#or hell judging from the call with jo he didnt elaborate on shit

[todayisafridaynight]

Regarding Arakawa’s guilt: of course it's natural to prioritise Masato over Ichi because he thinks Masato is his actual son, but I assume he felt a little bad about being prepared to send Ichi to prison instead because why else would he lie about it being Jo? The way he talks in 2019 about dreaming of Masato being born in Shangri-la suggests he compares the two at least subconsciously, and he could have just said Masato is too frail for prison and Ichi would have agreed to take his place. So using Jo as a scapegoat to Ichi seems like some kind of an emotional shield

I don't think Arakawa was particularly happy about having to send any of his boys to jail, and especially not Ichi who we've established Arakawa sees as a genuine piece of his personal family. Softening the blow of asking Ichi to go to prison is a fair conclusion to come to as to why Arakawa would think to come up with the Sawashiro Story instead of saying the truth.

Ergo, with hindsight, it's easy to wonder why Arakawa didn't just tell Ichi the truth about that night. In review, it would be fair to assume that Arakawa went with Sawashiro being the killer as a way to mitigate the shock of the actual situation. Sawashiro- if we're to believe this part of Arakawa's story to Ichi- told Arakawa about the night of New Years just two hours before he met with Ichiban, after all.

Whether Arakawa is a hardened yakuza boss or not, he's still a father, and trying to process that your disabled son had to commit murder because he was almost beat up in an alley couldn't have been easy- especially to hear that first thing in the morning.

We could take the meta reason being that we needed a plot twist, but it also wouldn't hurt to gander that Arakawa didn't know how to tell Ichi the truth if he himself was hardly able to accept it, so a believable lie was the sound way to go. Especially with time being a sensitive factor- the police already having recovered Suzumori's body- they needed an excuse quickly. With Sawashiro being the family captain and his arrest would undoubtedly be detrimental to the family, it's fair to say that Arakawa went with Sawashiro being the killer so Ichi would be less inclined to question anything or press for details (both for getting the situation taken care of quickly, and so Arakawa wouldn't have to recount Masato being assaulted. Though again, as we know Ichi would have went to prison regardless for Arakawa no matter the truth).