OK I ACTUALLY HAVE LIKE A WHOLE ASS POST ABOUT THIS..... SOMEWHERE. ill dig it up later but i will reiterate here. #MYOPINIONS:

stage 1 of this relationship that lasts the 0.5 seconds before majima opens his mouth: daigo meets saejima. is beyond floored at how well adjusted he is and thinks that he may have finally secured a serious ally in the fight of Managing Majima that he has been battling for years on his own with remarkably little success.

stage 2: daigo realizing that saejima and majima are the most annoying people on planet earth together. instant regret.

stage 3: awkward as hell whenever majima is not in the room because well honestly they are both just kind of awkward people in general but compounding this is daigo, who is already an extremely guarded person in general, has become like 2 billion times worse after y3. so like he will do professional small talk (customer service voice) but saejima knows its full of shit and its hard for him to break through that barrier when daigo is giving him. absolutely nothing to grab onto.

stage 4: PROJECTION CENTRAL. something i find deeply and painfully underexplored is like. ok youve definitely seen that one quote probably thats basically like "yeah we specifically made saejima's character based around kiryus to explain why majima gets so bizarrely fixed on kiryu. like basically hes projecting saejima into kiryu and then getting insane about it" <- and what nobody ever likes to think about is the reverse of this. so much in the same way that kiryu carries reflections of saejima in him, saejima carries reflections of kiryu in him. And yeah you can already see where im going with this 1000% once daigo starts getting a better sense of saejima as a person he starts crazy style projecting. not in the way where hes consciously taking his frustrations with kiryu out on saejima (because hes mostly trying really hard to pretend that his frustrations with kiryu dont really exist anymore) but like once that switch flips in his head and he realizes that saejima is someone he can trust and confide in he basically starts viewing him as kiryu 2.0 <- for better and for worse. saejima can definitely tell there is Something Else Going On Here that has literally nothing to do with him as a person but hes already impressively good dealing with seriously mentally ill people so i know he navigates this deeply unfortunate situation with grace. i know its soooooo fucking bad in the aftermath of y6 though

stage 5: normality...? i dont have a strict timeline on any of this but eventually as daigo gets to sort through some of his extremely messy feelings on his relationship with kiryu he eventually gets to the point where he can genuinely view saejima as his own person and they form an actual relationship outside of the context of kiryu and majima

i said in my liveblog this was primarily about ego but this is WRONG this is wrong actually. well ok its not entirely incorrect but its only part of the puzzle because hes also kind of trying to become majima

to back up a bit. daigo is profoundly unpopular in-universe and this has been an extremely hammered in fact throughout his entire chairmanship. i think this does bother him like he literally tells kiryu even if he had the option he wouldnt give the tojo back to him because hes too proud for that. but also i dont think its enough of an issue for him to throw everyone under the bus like that.

like in essence i think this is about self sufficiency in the same vein that majima approaches it. like majima has carefully constructed his life in such a way that hes not dependent on anybody else and can survive even if everyone leaves or turns on him because of Well Everything, and will also cut other people off if he views them as potential targets or liabilities (makoto, park, sunshine cast, kicking saejima out of the tojo in y5, etc)

now back to daigo theres two things we want to think about: 1) the rggo story and 2) the events of y3

for point number one honestly usually im kind of hesitant to include bonus material discussions in analysis for decisions the characters make in the games but we have so little in terms of material to work with for majima and daigo that since because its (dubiously/unless proven otherwise) canon im going to talk about it anyways. you really should read it but if you havent for whatever reason the basic plot is that nobody in the tojo is accepting daigo as the new chairman due to his lack of experience/general ability, and majima (just having returned on kiryus request) is beating the shit out of anybody who criticizes daigo. which is obviously doing nobody any favors. daigo tells him to knock it off and majima laughs at him and says Um LOL grow a spine maybe and ill consider it. it eventually gets to the point where majima attempts to kill a patriarch for trying to have daigo assassinated, and daigo tries to step in only to be told that he has to beat majima in a purgatory cage match if he wants majima to finally submit. they fight, daigo obviously loses but impresses majima enough with his mindset and willpower that majima pretends to lose in the end, which sends a message to the rest of the tojo that daigo is strong enough to collar even the mad dog so maybe get off his back.

now obviously you can make an argument that the spectacle of majima causing trouble and eventually having to be subdued by daigo was necessary for the impact that majima wanted (namely, getting tojo goons to have some bare amount of respect for their chairman). but like also Was it really necessary if that was all. i think its pretty easy to read in the idea that majima is also sending a message to daigo - that he cant blindly rely on the people around him to keep him safe. the only way he's going to survive in this world is by his own two hands.

^and so onto point number two. given the entire events of y3 which involved 1) mine betraying the clan 2) kashiwagi & mine dying and 3) kiryu showing up briefly for the finale and then leaving again. between all this and the fact that majima pretty demonstrably was trying to teach him lesson that "you cant become blindly reliant on the people around you" from the moment he stepped back into the tojo. its actually kind of no surprise the moment the clan had another crisis daigo immediately starts making sacrifices out of people left and right

like. "if i dont keep it safe, who will" <- daigo feels that he cannot rely on anybody else because they will leave him one way or another. he cant become dependent on them because thats a liability for him, because when they leave the tojo will crumble. so honestly it makes perfect sense he'd throw majima under the bus for the money because frankly the money cant leave him, and the money cant be a liability like a person is and if he sends majima to prison this is one less person who he has a personal connection to that he has to worry about. like if that makes sense

its difficult to make a fully confident assertion on this due to how frankly little we know about what majima spent half this game doing, but im honestly really inclined to say that daigo was not privy to at least majima planning on faking his death due to the insane risk factor. like both kitakata and baba were very much under the impression that he was dead; kitakata was physically present for majimas "death" and did not give even the slightest impression that he thought majima was still alive, and baba, being one of the key players in kurosawas plan, would have been enough in the loop to know that it was one of kurosawas men that "killed" him - when he's talking to saejima about it he seems very confident that majimas death was of their doing. so it was clearly very believable to someone whos almost definitely seen people die before, and i find it difficult to imagine majima would have been able to pull this off unless he had actually been close to dying. additionally it seems highly unlikely that majimas attempted assassin was someone in league with him and katsuya so as to "kill" majima but make sure he was not going to die, because katsuya wasnt completely confident in his guess that this entire thing was kurosawas plan. if the fakeout death was an airtight plot and the assassin was a double agent, katsuya wouldve known without a doubt that kurosawa was the mastermind and frankly none of this elaborate scheme would have been necessary. not to mention the fact that the letter was given to katsuya before any of this even occurred - majima was not 1000% confident in the fact that he'd live past the assassination attempt to send it himself.

setting daigos (relative) softness and personal relationship with majima aside, it would be insane for him to approve of this because he needs majima. its always pretty emphasized but especially in y5 we get to hear a lot of peoples opinions on daigo being the chairman and absolutely none of them are positive - people think hes too inexperienced, too young, and too weak to lead, and after the disaster that was y4 he's tremendously unpopular. the only reason he hasnt gotten overthrown is because of majimas support - the combined strength of both majima himself and his clan makes it impossible for the rest of the tojo to dethrone daigo. but if the plan goes even slightly askew and majima dies in this insane plot to try and smoke out the real mastermind, regardless of whether or not the mastermind is defeated, forget about leading it because daigo would be doing good to just make it out of the tojo alive. if majima dies, he dies, and since theres literally nobody else even remotely qualified enough to lead, the tojo dies too. i think daigo absolutely would have viewed the plan as infinitely too risky and would have vetoed it without question, so majima just. Did not tell him.