Oh, are we talking about Bad Dad Yoshimura and why Bad Dad Yoshimura was such a Bad Dad. Allow me to chime in. Basically since Yoshimura once again (repeat after me) foils Kaneki, he provides a pretty good illustration of what Yoshimura’s major flaw is. This is a comparison that’s been made by the story several times already.
Weeeeeelll… I’m so sorry but: great fathers don’t murder their child’s mother, abandon their children, and raise other adopted children but not care about whether or not said children live because you hate what they are (ghouls) because you’re projecting your own sins onto them. Sorry Anon, but yes, I blame Yoshimura for being a Bad Dad. I wrote this post about it.
But like all things TG, it’s gray. Yoshimura WAS in many ways a great person. But he was not perfect, and his flaws unfortunately had consequences. I actually really like him as a character and his role in Touka’s life, etc. The saddest thing was I think he was so blinded by guilt he couldn’t ever see the beauty that was also a part of what he had created.
“That time, while making sure I would not be noticed by anyone (not even Father), I secretly and quietly rewrote the summary. One can only destroy things one cannot change. This is so for me, a person who left in the womb everything that was needed.” —Excerpt from Dear Kafka
This quote by Dear Kafka really summarizes Eto’s problem with both parents. To whit though as this isn’t really about Ukina, both parents failed to choose Eto. Yoshimura chose not to fight the world for her sake, and Ukina chose Kuzen over her own daughter.
It’s not just that Kuzen chose to kill her, it’s also that Ukina chose to die by Kuzen’s hand with almost no resistance, when she still had a daughter back at home. The only thing she remarked as worrying about was about Kuzen himself, not Eto.
It’s evident in how Eto talks about herself vs. the narrative that Yoshimura presents to Kaneki. She’s not the embodiment of her parents love, a love that crossed species lines. She’s a surplus, an afterthought at best. It’s unknown if the suffering that Ukina went through to carry Eto to term is known by Eto herself, but the words “left in the womb everything that was needed” is highly suggestive.
Imagine if you would, attempting to comprehend this paradox of your birth. That your mother would choose to suffer so much to bring you to term, but once you were already born she would choose to die by the hand of her husband rather than attempt to continue living with you. That is to say, you were loved all the way up until you were actually born.
Everything that was needed was love, and Eto views that love as being left behind from the moment she actually came into this world.
It’s an unsolvable paradox of love, like many of the ones that are thrown onto the childhood minds of the characters in this series. Touka even says something similiar to whit, why wouldn’t her father choose to be with her?
She didn’t care about his grief she just wanted to be with him. That’s kind of the key when realizing the flaws of Bad Dad Yoshimura. The entire time it wasn’t really about Eto, so much as it was about his own grief. Remember what parts specifically Kaneki related to with Yoshimura in giving his rationale for Nishiki as to why he wanted to jump into the fray all alone.
Amazing how… Yoshimura shows up in Kaneki’s monologue when he talks about how he thought he was deciding and making choices, when really all along he was just hesitating and shying away from the answer. It’s almost like there’s some kind of parallel there.
Kaneki specifically related to Yoshimura’s loneliness, his want for his broken family to somehow be fixed again and return home. This was of course not a bad thing, however once again it was more about himself than it was about the other party.
Yoshimura was ultimately too caught up in his own loneliness to do anything at all effective against Eto. He could just like Kaneki, only bother to try to protect her in a half thought out way rather than actually try to confront her, or the world that maligned her.
Ultimately even his death which he framed as a sacrifice wasn’t really that much about Eto. I mean, if we draw the line back to Kaneki again, it was revealed a long time ago what Kaneki’s real reason for charging into the Anteiku raid was.
I mean, the fact that Eto does not feel chosen, the fact that Eto feels like she inherited the entirety of both of her parent’s emotional issues and agendas (against V, the ghoul and human kind divide) with absolutely no support from either of them, the fact that Eto grew up this way specifically because of her parents lack of love should be enough to prove that Bad Dad Yoshimura is in fact a Bad Dad.
The world also doesn’t serve as an excuse to dilute his bad daditude. After all, Kaneki’s mother was surely stressed from her job, her sister’s undue stress on her, and her husband dying and having to handle it alone but that does not in any way excuse what she did to Kaneki even though there were circumstances at play out of her control.
