no one asked for my thoughts on hanazawa koujirou but EYE like the idea he's spent his entire life crushing himself into the shape of what society requires him to be (and noda explicitly gave him a second son's name!!! so he wasn't even supposed to inherit but i suppose his older brother got killed in the boshin war or something), all HIS hopes and dreams got crushed and HE shed all semblance of humanity as required AND he probably had an extremely harsh childhood given he grew up in (hazing in dojos so severe kids regularly died, still practicing pedagogical pederasty) satsuma. so he can credibly think he's actually a very lenient cool dad to yuusaku, who he brought up by modern, cosmopolitan standards with an excellent education, and who he's only asking to be a good example at dying for goodness' sake.
and the idea that he didn't give tome up because he didn't love her but rather because he did - but as the new heir to the household he's not going to be allowed to marry some random geisha he knocked up, who brings him nothing and has no value in terms of a political alliance, which he needs, and if she'd already started her decline then she would not have been able to cope with the demands of the role anyway. So better and kinder to cut her loose and send her on her way, a child is not necessarily a handicap for her career. and as for ogata, why would he want a walking reminder of his moral failures and the woman he abandoned and left heartbroken cluttering up the house? how's he going to shed the last lingering traces of his human self and become what he's supposed to and expected to be if he has to constantly be looking at the result of a time when love was still something that might have been something he could feel? sometimes the only way you can make the life you've created for yourself bearable is by leaning into it and pretending this was what you wanted all along, this is what you've always been
you know, all of this is complete conjecture OF COURSE but i think it’s kind of obvious that koujirou has raised yuusaku to live up to certain standards that he has not exactly been encouraged or allowed to question and that hiro and koujirou don’t exactly like each other very much and have quite different ideas about what is the appropriate way to direct yuusaku’s life. the idea that they love each other or that yuusaku was doted on is something that comes solely from ogata who has absolutely no knowledge of the situation and every piece of info canon gives us, scant tho it may be, says the exact opposite.
yuusaku being raised not to question the authority of his father or the role he’s supposed to play in life is not exactly something you have reach very far into the text to get out of it, but it IS interesting to me that koujirou has this one massive, glaring transgression that ogata is the very obvious result of, and to MEEE anyway it’s pretty obvious that to yuusaku, ogata represents an ‘allowed’ transgression out of the bounds of propriety (because really, 'ani-sama’, come ON) and a potential escape from the strictures of the life he has been stuffed into from day one; it’s a lovely paradox because ogata is both a safe transgression (he’s family!!!) and one that is waaaay out of the bounds of what he’s allowed because he’s an unrecognised illegitimate child who his father has clearly decided to reject, and not anyone yuusaku should be deferring to.
