Sekai de Ichiban Papa ga Suki (1998)

Sekai de Ichiban Papa ga Suki 1998 / 世界で一番パパが好き 1998 / I Love Dad Best in the World

The protagonist is a 41-year-old divorced lawyer. 13 years ago, his wife's infidelity led him to abandon his then 5-year-old daughter and leave home. This summer, his wife departed to heaven. The daughter still hates his father, and wants to enter a Tokyo university so she needn't have to live with him... This is a story of how two people even as they fight each other also gradually come to understand each other. How the father thinks of his daughter, how the daughter thinks of her father, and other faint awakenings of love: This begins the ‟love story‟ between parent and child. (Source: DramaWiki)