The 2016 Yomei civil war was a violent conflict that broke out within the ranks of the powerful, Chugoku-based Yomei Alliance yakuza clan in 2016 as Iwami Shipbuilding president Tsuneo Iwami attempted to seize control of the Yomei from his father, Heizo Iwami (known in the yakuza world as "Takeru Kurusu"). Tsuneo instigated a conspiracy with nationwide implications, such as sparking the 2015 Little Asia fire to pin the blame on the Tojo-kai leadership and enable his puppet Katsumi Sugai to take control of that clan as his vassal, and allying with the Jingweon Mafia to wipe out the Saio Triad, which had moved into Tokyo as a result of the fire. His ultimate goal was to have the Tojo and Yomei form an alliance through an oath of brotherhood between himself and Sugai's right-hand man Takumi Someya, which would make him the strongest yakuza boss in Japan and enable him to crush the Omi Alliance of Kansai. However, his plans were complicated by Toru Hirose and Kanji Koshimizu's loyalty to his father, while he involved the legendary yakuza Kazuma Kiryu in the conflict after his henchman Shu Tatsukawa accidentally struck Kiryu's adoptive daughter Haruka Sawamura with a car while attempting to kidnap her son, Haruto Sawamura, the son of Hirose-gumi yakuza Yuta Usami (himself the son of Saio Triad leader Big Lo). With the help of the Hirose-gumi rank-and-file, Kiryu was able to thwart Tsuneo's conspiracy while inadvertently revealing the "Secret of Onomichi", thus triggering Heizo's downfall as well. Ultimately, the Daidoji Faction - which has been responsible for financing the Iwami Group's construction of the secret battleship in Onomichi, persuaded Kazuma Kiryu to fake his death and conceal their role in the ship's construction in exchange for arranging for Tojo chairman Daigo Dojima and his lieutenants Goro Majima and Taiga Saejima to be released from prison. Kiryu's "death", supposedly at the hands of the Yomei, nearly caused a war to break out between the restored Tojo leadership and the Yomei, now led by Kanji Koshimizu, but Kiryu left Daigo with a will asking him to be a man of peace, resulting in both alliances backing down from a confrontation.
Background[]
During the early 21st century, Japan's criminal underworld was dominated by three yakuza factions. The largest of these yakuza factions was the Kansai-based Omi Alliance, with around 30,000 members in 120 families. The second-largest was the Kanto-based Tojo-kai, with around 25,000 members in 100 families. Third in strength was the Chugoku-based Yomei Alliance, which remained neutral in the many wars between the Tojo and Omi; unbeknownst to other yakuza families and even to much of its own membership, the Yomei's sole purpose since its founding in the 1940s was to protect the "Secret of Onomichi", a Yamato-class battleship built by Iwami Shipbuilding at the end of World War II and financed by Admiral Minoru Daidoji using misplaced war funds. Yomei chairman Heizo Iwami, who used the name "Takeru Kurusu" for yakuza business, used this secret to blackmail Daidoji into making him one of Japan's wealthiest businessmen, and Iwami used this wealth to found the Yomei and consolidate control over Chugoku. The Yomei maintained a strict hold over Hiroshima Prefecture, with the police rarely receiving reports about Yomei activity and Kurusu last being heard of in the 1970s. As the Tojo and Omi had at each other in 2006 and 2012, the Yomei remained confined to their stronghold.
The Yomei's policy of neutrality ensured that the yakuza balance of power was always at an equilibrium. However, matters began to change by 2016 as ambitious figures within the Tojo, Yomei, and beyond began plotting to seize power as the yakuza world was shaken up by anti-gang legislation and the intrusion of foreign criminal outfits. As Heizo Iwami neared 100 years old, his son Tsuneo Iwami, who handled the legitimate business side of the Yomei, came to desire future control of the Yomei against his father's will. On hearing that his father groomed Koshimizu-gumi patriarch and Yomei captain Kanji Koshimizu as his heir, Tsuneo decided to conspire to overthrow his father with the help of allies from other organizations.
To this end, he established contact with longtime Tojo-kai advisor Katsumi Sugai, who lamented his lack of advancement in the clan despite his years of service. He also allied himself with Jimmy Lo, the son of Chinese kingpin Big Lo of the Saio Triad; Jimmy Lo ignored his father's refusal to expand into Japan and conspired with Iwami to bring the Saio into Tokyo. To handle his dirty work, Tsuneo Iwami also used his immense wealth to hire the Korean Jingweon Mafia as mercenaries, with their leader Joongi Han seeking to rebuild the mafia's strength in Japan ten years after the 2006 Tojo-Omi war nearly destroyed it.
