Trying to imagine what Jiro Higuchi looks like compare to his son?
the timing of this ask was perfect, cause i just finished reading an amazing fanfic, where higuchi's family was discussed. here
i didn't have any headcanons beforehand but i liked the portrayal of his family in this fic so i drew something inspired by it. i probably skimmed through some parts tho cause i'm not sure if their appearence was described.
i really liked the idea of giving him a sister. i think it was mentioned that she resembles their father so i went with that. so i guess kyosuke takes after his mom's side of family? hm i like it. when the daughter is more like dad and son like mom.
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!
Could you do a small headcannon for the yotsu's parents? Please I need more content of them on the internet
i sure can! it’s under the cut bc i uhh talk a lot. “small” headcanon... sorry.
we know that higuchi’s father is jiro higuchi, president of yotsuba heavy industry. i assume that this is some sort of subsidiary of the yotsuba corporation, although i honestly don’t know much about that kind of thing? either way, it deals with the manufacturing of large items in bulk. i don’t see his father as very involved with kyosuke’s life at all, especially when he was younger; he was more concerned with kyosuke’s decorum than anything else, but was never very involved in his upbringing. his mother was more involved. she was a temperamental woman with a bit of a drinking issue; she was also younger than jiro and married him primarily for money. kyosuke isn’t particularly close to either of them and secretly wishes he could’ve been more rebellious as a teenager.
namikawa’s father is the head of the u.s. division of yotsuba, and that’s all we know about his family. i imagine that his parents were actually fairly close and did have a genuine relationship (wow)! they pretty much trusted him to handle himself, so he had a fair degree of freedom as a child and teenager. reiji came out to them as trans when he was very young (probably towards the end of middle school), and his parents were very supportive; in fact, it’s partially due to his father’s influence that very few people in the company (or the world at large) are aware that reiji isn’t a cis man. despite this, reiji doesn’t have very much respect for his parents, his father in particular, and more or less ignores his parents’ existence when he can.
ooi’s father works for the ministry of defense according to the manga, but i actually headcanon this to be his step-father. his biological father was a morally rigid man who passed away when ooi was in junior high. his mother remarried not long afterwards to takeshi’s step-father, who was already a close friend of hers; she mainly did this to give takeshi another parental figure and to keep the family financially stable. she and takeshi are very close – probably the closest out of any of the yotsubas and their parents. he’s on good terms with his step-father, but they’re not close.
i’m going to refer to mido w she/her pronouns and the name ayame bc this is a headcanon post and i will headcanon as i please. her father, eigo mido, is a member of the house of councillors, so basically a politician; this is actually referred to outside of their manga profiles, when higuchi asks ayame to call him up and get him to stop the sakura tv broadcast. ayame gives him a decisive no on that and looks a bit annoyed – and in the context of canon, she’s really just annoyed about higuchi calling her up to ask this of her, but i do also headcanon that her relationship with her parents isn’t that great. they pushed her very hard to succeed throughout her childhood and were more focused on her academics and future career than actually being good parents, so their relationship with her was cold and distant. she never felt like she could live up to their expectations and they were never very understanding people; she isn’t out to them in any capacity and their relationships as adults is extremely muted. she’s not fond of them and they don’t reach out to her.
takahashi’s father, karazo takahashi, is the president of the japan financial times, which i assume is some sort of financial journal / newspaper? aside from ooi, eiichi probably has the best relationship with his parents overall. karazo and his mother had a bit of a rocky relationship when eiichi was growing up, but he gets along with each of them and they’ve mostly resolved their issues. karazo has a bit of a smoking habit and talks too loudly; his mother is more soft-spoken and perceptive. they’re very traditional people, but they’re decent company.
shimura is a bit of an exception to the rule here in that we’re given absolutely no information about his father aside from the fact that he wasn’t raised by one; according to the manga profiles, he was raised by a single mother. my headcanon is that his parents were unmarried and, in fact, not in a very committed relationship; he was never really supposed to happen. his mother was a somewhat unstable individual with a lot of unhealthy habits and an addictive personality, and his father bailed on her a few months into the pregnancy. suguru’s mother was extremely unprepared for motherhood, especially on her own. she was able to bring in enough money to keep them afloat, and her family (especially her sister) contributed as well, but they still had a difficult time keeping food on the table, and she treated suguru very poorly. like, very poorly. he cut off contact with her almost entirely when he left for college, and she passed away around when he began working at yotsuba.
both of kida’s parents are anatomy professors! that’s all we know about them. i headcanon that they actually met because they were studying at the same college and took a lot of classes together. they’re very logically-minded people; his father is a bit more sentimental than his mother, but even he isn’t very. masahiko was exposed to a lot of things about their field of study when he was little, so he was pretty impervious to “gross” stuff as a child and learned not to be freaked out by gore. they were also very strict with him, though, and really a bit repressive. he isn’t close to either of them anymore, but their relationship with him is certainly not the worst of the yotsubas.
and now we get to hatori’s parents. his dad, dainosuke yotsuba, is the big man himself, the president of the yotsuba group! since his name is also the name of the company, i’d imagine that he inherited his position from his father or … something like that. arayoshi is also canonically an illegitimate child, however, so we know that mr. yotsuba is a bit saucy himself. i’d imagine he’s married, but not to arayoshi’s mother, and had sired a child with his wife before arayoshi was born, although they didn’t go into the business field. his presence in arayoshi’s childhood was practically zero, although he kept him and his mother provided for financially; he has far more interaction with him as an adult than he did when he was a child, and that’s only because arayoshi works for him. their relationship is professional and pretty damn painful to watch because of how stilted it is. yotsuba also never really stopped with the whole extramarital affair thing and is having a bit of a fling with reiji right now, oops. as for arayoshi’s mother, she was pretty distant from arayoshi; she never really planned to have kids and mostly let him do his own thing. they’re still in touch; she finally married while hatori was in college, and her husband is a decent guy.
What about Kyosuke Higuchi getting a unexpected phone call and birthday present from Jiro Higuchi?
or, the one where higuchi goes out for drinks with some coworkers he can’t stand and his night just doesn’t get better.
Higuchi receives the call halfway through the evening and doesn’t recognize the number immediately. The revelation of its origin is not a pleasant one, but he doesn’t hang up; to the contrary, he sits tensely through the duration of the call, hunched over partially in his seat and giving clipped answers when required. He can feel Hatori staring at him curiously from the opposite side of the booth and imagines that his gaze is boring a hole in his cheek.
“And happy birthday, by the way,” his father adds gruffly right before the call cuts off.
Higuchi’s mouth twitches — it’s the third of August.
