After seeing some people confused about this scene, asking "Why does Yuusaku have blue eyes? Is he actually Russian?", I felt inspired to analyze it through the parallels between Yuusaku and Asirpa, and through the different ways Sugimoto and Ogata respond to them.
Yuusaku is Japanese and doesn't actually have blue eyes. The scene where he opens his "blue" eyes is merely a figment of Sugimoto's dream. It symbolically suggests that Sugimoto sees Yuusaku as a parallel to Asirpa, who is the one with genuine blue eyes.
Yuusaku was similar to Asirpa in the sense that both of them remained pure and had never stained their hands with killing, despite standing on the front lines of brutal and bloody conflicts (Yuusaku in the Russo-Japanese War, and Asirpa in the battle over the gold). Their purity made them idols and symbols of hope. In fact, both functioned as a "Joan of Arc" for their respective sides, upholding a non-killing principle rooted in religious/superstitious beliefs. Yuusaku embodied this as a virgin flag bearer for the Japanese military, while Asirpa did so as a pure, young female leader of the Ainu and other oppressed people.
Also, Yuusaku and Asirpa had limited free will in common. Yuusaku is the son of Lieutenant General Hanazawa Koujirou, a high-ranking military officer. He decided to join the Japanese military and go to the war as his father wished. He did so without anyone ever letting him know that he could have chosen to marry a rich girl, Kaeko, and live a peaceful life instead. Similarly, Asirpa was the daughter of Wilk who was the central figure of revolutionaries. She also decided to join the battle over the gold, not realizing that her father had trained her for this exact mission since her early childhoodsince. Although both of them believed they were making their own choices out of love, duty, and belief, their choices were under the strong influence of their fathers.
Still, I highly doubt that either Yuusaku or Asirpa would have chosen the easier path of living peacefully, even if they had been less influenced by their fathers.
Both Yuusaku and Asirpa were driven to the battles not only by their fathers, but also by the environments they were in. Yuusaku was brought up in an era of Japanese imperialism, when young men were conscripted and state propaganda claimed that the Russian Empire would invade Japanese territory unless Imperial Japan fought back. Meanwhile, Asirpa was born an Ainu, an ethnicity severely oppressed by Imperial Japan, whose people and culture would face total erasure unless she chose to resist.
Of course, viewing Yuusaku merely as a victim of his environment risks minimizing his wartime responsibility, especially from the perspective of countries affected by Japanese imperialism (e.g. China, Korea). However, his story highlights the terrifying power of state propaganda, which strips individuals of their free will and turns even the most innocent souls into symbols of invasion.
Sugimoto wanted Yuusaku and Asirpa to know that they could choose a peaceful life such as eating delicious food (namely fried shrimp for Yuusaku, and brains and citatap for Asirpa), free from the horrors of wars, instead of dying miserably on the battlefield. However, Yuusaku eventually became a flag bearer, an idol, and lost his life in the war. Sugimoto feared that the same fate (being set up as an idol and dying) would befall Asirpa. This is why he had a dream of Yuusaku with blue eyes, followed by Asirpa looking at him with the same blue eyes from a similar camera angle, thereby projecting Yuusaku's death onto Asirpa.
Moreover, as we already know, Ogata also overlapped Yuusaku with Asirpa due to their shared purity. The most evident scene illustrating this parallel is when Yuusaku (it's a hallucination, though) looks back at Ogata in his nightmare, immediately followed by Asirpa looking back at him from the very similar angle. As if to prove their parallel, even the framing of Ogata's own face is almost exactly the same in both panels.
More importantly, this is not merely a fan interpretation. Ogata himself eventually acknowledged the connection between Yuusaku and Asirpa. After reflecting on why the hallucination of Yuusaku, an embodiment of his guilt, would appear whenever he attempted to kill Asirpa, he came to realize that he had unconsciously been viewing them as the same all along.
It is really interesting that both Sugimoto and Ogata overlap Asirpa and Yuusaku through their nightmares, which makes them foils to each other. Sugimoto and Ogata, despite both recognizing the similarity between Asirpa and Yuusaku, respond to their purity in completely opposite yet strangely similar ways.
Sugimoto wanted to protect their purity by giving them choices of whether to live peaceful lives or join the battles, so that they wouldn't blindly take part in killing and get consumed by war.
However, the way he presented that "choice" feels somewhat pushy. Although he claimed that he wanted Yuusaku and Asirpa to choose their own paths, he had already convinced himself that a peaceful life was what was best for them and actively encouraged them toward it.
He assaulted Yuusaku, telling him that he should be a fried shrimp kind of guy. Likewise, he directly told Asirpa that he wanted her to abandon the battle over the gold, without fully considering the consequences or the future of the Ainu people. This kind of hypocrisy was even called out by Shiraishi, who accused Sugimoto of trying to "control" Asirpa.