Tsuneo's plan was for the Tojo to light several fires in Kabukicho's Little Asia district and this destroy the neighborhood through arson; the Saio Triad would then move in, use their capital to rebuild the neighborhood, and establish a presence in Kabukicho. The Tojo chairman Daigo Dojima and his lieutenants Goro Majima and Taiga Saejima would be blamed for the fire and imprisoned, clearing the way for Sugai to take power as acting Chairman and the ambitious Takumi Someya to become his right-hand man and successor. With the Saio now useless to him, Iwami would have the Jingweon Mafia assassinate Jimmy Lo and Big Lo to decapitate the triad and allow the Tojo to take back Little Asia; in exchange, he would give the Jingweon enough money for them to buy up Kabukicho's main nightlife venues. He would then use these allies to seize control of the Yomei from his father, and, with the Tojo as his allies, he might one day move on to destroy the Omi Alliance in a two-pronged offensive and thus command all of Japan through direct control or the Tojo's vassalage.
The 2015 Little Asia fire achieved Tsuneo's goals, and he forced Big Lo to consent to the Saio's movement into Japan in exchange for Tsuneo not revealing Big Lo's ignorance of the true nature of the "Secret of Onomichi", which he had used as leverage against Heizo Iwami to secure hush money payments for decades. This "secret" was, in reality, a World War II-era, Yamato-class battleship that Heizo Iwami had built for the Imperial Japanese Navy from misplaced war funds supplied by Admiral Minoru Daidoji. On the war's end, Daidoji was forced to hide the battleship underwater to conceal his past embezzlement, enabling him to become a powerful behind-the-scenes fixer of LDP politics. Heizo Iwami refused to destroy the ship at Daidoji's request in 1975, instead eliminating all of the Yomei officers who knew the secret's true nature and continuing to hold leverage over Japan's secret political boss. As the Saio had supplied Chinese cheap labor for the ship's construction, their first leader was aware of the secret, but Big Lo had never been told of its true nature, and his son Jimmy Lo drunkenly revealed this weakness to Tsuneo Iwami.
Once Sugai was in control of the Tojo and the Saio in control of Little Asia, Tsuneo Iwami attempted to have Big Lo and Jimmy Lo killed by the Jingweon. However, only Jimmy Lo was killed, and Big Lo embarked on a bloody war with the Tojo on the streets of Kabukicho. After several failed attempts to kill the transient Big Lo, the Jingweon discovered that one of the hosts at their Club Stardust, Shu Tatsukawa, was a former Saio Triad member who had helped raise Yuta Usami, Big Lo's estranged second son-turned-Saio heir, as well as a member of the Hirose-gumi in Onomichi. Tsuneo consented to Joongi Han having Tatsukawa kidnap Usami's illegitimate son Haruto Sawamura to lure out Usami, who would then be told of his true parentage and deceived into killing his father to protect his son. In December 2016, this plan went awry when Tatsukawa accidentally struck Haruto's mother Haruka Sawamura with a car while attempting to kidnap her child. Haruka's accident led her adoptive father Kazuma Kiryu, fresh out of prison, to travel to Tokyo from Okinawa and search for answers. After his police contact Makoto Date discovered that a recent photo from Haruka's phone had been taken in Onomichi, Kiryu headed to that city to continue his investigation, which would prove fatal for Tsuneo's plan.
War[]
Within a few days, Kiryu befriended Snack Kiyomi proprietress Kiyomi Kasahara and made enemies with Hirose-gumi captain Tsuyoshi Nagumo, who was jealous over Kasahara's affection. When Masuzoe-gumi patriarch Koji Masuzoe attempted to punish Nagumo for failing to collect on protection payments from Kiyomi, Kiryu - moved by Nagumo's loyalty to his woman - rescued Nagumo from Maszueo and his men at the Ryunan Shrine, making enemies of the Masuzoe Family in the process. At Nagumo's behest, the rank-and-file of the Hirose Family - namely himself, Yuta Usami, Takaaki Matsunaga, and Naoto Tagashira - accepted Kiryu as their aniki and eventually came around to helping him with his search for Haruka. The Masuzoe Family went on to mount an unsuccessful manhunt for Kiryu, and, after Kiryu helped Matsunaga beat down several Iwami Shipbuilding employees who caused a ruckus at his Moreno bar, Nagumo was forced to beat Matsunaga to appease Koshimizu and the main family.
