When a young Tokyo couple called Yaichi and Natsuki got divorced, it was agreed that Yaichi would bring up their daughter, Kana – a decision that makes Yaichi seem like a more than usually modern and sophisticated Japanese man. But this isn’t the whole story. Yaichi has his share of cultural prejudices, or so it seems when a smiling, bear-like Canadian arrives at his door and announces that he, Mike Flanagan, is the widower of Yaichi’s estranged gay twin, Ryoji.
Yaichi hesitates unaccountably before inviting Mike to stay (Mike is in Japan because he wants to see all the places Ryoji told him about before he died). Then he worries that the stranger now sharing his bathroom is about to hit on him: after all, he looks just like his dead brother. How, he wonders, will he explain to little Kana that in Canada men may fall in love and even marry? How, in other words, can he hope to keep the disgust from his voice?
Mike, though, is an unexpectedly easy house guest, even in his grief – and Kana regards both her new uncle and gay marriage as marvellous novelties, things about which she can boast to her friends on the way to school. It isn’t long, then, before the distance between the two men begins to close, their differences lying as much in their attitude to sushi – why do Canadians put tempura in it? – as in anything connected to their sexuality. After all, neither one of them conforms to the old stereotypes, for isn’t it the soft-cheeked Yaichi, rather than the bearded, gym-pumped Mike, who stands in the yard pegging washing in an apron?
Yaichi, almost without realising it, grows protective of Mike, a feeling that’s heightened when the mother of one of Kana’s schoolfriends makes it clear she doesn’t want him around her daughter, and this in turn causes him to rethink what might constitute a family. Finally, he gives in to grief himself, not only for the long-lost Ryoji, but for their parents, too, killed in an accident when they were still at school.
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. It’s not hard to see why. Not only is it very touching; it’s also, for the non-Japanese reader, unexpectedly fascinating. 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. 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. 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.
• My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is published by Little Brown (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
