Moonlight Flowers

Bearing in mind the actual literal crimes committed in both the first and second arcs, the fact that nobody ever went to jail is a pretty forgiving choice of resolution for a fictional story, and the men are all sympathetically presented as people who were genuinely in love, genuinely wanted to be loved in return, and terrified beyond reason by the idea of losing the bond they thought had with their wives. If the men were unilaterally depicted as greedy, sneering apes who enjoy making women suffer just for the sake of it, I'd agree that it was being heavy-handed, but I don't think it's at all unrealistic to show desperate men acting in desperation.

They may have been complacent, or naive, or possessive, but none of these are unusual traits for a man to have, and I think the stories go one step further than really necessary by specifically giving space for all the male antagonists to sincerely express their own pain. Despite Kaoru's harsh and unforgiving perspective on the matter, the reason the first arc's husband has an affair is subtly explained as him being genuinely hurt and confused by how much his wife struggles through sex with him. When he realises that his conflict is a larger issue of not having his love reciprocated, rather than just being unsatisfied by their sex life, he grasps pretty much immediately the difference between the love he wants with his wife, and the shallow catharsis he receives from his affair. Even the violent rape and confinement is explained in the context of a cultural tendency of women ultimately being considered as possessions of men, by both their husbands and their families, which was a very real and dangerous issue at the time this was written, and continues to influence Japanese sensibilities today.

In the end, the only punishment he suffers is the loss of the wife he'd taken for granted. Sahoko even talks to him and personally forgives him for his actions. This was, frankly, deeply unsatisfying to me, as was the murderer artist's "deferred sentence", but it's part of what gives the story a painfully real atmosphere. It's not about heroic lesbians swooping in to save beleaguered wives from the dirty, irredeemable menfolk with the one true love of other women, nor does it accord to any sense of karmic justice or dramatic irony.

On that point, Kaoru generally dislikes men, and affords them very little patience or understanding. We spend the most time with her, and she is given a lot of space to talk about her views, and I think it's not unreasonable to think of her as the author's mouthpiece, a role she fulfills quite literally on more than one occasion. However, taken as a whole, I think the story is actually much more forgiving of men than she is. While the author more than likely agrees with much of what Kaoru says about society and the place of lesbian women within it, and she's never quite willing to imply that Kaoru is being unreasonable even at her harshest moments, I think she makes an extensive effort to show that there's more to it than that, and that it's okay for different people to respond differently to their experiences. Rather than an unfairly harsh depiction of men, I think it's a decidedly unromantic picture of the love and self-acceptance in a world that would never bend for aesthetics or righteousness.

It's entirely your right to feel put out by this kind of story, and I can understand why you'd prefer to have more of a strong, respectable male presence to identify with, but it's also completely okay that your preferences aren't specifically being catered to. It was written as a story for adult lesbian women, about adult lesbian women, dealing explicitly with the kind of dangers and discrimination adult lesbian women have to worry about. It doesn't particularly want or need to be palatable to men, you know? And hey, if you want a good guy, Kaoru's friend in the second arc seems very happy with her boyfriend. He's probably a totally stand-up guy! Go him!

"It's natural for a man to have an affair or two at one point or another in his life"

...Too bad both of the stories are kind of the same. ^^; The blondies getting married to men they don't love and then eloping some distance to a classic Japanese beauty who has a career of her own. Both kinda put a little uncomfortably much weight onto the roughness and ignorance of the men presented, too... That part really leaves me cold.