In the meantime, Heizo Iwami, catching wind of his son's plot after hearing of the events in Tokyo, maneuvered behind the scenes to undo his progress. When Tsuneo Iwami invited Someya to Onomichi to swear an oath of brotherhood with him, Heizo suggested that Kiryu be compelled to serve as a witness to the oath, ostensibly to ensure that Kiryu's friends in the Omi would begrudgingly accept the new Tojo-Yomei alliance rather than go to war. However, Heizo was privately aware that Kiryu would not give his blessing without Dojima's consent, and the threat of an Omi declaration of war would force Someya to cancel his oath. To rope Kiryu in, Heizo had Someya kidnap his ex-wife Kiyomi, causing Kiryu and his Hirose-gumi friends to mount a rescue mission to Someya's hotel on Mount Senkoji. While the Hirose-gumi men fought their way through Masuzoe's family, who had provided security for the meeting, Kiryu and Nagumo were ultimately brought into a dining room with Heizo and Tsuneo Iwami, Someya, Kiyomi, Masuzoe, and Koshimizu. There, Heizo announced that the Hirose Family would not be punished for the misunderstanding, and he invited Kiryu to meet with him and the Yomei's higher-ups on his private yacht, where he invited Kiryu to serve as witness to the ceremony. Sure enough, Kiryu declined, and Heizo ensured that his son did not try to convince Kiryu to reconsider.
Kiyomi, grateful for Kiryu's help, revealed her suspicion that Shu Tatsukawa was Haruto's father, causing Kiryu, Yuta, and Nagumo to head to Kabukicho to search for him. Along the way, Joongi Han lured them to Club Stardust, where he offered to give up Tatsukawa's location in exchange for Kiryu's participation in a staged fight. Kiryu and his friends were forced to fight with dozens of Jingweon rank-and-file before Kiryu could battle Han in the club, where he defeated him and learned that Tatsukawa lived in the Ouka Building. The Saio Triad's Ed Zhang beat Kiryu there, brutally murdering Tatsukawa and his girlfriend. This eliminated Kiryu's lead, but, suspicious of the Saio Triad's involvement, he went on to lead his friends in an infiltration of the Saio headquarters, where Big Lo confronted them, with Masuzoe - a heihaizi who had infiltrated the Yomei for the Saio Triad - at his side. In the ensuing standoff, Big Lo recognized Yuta as his son, and, speaking Chinese, Masuzoe revealed that Yuta did not know the "secret of Onomichi." Big Lo surprisingly let the intruders go scot-free, although he requested to meet Kiryu the next evening at the ruins of Shangri-La. Someya learned of this from his spies in the triad, and he persuaded Kiryu to take him with him to meet Lo. There, Kiryu foiled Someya's plot to take Big Lo hostage, and Big Lo revealed to Kiryu that Tatsukawa was not Haruto's father, and that Haruto was of central importance to the ongoing gang war.
At the same time, different factions in the Yomei plotted to take Haruto for themselves. Tsuneo Iwami still intended to kidnap Haruto, lure out Yuta Usami, reveal his parentage, and turn him against his father to help wipe out the Saio, while Heizo Iwami sent Koshimizu to kidnap the infant and thus prevent Tsuneo from carrying out his plan, and Toru Hirose - who had been ordered by Heizo Iwami to chase the Triads out of Kabukicho to end their blackmail (which he intended to do through means similar to Tsuneo) - took him from Kiyomi and went into hiding. On hearing of Hirose's supposed kidnapping of Haruto, Kiryu and his friends returned to Onomichi, where they tracked their boss down to the Ryunan Shrine with the help of a snack bar proprietor. Koshimizu intercepted Kiryu at the foot of the hill, but Kiryu defeated Koshimizu in the ensuing fight, preventing him from taking Haruto. At the shrine, Hirose and Masuzoe told Kiryu and the Hirose-gumi that Yuta was Haruto's father and the heir to the Saio Triad. When Yuta asked about the "Secret of Onomichi," Hirose feigned a lack of knowledge about the secret. The group was soon beset by masked Jingweon assassins who came to kidnap Haruto. While the Hirose Family fled with Haruto, passing him like a rugby ball to escape the Jingweon henchmen, the Jingweon ultimately captured Haruto and took him to a shipping container facility on an outlying island. Kiryu and his friends decided to mount a rescue mission, borrowing Kazuaki Ino's boat. During the ride, the "Secret of Onomichi" again came up, and Matsunaga correctly deduced that it had something to do with Minoru Daidoji ("the Fixer") and the secretive Daidoji Faction.