The thing is, even the people that Yoshimura could be called a good dad too he exhibits several of his bad dad tendencies.
No Touka just has to suffer because she did the bad thing, let her die in a gutter all on her own because I want to make a philosophical point to her.
God is your solution to everything to shove it to the 24th ward.
Hire Touka… and her other brother…. uhhh… potato I think. When he runs away at 13 don’t even bother chasing him down and trying to reach out to him even though both of us are much stronger than him and it would be a minimal risk on our part to try to straighten him out.
I don’t want to go save Ken, my daughter’s there it would be awkward.
It’s pretty clear Yoshimura only intends to parent those children that are 1) receptive to his parenting and 2) not an inconvenience to him. That’s not really how parenting works, you can’t just only pay attention to the favorite child Touka and let the disobedient child run away and make no attempt to follow up on him. Once you take that responsibility you’re sort of locked in for life.
Also consider all the plot critical details that Yoshimura could have just told Kaneki at the start of the manga but chose to leave him entirely in the dark about for the sake of “protecting him” which meant squat in the end as Kaneki learned all of these facts after receiving several literal punches in the face.
The point is, Yoshimura’s parenting style with the children he does parent instead of Eto is really Lassiez Faire at best. There are several opportunities where Yoshimura could have lifted a finger and done something to act, and clearly chose not to.
As I said before, focus on internal tragedy and how much they miss the others around them tends to render people like Kaneki and Yoshimura completely unable to do anything substantial. It’s important to note, that for Eto what annoys her is just as much about what Yoshimura did do as he didn’t do.
For example, Yoshimura could not directly challenge V or even go to the 24th ward to visit Eto but he could… show up right in front of Arima Kishou to save some Rando.
That’s somehow less dangerous than facing off against V to protect Eto how? Why? Remember at the time Yoshimura has absolutely no clue as to what Arima Kishou’s true alliance might be.
It’s just a repeating pattern. Yoshimura is so held back by his own personal tragedy, when he acts to save others, it’s mainly about himself. When he mourns his daughter and his wife, it’s mainly about how much he wants them to return to him.
It’s not wrong for Yoshimura to want to be loved, to want his family back, but the fact that he imposed all of this onto Eto and made her second priority again and again is. It’s not the job of the children to inherit the issues of their parents, yet we see again and again this theme repeating itself in Tokyo Ghoul. Yoshimura pretty much pushed all of his unresolved feelings onto Eto, and that is the reason he could not face her, the world and V be damned. Look at the art here, it’s clear she quite literally is shown being made to feel small in comparison.
Ultimately what’s important to remember is that Tokyo Ghoul is a book. If Ishida wanted to show that Yoshimura truly truly wanted to see Eto again, than he could have figured out some scenario for him to see her. The fact that we see Yoshimura ultimately do nothing is reflective of the fact that it’s more on Yoshimura’s own personal choices, than the scenario of the world itself for why he did not face her.
Yoshimura also, does quite clearly push responsibilities onto his children that aren’t even remotely their responsibility to handle. He does it to Kaneki twice, first insisting that him, a person whose been a ghoul for five whole minutes a relative newborn could somehow become the entire bridge to end a hundreds of years long feud between species. Second in suggesting that Kaneki can somehow save his daughter Eto, like that wasn’t Yoshimura’s job to begin with. Nah just leave it to the guy she’s never met.
In Tokyo Ghoul this avoidance, this shuffling of responsibility, this indecisiveness, its drawn clearly in a line between Yoshimura and Kaneki but it’s shown to be a result more from being unable to face one’s self, rather than entirely dictated by the situation.
The tragedy isn’t that Yoshimura would have been the best dad ever and they would have had such a happy family if V hadn’t interfered. The tragedy is that Yoshimura couldn’t really get over himself in time to do anything effective enough.
He even says exactly that about Ukina in the end. He didn’t know her very well, he just knew that he loved her. The point being that, if he had understood her from the beginning rather than just looking at her love to solve his own loneliness then perhaps things would have turned out different.
