He’s moved by the gentle way Mike talks to Kazuya, the older brother of another of Kana’s friends, who comes out to him.
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When the mother of a friend forbids her daughter to visit, fearing Mike will be “a bad influence,” Kana is puzzled and Yaichi is appalled. (A considerable body of literature exists involving romances between samurai and their beautiful page boys.) But gay marriage is not legal in Japan, and remains a controversial issue. In traditional Japanese society, homosexuality wasn’t regarded as particularly immoral or scandalous, as long as the man married and fathered an heir. Yaichi examines not only his feelings for his twin, but his attitude toward homosexuality and the place gay people occupy in contemporary Japan. Ryoji came out, went to a different college, moved to Canada and married Mike. Although he and his brother were close when they were growing up, they drifted apart after high school. Mike’s presence forces Yaichi to confront issues and personal demons he’s kept at arm’s length for years. Yaichi reluctantly invites Mike to stay with them. Kana is delighted with her exotic new uncle who hugs her and makes her macaroni and cheese.
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Everything about him seems strange and un-Japanese: his size, his full beard, his openly affectionate demeanor. Mike is a big, ursine man, similar to the characters in Tagame’s homoerotic stories. Yaichi’s comfortable, quiet life is knocked askew by the arrival from Canada of Mike Flanagan-the widowed husband of Yaichi’s estranged twin brother Ryoji. The warmer, gentler “My Brother’s Husband” is his first work intended for a more mainstream audience.Ī divorced father living in a small suburb of Tokyo, Yaichi manages the apartment building he inherited from his parents and takes care of his precocious daughter Kana. Tagame is openly gay, and his audience is gay Japanese men. Tagame’s dark fantasies are completely unlike the popular feathery romances between willowy young men in yaoi/boy’s love manga, which are created by women for female readers. Tagame is a celebrated manga-ka, or manga artist, best known for his homoerotic stories that feature sadomasochistic elements. Manga culture remains far more complex and diverse than readers in the US realize, as Gengoroh Tagame’s singular My Brother’s Husband demonstrates. Phone orders min p&p of £1.Although millions of Americans, especially Americans udner 30, buy and read manga, they’re only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
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Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. To order a copy for £14.44 go to or call 03. My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is published by Little Brown (£16.99). If Yaichi envies anything about Mike, it’s his unnerving openness, the sound of his thoughts filling up every room like dazzling sunlight through suddenly opened blinds. The pain, he suggests, cuts both ways, for while Ryoji found the freedom to express his feelings in another country, all that was left to his brother was shyness, silence and stoicism. Gay life remains largely closeted in Japan, and Tagame’s complex but deftly told story – this is volume one a sequel is forthcoming – seeks to examine the effect such secrecy has not only those who must live it, but also on their wider family relationships. Not only is it very touching it’s also, for the non-Japanese reader, unexpectedly fascinating. My Brother’s Husband is the work of Gengoroh Tagame, the award-winning manga artist whose cartoons have been translated into several languages, and it arrives in the UK garlanded with praise from, among others, Alison Bechdel.