So far on Terrace House there have been no openly LGB housemates (I'm setting aside trans issues for the purposes of this discussion). We do know that Makoto has appeared in a gay sex video, but we do not know how he self-identifies. As of the conclusion of Aloha State, there have been 55 cast members on the 180 episodes of the show. The Real World had 252 cast members across its 32 seasons and 33 of those were LGB though a few of those came out after their appearance.
Terrace House seems to be progressive compared to traditional Japanese social values; nevertheless, since an important part of the show is the potential for romance between the housemates, I initially suspected that the show would never be interested in casting any openly LGB housemates. However, Terrace House's production company made the first broadcast live-action drama centered on a lesbian relationship on Japanese TV: Transit Girls. In fact, the director of that series was the director of the Terrace House feature film. Thus, it would seem that the producers are aware of LGB issues and what on-screen representations can mean for that community. And so I'm going to take a look here at what having LGB housemates might mean for the show's potential romance story-lines, and the answer is that it would probably not have much effect one way or another.
This discussion will be a little mathy, but the numbers are pretty simple. With three men and three woman there are nine possible MW pairings (3 men x 3 women). You might initially think that having an entire cast of bisexuals would explode the number of possible pairings, but, in fact, that highly unlikely scenario would not even double the number of possible pairings. Among that number of men and woman there are only three possible MM pairings and three possible WW pairings, and so the total number of pairings in a fully bisexual cast is fifteen.
In fact, if you include cast-mates who are exclusively same-sex oriented, the number of possible pairings gets reduced in general because there are only two other members of the same sex in contrast to three of the other sex. Thus, having one gay or lesbian house mate would reduce the number of potential matches within the house from nine to six since that person would have no one to date within the house.
These numbers are not an argument against LGB representation on the show. Terrace House has functioned perfectly well when the number of potential relationships has been reduced. The original run of the show started with one male housemate who had a girlfriend outside the show and a female idol who could not have a relationship, and so while Tetsuya did try to go out with Rie there were really only four viable potential pairings at the start of show.
I'd like to see LGB representation on the show, but I do not think that doing so would have much effect on the in-house romance story-lines. I do encourage anyone who is interested in these issues to check out Transit Girls which is available with English subtitles at kissasian.ch. That show will give you lots of warm-fuzzies if you support the idea of LGB representation and inclusion and would like to see a Terrace House-like version of it.
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