In the ensuing raid on the island, Kiryu and his friends fought their way through scores of Jingweon henchmen, killing several of them by hurling explosive barrels at them. When Kiryu faced off against Joongi Han and defeated him, Joongi revealed that Tsuneo would stop at nothing to kill Big Lo and reveal the "Secret of Onomichi", as the first would consolidate the position of his Tojo allies and the second would create a scandal that could lead to his father's "suicide" (Tsuneo would have him murdered and take power for himself). Before Han could reveal the secret, Hirose shot him from a distance, having also killed Masuzoe to cover up the secret. Kiryu, unaware of the assassin's identity, figured that it was Tsuneo who had ordered his death to cover his tracks.
Yuta, overwhelmed by the revelations of his paternity and his parentage, persuaded Kiryu to take him to Kabukicho so that he could persuade Big Lo to call off the search for Haruto. Once in Kabukicho, however, Yuta snuck out of New Serena, supposedly to relate to his crew Date's news that Tsuneo Iwami was in town. Instead, he headed for Little Asia by himself, set the Saio headquarters on fire, and attempted to kill his father. Kiryu tracked a suicidal Yuta down and was forced to defeat him in a fight before rescuing him and his father from the blaze, upon which Big Lo revealed that Hirose had threatened to unleash Yuta against him if he did not voluntarily leave Japan and thus end his role in Tsuneo's conspiracy and his blackmail over the "Secret of Onomichi." Big Lo then decided to step down as Saio Triad leader and disinherit Yuta, although he knew that doing so would cause the triad to send assassins to kill him and prevent him or his bloodline from attempting to return to power. Before leaving, Big Lo gave Kiryu a hard drive containing a code said to lead to the Secret of Onomichi.
Kiryu then had Date put Yuta under arrest to keep him in check as he returned to Onomichi to inform the Hirose-gumi of their boss' manipulation of Yuta and Haruto. The Hirose-gumi initially refused to believe Kiryu, causing a fight between Nagumo and Kiryu, but the Hirose-gumi soon rallied to his side as the Yomei Alliance arrived and demanded to know where their boss was. Kiryu and his friends fought off the Yomei men before deciding to find the Secret of Onomichi, and, deciphering the code, they decided to match the characters and phrases to lines from Onomichi's poetry stones, leading them to the sailor Yamano Dodai's tomb in the cemetery. There, they discovered the plans for a battleship which was supposedly at an old Iwami shipyard, and the group took Ino's boat to the shipyard to uncover the truth.
Kiryu and his friends proceeded to fight their way through Yomei henchmen disguised as dock workers and ultimately reach the dock, where Hirose ambushed them and threw a knife into Tagashira's leg. Kiryu defeated Hirose before the elderly assassin could harm him as well, and, as Nagumo and Matsunaga arrived, Tagashira pulled a lever that caused the massive Yamato Mark II - the "Secret of Onomichi" - to emerge from an underwater drydock. Heizo Iwami arrived shortly after, revealing that the ship was the most classified military asset in Japan, and that it was the only physical evidence of his collusion with the political boss Daidoji. He then ordered Hirose to kill his own men to continue his lifelong quest of covering up the Secret of Onomichi, but Hirose relented when Nagumo covered Kiryu, causing Heizo Iwami to shoot Hirose and leave. Hirose died in the arms of Nagumo and Matsunaga after revealing that he had killed their fathers back in the 1970s to conceal that same secret.
