
Why I Followed My Husband Manga Assessment
According to Reuters, as of June 8, 2023, same-sex marriage remained banned in Japan, keeping it the only G7 nation without same-sex couple protections. These safeguards cover things like inheritance disputes, the ability to see your spouse in the hospital and make medical decisions on their behalf, and other things that the majority of married couples don’t have to worry about. Therefore, in order to enjoy those fundamental rights as a pair, same-sex couples must discover ways to circumvent their lack of official marital status. One such method is adoption, which is the subject of this short autobiographical manga. Although some readers may find that a little strange or unsettling, since it does imply that one spouse is the other’s legal parent, Yuta Yagi’s Why I Adopted My spouse does a fantastic job of outlining the steps involved in the process and how he and his spouse arrived at their conclusion.
The way that Yagi assumes his readers are homophobic is one of the story’s most startling aspects. That might not catch people’s attention as much as it did mine, but considering who I am and where I come from, it’s a really melancholy aspect of the book. Yagi frequently feels as though he must defend his desire to marry Kyota. This is evident in both the intensely personal moments where he struggles with coming out to his parents and in his remarks to the reader about how he hopes reading about their relationship will help readers’ minds become more open. The adoption process requires biological parental consent, so the two men will have to determine whether to declare their relationship as more than just “good friends” or continue to portray themselves as single men who are just figuring out how to take care of each other. While Kyota chooses not to come out to his parents, Yagi’s parents are approached differently by each of them. His parents are totally happy with Kyota’s explanation, which is a very good example of how every family situation is different. Even when he doesn’t come out to both of them, Yagi’s are significantly more reluctant at the same time. His emotional journey is far more about reassuring his parents that what they want for him and what he wants for himself won’t always look the same; Yagi’s vision doesn’t include his father’s desires of having grandchildren, for example. His attempts to speak with his father about this matter have an eerily familiar quality to them, which is well counterbalanced by the manga’s framing of it as an RPG boss battle—the kind in which you have to restart the attack because the boss’s health bar keeps inexplicably refilling.
The book also poses some thought-provoking queries regarding gendered norms. According to the text, this type of adoption is successful since the older person adopts the younger, hence Yagi will be the adoptee because Kyota is only a few months older than Yagi. This positions Yagi as the “wife” in a conventional heterosexual marriage, denoting that Yagi will be the one to adopt the last name of the other spouse. Traditionally, not many have given this much thought—wives are “supposed” to become part of their husbands’ families. It’s still typical to expect it. However, Yagi’s parents are furious and even make demands over which family tombstone Yagi will be buried next to after his death when they find out that their son would be transferring family records. This is an interesting component of marriage that relates to assumptions about a son’s obligation to his family and beliefs of both women’s subservience, even though it isn’t mentioned overtly. Even though one of them is unaware that this is being done for marriage, Yagi’s parents are uneasy, and it speaks much about the underlying cultural problems.
Even with such a serious issue, Yagi keeps his handling rather light. Gay prejudices are quickly disproved in the book’s opening section. It offers clear information regarding the adoption procedure. However, a lot of it revolves around the primary reason Yagi and Kyota want to be married: they are in love with one another and don’t see that changing. Their desire is to have legal presence in all area of each other’s lives. Having met at Comiket in 1998, they have been together for decades and are already happy, but they need to clear a few formalities before they can move forward with their next step. The novel covers every serious topic imaginable (Yagi’s father’s homophobia is probably the hardest to accept humorously), but the main message is that this is a narrative about two people who genuinely love each other and want to marry. And that’s it. The book is easy accessible while staying in your memory because of its thematic simplicity, which serves to emphasize how absurd it is that they can’t simply register their marriage as such.
Yagi states at the book’s conclusion, “I just want people to realize that people like us exist and for them to stop hating us for no good reason.” Although the reader is once more presumed to be homophobic, this serves as a clear reminder of Yagi and Kyota’s presumption. Their narrative shouldn’t have to be this complicated, and this novel serves as a helpful reminder that not everyone views the world in the same way.