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straycatboogie · 2 years

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2022/11/12 English

I try to reflect on my life. It is never any uncool, but a precious one. I couldn't imagine that it could be such a wonderful one... 20 years before, the period I was into Paul Auster's novels, I couldn't imagine my life could be this 20 years after. I can think of Lily Frankey, who was once a famous illustrator and now is one of the great actors in Japanese movies. Life might be like that. 10 years or 20 years after, how this life can be? I can never imagine that. But I throw myself into such unpredictable chaos. C'est la vie.

I think again that what is the thing I want to do in this life? Now I watch movies and write reviews. I read books and learn English. They satisfied my life... I read Takashi Akutsu's "Diary of reading" or Susumu Sogo's one, and listen to Donald Fagen. They are good friends of the life in my 40s. 47 years old. Although I always think this, I have to admit that I could never become a better writer than Kenji Nakagami and Albert Camus. I must be lesser than Yukio Mishima who passed away in his 45. Ah, I remember myself, who strictly believed that "I absolutely have a talent", but just an ordinary person with shame.

"I absolutely have something shining", or "I must shine and become a famous writer as a genius". I deeply believed so at that period. I wrote my novel without working seriously. and I surrendered the real state which said to me that I was just an ordinary person. Now I can "swallow" such a hard life like swallowing a whole fish. After that, I started writing this diary and also learning English... It can be a wonderful life that has many waves. How will this life become from now? I can't see. Who will read this writing?

This evening I watched John Turturro's "Fading Gigolo". Probably the reason why I am certainly living my life with swallowing the fact that I am never a genius, I can enjoy the point of view of women and the life of Woody Allen's. Indeed, I can't be agree with his "masculine" one well but I want to trust his smartness and humor. This movie is enough for me to notice John Turturro's sophisticated sense. I expect his next one, and I guess that I'm still alright because I can think of the next movie as "What movie I will watch the next?". Because it says that my "horny" essence hasn't gone out.

#diary #english #nikki #eigo

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sugurushimura · 6 months

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Hi! I was curious about the family dynamics between the Yotsuba members and their parents, more specifically Higuchi and Hatori (since he's the illegitimate son of the Yotsuba CEO). What do you think their relationships with their parents are like?

ooh, i have a lot of thoughts on this, particularly hatori.

hatori's father is yotsuba dainosuke, president of the yotsuba group, and he had him out of wedlock, like you said. we don't know any information about hatori's mother or home situation as a child, but we do know that he uses his father's position to his advantage within the company, according to htr.

i've seen this interpreted before to mean that hatori blackmails his dad, but imo it's more just a case of nepotism. L didn't seem to make his profiles of the yotsuba guys that in-depth, so if he knows about hatori's parentage, it's probably not a well-kept secret. i also just don't think hatori has it in him to outright blackmail someone on his own -- he'd get way too nervous and probably feel really guilty. besides, the other yotsuba guys seem to have low opinions of hatori, and i imagine the way he attained his job is part of that. of course, higuchi and namikawa also have dads who work for yotsuba, but it's okay for them to do it since they're not bastards! they're just going into the family business!

my personal headcanon is that hatori was raised by his mother with financial support from but no physical presence on the part of his father. yotsuba is probably married and might even have children with his wife (i like to think he has a daughter), and i doubt his wife is very happy about hatori existing in the first place. plus, i just... don't think yotsuba is a very caring person. hatori wasn't meant to happen, and yotsuba never wanted to be his father. any consideration he took for his son was out of obligation.

by the time hatori's adult life rolls around and he decides he wants to work for yotsuba, his dad has had enough time to think on things that he feels kind of bad for neglecting hatori so long. he hires him as a way of slapping a band-aid on it, but he isn't really that interested in hatori as a person. their relationship is professional and very awkward. on yotsuba's end, he feels sort of bad about the whole thing but is also kind of annoyed that hatori made him look bad by asking for a job at his company.

hatori... mostly just resents yotsuba for his lack of presence in his life, but a part of him will always want his father's affection and approval after he was deprived of it for so long. he's never going to get it, though -- certainly not his affection -- and he knows that. a professional relationship is the closest he's going to get to a father-son bond, and it stings, but he still works with the man. part of this is because, subconsciously, he wants to be near to and loved by his father, and part of this is because he wants to be normal.

his entire life, he's been something of an outcast because of his parentage. his main interests (literature and ceramics) are artistic, and his hair (bleached, imo) is unprofessional, and yet he works as vp of marketing for a large company. he wants to be normal! he wants to be accepted by the people who have rejected him all his life! he wants to be like them! it's because he's been denied normalcy and the perceived community it brings with it for his entire life, entirely due to his parentage. yotsuba certainly didn't intend for that to be the case, but he also doesn't care enough to mitigate it, because he barely knows hatori and doesn't really want to know him. it's a sad state of affairs for poor arayoshi, and he knows it, and he resents his father for it.

my thoughts on hatori's relationship with his mother are less in-depth. she hadn't wanted a child, imo, and being the single mother of a wealthy executive's son comes with social stigma that she probably blamed hatori for without meaning to. i don't think she was cruel to him, but rather distant. they're on decent terms in hatori's adulthood, but they're not close. part of the reason he doesn't really resent her is because, compared to yotsuba, at least she was physically there for his childhood. he probably also has a step-father with whom he isn't close.

higuchi also has big issues with his father, but they're different in nature from hatori's. i've always imagined higuchi jiro as a strict, severe man -- not purposefully cruel, but often aloof and unforgiving. he made his expectations for kyosuke -- academic and social excellence, exceptional skills in the workplace -- very known, and likewise made his disapproval known when kyosuke failed to meet those expectations.

