Yeah they're cousins, it's kind of weird because it's never brought up throughout the story.
yeah... for some reason cousin x cousin isn't considered incest in Japan. it's a pretty common theme in yaoi unfortunately lol
Oh this is interesting topic. You see I came from a pretty big family, counting my close relative we have about 50 people meeting regularly every year, many I consider as distant relatives whom I rarely meet (only heard about them from my grandparents' stories, including that we would have about 70 or more people, whom I meet once every decade). What's happen is that my great-grandparents have 6 children whom I would all call Grandparents, then my grandparents have 12 children, and each of my uncles/ aunties have 2-3 children and they became my cousins. Now children from my grandparents, I would consider them as close relatives, but other cousins whom was born from other grandparents , they would be distant relatives. As far as I'm concern those distant relatives are practically strangers to me. In this case, if my cousin in a relationship with another distant cousin of mine, would that still be incest? This is so confusing. I really need to pull out my family tree to be in touch with my root again.
I did some research and it's seem that in ancient Japan, they actually allow half-siblings marriages, so i guess that's why cousin x cousin isn't consider as incest, though with now day society I doubt they would consider it as "healthy" relationship.
In the United States, second cousins are legally allowed to marry in every state. What's more, the genetic risk associated with second cousins having children is almost as small as it would be between two unrelated individuals. Marriage between first cousins, however, is legal in only about half of American states.
It's been a long time ago, but I wanted to add something.
I looked it up why incest was banned in most countries and it seems like the main issue was that if there was a child given birth to between two relatives, than its most likely to have a genetic issue. And to prevent that from happening it was banned.
It's similar to why being homosexual was banned a long time ago (due to young boys being used as sex slaves or something).
Okay? Incest is still gross...
I meant I thought their moms were very close like they were family.
after the 5th time reading this I didn't notice. I thought they were just each other's family friend.