Mitsuharu Okumura in the manga
Mitsuharu Okumura is a suitor from a wealthy ducal family and Ryunosuke’s son. He has access to protection, influence and medical resources that could change Satoko’s future.
He seeks to marry Satoko despite knowing she loves Shinpei, and his pressure turns help into coercion. Their wedding is interrupted and the marriage is never completed. Jubei promotes the match, while Ryunosuke’s approval matters to it. Mitsuharu later helps seek the foreign doctor who can save Satoko.
Real help does not make a coerced marriage a free choice.
Mitsuharu can offer resources Satoko urgently needs. His contradiction is that he can take her suffering seriously while refusing to take her refusal seriously.
Chapter references identify the scenes behind each argument. “Our reading” is an interpretation, rather than a statement of the author’s confirmed intent.
The cure comes attached to a condition
Chapters 54–56, 65, 72–73 & 79
Mitsuharu pursues Satoko despite knowing she loves someone else. In Chapter 65, he makes marriage the condition for sparing Shinpei from execution and protecting her family. He also works to find a doctor. After the interrupted wedding, he continues helping; in Chapter 79, Satoko credits a foreign doctor he summoned with treating her.
His medical help is consequential. It still does not make the earlier bargain consensual. A threat to the person she loves leaves her a choice shaped by force, even when the alternative includes comfort and treatment.
His later care is more generous because it can continue without securing the marriage. That change deserves recognition without turning him into the secretly ideal husband. He shares with the other suitors a temptation to regard the ability to provide as the right to decide.