kyosuke was never an awful student, but he went through spurts of apathy, and when he did care, he still only did moderately well. he had friends, but none of them really liked him or were loyal to him. his work performance was just barely subpar. for a more loving father, all this might have been fine, but jiro only tolerated it with obvious dissatisfaction.

similarly to hatori, i think higuchi both resents his father and aches for his approval. the fact that he has never been able to stand on his own without his father or live up to the standard set by him grates on him constantly for his entire life, as does the fact that, imo, jiro seems to prefer namikawa... which, come to think of it, yotsuba does too. hatori doesn't have Debilitating Higuchi Jealousy Syndrome, though, so he kind of just deals with it, meanwhile higuchi wants to chew on namikawa and shake him around like a dog toy.

i actually think kyosuke's resentment for his father and frustration with being funneled into a professional job reached a boiling point after he graduated high school, when he decided he didn't want to go to college and bought a plane ticket to america without telling anyone. he spent a few weeks wandering around new york before he ended up in a fight, got arrested, had to call his dad to bail him out, got shipped back to japan with his tail between his legs, and ended up in college anyways. i hope to elaborate on this in a pretty extensive higuchi fic i've been formulating in my head for a while.

again, my thoughts on kyosuke's relationship with his mother are less fleshed-out. i headcanon her as significantly younger than jiro and nursing an awful alcohol habit. this habit and her dissatisfaction with her marriage led her to be distant and at times mean-spirited towards her son. he's definitely internalized it, but he hasn't ever really stopped to think about it, whereas he constantly fumes over his relationship with his father.

...i've kind of gone on for a while, so i'll keep the rest more concise. if you'd like to hear anything about any of them in particular, let me know and i'll be happy to elaborate! pretty much all of this is just headcanon, haha.

namikawa's parents both treated him pretty well as a child. he was raised with affection and consideration, and while he was expected to go into the business world or a similar profession, he was never pressed into it against his wishes. both of his parents really love him. however, his mother has always kind of stepped all over his father, and she's probably having an affair that he's too scared to do anything about. witnessing this as a child led namikawa to view the world as a very "use or get used" place and is part of the reason he's... the way he is: he doesn't want to be the type of person to get used, so he has to use instead. ironic, considering he's ultimately a pawn in kira's game. anyways, namikawa respects his mother but secretly looks down on his father. he cares about them both to some extent, but not as much as they care about him.

ooi's biological father was a second-generation nigerian immigrant in the technology industry who died when ooi was a child. he was a good, gentle parent who cared about his son a lot. his mother was an incredibly strong, compassionate woman who was raised in rural japan and had an incredibly close relationship with her son. she remarried soon after her first husband's death in order to give ooi a father and a stable financial situation, and her second husband is the man referred to as ooi's father in L's profiles on the yotsuba group (and the one whose family name is ooi). ooi's stepfather is a tough, military sort of guy, but he gets along well with ooi, who more or less sees him as a father figure. he's also got a younger half-brother who he's taken under his wing.

mido is the only yotsuba to ever discuss one of her parents in canon! higuchi asks her to call her dad up and ask him to get sakura tv's kira program taken off the air. her reaction is to say no and look incredibly annoyed about it, but this is probably because she hates higuchi and doesn't want to help him (besides, it's a stupid idea). i also happen to think she doesn't get along with her parents. they put an incredible amount of pressure on her to succeed from a young age, and as a result she's very much a burnt out gifted kid. she resents them for it. they're also generally aloof and cold, especially her father.

takahashi has a good relationship with his parents. they're both decent people, although their relationship as a couple goes through phases of good and bad, and eiichi probably inherited his womanizing habits from his father. i don't have much thoughts on it beyond that, honestly... i also think eiichi has an older brother.

shimura's parents were never married, and his dad left his mother before suguru was born. in fact, he pretty much disappeared off the face of the planet, probably to another country. shimura's mother, meanwhile, was an unhealthy woman both physically and psychologically, and she took a lot of it out on him. their financial situation was also pretty dire, and since she had a difficult time keeping a job, he had to work from a young age. she passed away when he was in college, and his feelings about her are never really resolved. his closest familial relationship is with his maternal aunt, who used to visit and help out sometimes when he was a child. they still talk from time to time.

kida's parents are both biology professors. imo they worked in human biology and exposed their son to some of their work when he was a child, which has led him to be sort of desensitized to blood and stuff like that. i think he appreciates the access he was given to their work, honestly. outside of that, though, his parents were very strict, especially academically, and had rigid social expectations for masahiko -- his mother was more concerned with his academic performance and his father was more concerned with his social performance. unlike mido, though, kida doesn't really realize this wasn't great for him and has a great deal of respect for his parents, even if they aren't close. he's very concerned with living up to their expectations -- which, for the record, he does, so they're pretty cordial with him as an adult. they probably wouldn't be if they knew he was gay tho :/

and there you have it! i hope this wasn't too rambling for you, haha. again, i'd be happy to elaborate on any of these or chat about them with you! thanks for the ask!

#asks #Yotsuba #Arayoshi Hatori #Dainosuke Yotsuba #Kyosuke Higuchi #Jiro Higuchi #Reiji Namikawa #Takeshi Ooi #Shingo Mido #Eigo Mido #Eiichi Takahashi #Karazo Takahashi #Suguru Shimura #Masahiko Kida #anonymous

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