After all, he knew all too well the pain of losing his loved ones (his family, Umeko, and Toraji) and even his innocent old self to the circumstances that had been beyond his control, such as tuberculosis and war. As a result, he often tried to guide Yuusaku and Asirpa toward what he believed was a safer and happier path, even if it meant interfering with their choices.
Ogata, on the other hand, wanted to taint that purity by forcing them to do things they didn't want to, especially killing. He even tried to ruin Yuusaku's purity by pressuring him to sleep with a prostitute and lose his virginity.
His motive was actually quite simple. He just wanted to validate his own existence. Having spent his childhood feeling unloved and neglected by his parents, he came to believe that he lacked something as a human being. As a coping mechanism, he convinced himself that everyone must be the same as him, impure, vile, and defective.
Therefore, Yuusaku and Asirpa, people who were pure, kind, and honorable, caused a massive contradiction to his worldview. This is why he was so desperate to drag them down to his level, to prove that no one in this world can stay pure and even those as virtuous as them will commit the killings if given the right reasons.
In short, Sugimoto wanted Asirpa to choose the path of a peaceful life so that he wouldn't repeat the same regrets he carried over Yuusaku, who died as a flag bearer with only a narrow range of choices. In contrast, Ogata wanted to destroy Asirpa's purity as a way to vindicate his past failure to corrupt Yuusaku's.
At first glance, it seems easy to label Sugimoto as "good" and Ogata as "bad." However, they are no different when it comes to imposing their own values and traumas onto Yuusaku and Asirpa while disregarding their individual wills. Sugimoto and Ogata could be described as two sides of the same coin.
That said, in both Yuusaku's and Asirpa's cases, Sugimoto eventually changed his mind and decided to respect their own choices, even when those choices did not align with what he personally wanted for them. In that regard, he achieved a sense of growth and redemption that Ogata never could.
Asirpa was gradually given the opportunity to reflect on what she truly wanted for herself. She even learned that her father, Wilk, raised her to fight and lead the Ainu. In the end, however, she chose to involve herself in the battle over the gold by her own free will, fully conscious of Wilk's scheme and alternative path available to her (a peaceful life). She understood that these two were not mutually exclusive and she could pursue both by fighting for a happy future for the Ainu, including herself.
Her choice ultimately matched Wilk's goal, but what truly mattered was that it became her choice rather than merely her father's expectation or manipulation.
She also claimed her autonomy over her purity by shooting a poisoned arrow at Ogata, rather than allowing her purity to be either protected by Sugimoto or corrupted by Ogata. She made a conscious choice to shoot Ogata, resolved to fall into hell for it. This act allowed her to grow out of her role as a mere symbolic figure, a "Joan of Arc" for the Ainu, and become a flawed, multi-dimensional individual.
Yuusaku, on the other hand, died before he was ever given the opportunity to undergo the same kind of development. He died pure and idolized, never got to objectively view the framework of imperialism and break free from it.
He only showed up in other characters' flashbacks or in Ogata's hallucinations, and his character is mostly defined by what others projected onto him. To his father, he was the ideal son. To the country and the military, he was the pristine symbol of imperialism. To Sugimoto, he was the reminder of a stolen future. To Ogata, he was the embodiment of Ogata's sense of guilt.
It is unfortunate that he received far less narrative focus than Asirpa, but it also emphasizes the parallel between him and her. They function as "what-ifs" for one another. Asirpa could have ended up like him, and Yuusaku could have become someone like Asirpa under different circumstances. And the former was exactly what Sugimoto wanted to prevent and the latter was what Ogata wanted to prove, and in a sense, both of their wishes were fulfilled.
Sugimoto's wish was fulfilled because Asirpa avoided being another "Yuusaku" by choosing her own path. By the end of the story, she accomplished everything Yuusaku never could. She made her own choices and ultimately decided to kill, steeling herself to fall into hell.
At the same time, Ogata's wish was also fulfilled because he finally confirmed that even Yuusaku could have gotten his hands dirty if given the right reasons, after witnessing Asirpa choose to kill him (even though the direct cause of his death was ultimately suicide). Asirpa's decision to kill him and fall into hell alongside Sugimoto vindicated his life philosophy that no one can remain pure. As a result, it strongly affected his perception of Yuusaku as well. Although Yuusaku had always represented purity, sense of guilt, and opposition to killing, his hallucination assisted in Ogata's suicide and happily plunged into hell alongside his brother.
In conclusion, it can be said that the parallel between Asirpa and Yuusaku mirrors the parallel between Sugimoto and Ogata. Asirpa's ability to break free from her role as a symbolic figure, combined with Sugimoto's decision to accept her for who she was regardless of the choices she made, allowed them to step into the future together. In contrast, Yuusaku died as an idol and even after his death, he remained a canvas for Ogata's psychological projections. And Ogata never truly saw Yuusaku for who he was. Even when he was finally forced to confront the image of Yuusaku as the embodiment of his guilt, he stubbornly rejected it, which ultimately contributed to his downfall and death.
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