Self awareness and self examination aren’t just nice things to have, they’re exactly the tools that prevent people from shoving all of their own issues haphazardly onto their children. Considering how broken and lonely that Kuzen was, even if tragedy had not interfered it’s likely he still would have been an emotionally distant and hands off parent who pushed some unhealthy stuff onto his children, because that’s exactly what we see him do with Touka, Yomo, Irimi, Koma and Ayato (Who he forgot about).
But remember, nobody really confronted Juuzou this time around in an extended fashion except for Hinami and even that was more of a fight to buy time than a genuine character fight like Ui and Hirako was.
It wasn’t about Juuzou’s character at all, except to show how ruthless Juuzou still was.
The thing about all the major end Tarot boss fights, Seidou, Karren, and even Arima himself all of those characters embodied their card a lot and their fight with Kaneki embodied that card too.
For example Seidou is the devil. Around the time that Seidou appeared, Kaneki was beginning to feel trapped within the CCG but rather than trying to free himself he decides to revel and try to make the best out of his lack of freedom. He convinces himself it’s a good thing that Arima and Akira basically dictate every detail of his life because they know what is best for him.
What does Seidou do but revel in the current position he’s in in order to prove himself in some desperate way. The Seidou we meet up with, is entirely different, yet still the same and still trapped by the same tragic vices.
The tower is a card of stagnation that can only be cleared by destruction. Haise had stagnated so long by that point that he could no longer be saved except by some great destruction. Kanae’s vices had piled up so much and their resentments towards Shuu, and equally as strong want to stay with Shuu forever even if it meant Shuu would be in a coma and helpless completely and thoroughly stagnated meant that their desires towards Shuu turned destructive.
Arima himself gave Kaneki a brief moment of hope and insight through their fight. However, his inspiration was equally as fleeting, as without Arima around him Kaneki quickly became lost in illusion again even though he had become inspired to move forward.
So we have near perfect matches for Devil, Tower, and Star. However, there was nothing sun about the 24th ward arc, Uta was barely in it, and we see characters pretty much ignoring insight the entire time. There’s… baby… I guess but it’s not even born yet.
If then this current raid arc is judgement, then whatever Juuzou was supposed to represent with Judgement is entirely skipped over.
I guess… Kaneki sure gets judged if you want to be overly literal.
If Juuzou and Kaneki’s confrontation was entirely skipped over because of meta reasons, then this would exactly be the reason why. We are not at the judgment arc yet, the time for fighting Juuzou has not come. Juuzou himself, does not even have a strong enough reason to oppose Kaneki besides (Furuta told me so), or his own personal stagnation when it came to Shinohara’s memory.
The Judgement card calls for a period of reflection and self-evaluation. Through meditation or quiet reflection, you may come to a point of deep understanding about the common themes throughout your life and what you can do or change to avoid these situations in the future. Judgement tells you that you are close to reaching a significant stage in your own journey.
The Judgement card suggests that you have had a recent epiphany or an ‘awakening’ where you have come to a realisation that you need to live your life in a different way and you need to be true to yourself and your needs.
Self evaluation, sudden realization, newfound life, Juuzou represented literally none of that. Perhaps Judgement in reverse, but that already complciates the symbolism a whole bunch.
If you take the fact that they are attempting to escape through 20 seriously though, and what Furuta says later in the chapter I have a small theory.
Their route is sealed ahead of time. They were never going to get past 20. The characters could have believed they were growing and about to reach the world, only to be suddenly cut short.
Which I mean to say is we have an illusory preview of the future tarot arcs contained in this last swing of the moon arc, a pregnancy on the way (sun), the possibility Juuzou might change sides with a glimpse of Touka’s sympathy to shinohara (judgement) escape to a free world from dater (world), but none of it comes to be because the characters are not there yet. They are rushing things. The same way that Kaneki and Touka get married partly because they are so pressured by the circumstances and don’t want to lose each other.
The narrative lately has been entirely dependant on narrative breaking and illusion. We literally had a bait and switch, with both Shio’s anouncement that he was not going to die so easily, and Kaneki’s own expectations that he was going to protect them this time only to get cut down immediately. The narration actively lied to us that Kaneki did not know and would not come back, that is an illusion.
Pitch black and shadows are symbols of the moon, not of judgement.
hamliet 