The emergence of the Yamato Mark II in the harbor produced a media spectacle, and Iwami Shipbuilding denied any knowledge of the ship's origins. A dying Daidoji, concerned about the influence of his faction after his death, decided to abandon Heizo Iwami in favor of his son, who had Captain Koshimizu execute Heizo Iwami at his office and pass off his death as a suicide. With Tsuneo planning to take control of the Yomei, he and Sugai of the Tojo initiated a manhunt for Kiryu, the main threat to their plot. Someya warned Kiryu of Sugai's plans, as he did not believe Sugai and Tsuneo worthy of murdering Kiryu, whom he intended to challenge only after seizing power from Sugai. Kiryu and the Hirose Family headed to Tokyo to confront Sugai at the Millennium Tower. Before the confrontation, Kiryu brought Haruto to meet his mother at the police hospital, and Haruka awoke upon feeling her child's hand. Kiryu entrusted their care to Date, and, before embarking on what could be a suicide mission, Kiryu wrote a will addressing Daigo Dojima and asking him not to go to war with the Yomei in the event of his death.
Unbeknownst to Kiryu and his friends, Iwami had Koshimizu kidnap Kiyomi Kasahara to force Someya to fight Kiryu to the death. After shooting down two attack helicopters and taking down dozens of Sugai-gumi henchmen, Kiryu was confronted by Someya and forced to battle him in a live-streamed fight watched by Sugai, Iwami, and Koshimizu from Hiroshima. When Kiryu won, Iwami offered to spare Kiyomi if Kiryu would kill his rival. When Kiryu relented, Someya committed seppuku, only for Iwami to still order Kiyomi's death. Koshimizu then shut off the camera as he shot at Kiyomi, causing Kiryu and Nagumo to believe that she had died.
Back at New Serena, Kiryu and his friends decided to split up until things were safer, nearly accepting defeat. However, Nagumo persuaded Kiryu that they could still stop Tsuneo, as he, Sugai, and Koshimizu were to attend Heizo Iwami's funeral back in Hiroshima. The two men returned to Onomichi, where they crashed the funeral and fought their way through several bodyguards. Just before then, however, the Yomei had bribed the detective Jiro Honjo's superior to report that Date was keeping Haruka and Haruto under false imprisonment, leading to Honjo taking two Yomei men disguised as police to arrest Date. The two men then murdered Honjo, shot and wounded Date, and kidnapped the two Sawamuras, whom they brought back to Onomichi in time for the funeral. Kiryu found them held at gunpoint, and Kiryu was forced to endure a severe beating by a pipe-wielding Sugai as Iwami tortured Nagumo. Iwami threatened to kill the hostages if the two men failed to get up, but the Hirose Family arrived in time to rescue Haruka and her child, and Kiryu proceeded to take down Iwami in a fight. Iwami then ordered Sugai to shoot Haruka and Haruto, causing him to shoot Nagumo when he shielded them. Kiryu knocked Iwami unconscious before running to prevent Yuta and his family from being shot, absorbing Sugai's bullets. With only one bullet left, Sugai realized he was defeated and shot himself. Kiryu passed out in Haruka's arms, causing her to mourn his supposed death.
Unbeknownst to his friends and family, Kiryu recovered in a hospital, where he was visited by Daidoji's successor and guarded by Date. Kiryu persuaded the new faction boss to release Daigo, Majima, and Saejima from prison in exchange for helping him fake his death so that he would not be able to reveal the Daidoji Faction's connection to the "Secret of Onomichi." The boss reluctantly agreed, and Kiryu, while saddened at Date's realization that Kiryu could never see Haruka or Haruto again, had the new boss write him a death certificate so that he could become anonymous. Not long after, on Daigo's release from prison, Daigo read Kiryu's will and decided against leading his clan to war against the Yomei, whose leadership was taken over by Koshimizu after Tsuneo Iwami's arrest. Kiyomi Kasahara, whom Koshimizu had spared out of regret for being Tsuneo's lapdog, was reunited with her and Someya's daughter, whom she raised with Nagumo's help. With Daigo once more at the help of the Tojo, peace was soon restored.
Aftermath[]
The Yomei Alliance was devastated by its civil war, which left several of its leaders dead or in prison, and which cost the clan its support from Daidoji. However, it would be the Tojo Clan that was fatally wounded, as, within a few months, Tokyo governor Ryo Aoki cracked down on the clan with his Kabukicho 3K Plan, which nearly dismantled the organization. This enabled the Omi Alliance to conquer much of Tokyo, establishing the Tokyo Omi Alliance as its regional branch. However, Daigo, Masaru Watase, and Masumi Arakawa's plotting ultimately resulted in the joint dissolution of both the Tojo and Omi in 2019, while Masataka Ebina of Bleach Japan failed to procure the Yomei's dissolution in 2023.