanese men who read the magazine in which it runs. It needed to be heavy-handed so they got the point, and so they were emotionally rewarded for getting that point. It wasn’t for us – it was about us for someone who, like Yaichi has never once thought about us (or if they had, had done so with passive fear and loathing society bolsters in a million ways.)
So, when someone says “it’s too preachy” I respond, “It’s exactly the right amount of preachiness for the intended audience of adult straight men who would, like Yaiichi, be horrified to the point of shutting down communication, if they learned a relative was gay.
I also found reviews by men amazed at the way the male bodies were drawn to be highly entertaining. ^_^ (“Wow, this guy draws really beefy dudes!” Yes, yes he does. ^_^)
More than anything My Brother’s Husband is the kind of wholesome, family-friendly book you could hand to a relative who just was not getting why their “confusion” or “concern” about your sexual identity was painful to you. So go ahead, get a copy for the grandparents, uncles, aunts or parents…
Ratings:
Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
LGBTQ – 10
Service – 2
Overall – 10
…while you’re at it, give a copy to the library. There’s kids out therewho will need it.
