“We’re family”: Japanese Characters’ Categorizations of a Gay Man in a TV Drama

Drawing on notions of membership categorization analysis and stance, this chapter explores how a gay character is identified and perceived by non-LGBTQ characters, based on the categorizations they construct, in the 2018 Japanese TV drama My Brother’s Husband. The purpose of the study is to show how society’s (non-)marginalization of people in certain categories stems from categorization work. The analysis reveals consistent differences in how the gay character is identified by non-LGBTQ characters depending on the roles the latter are performing. The drama’s trajectory involves a change in the protagonist’s categorization practices regarding the gay character, indicating changes in taken-for-granted ideas about the social institutions of marriage and family. The chapter suggests that media representations can provide an arena for people to realize when such ideas become irrelevant to their everyday lives, thus potentially contributing to societal change.