The 2019 Yokohama gang war was a violent underworld conflict that occurred in the Isezakicho district of Yokohama, Japan in 2019. The Omi Alliance, the largest yakuza federation in the country, took advantage of a civil war within the Yokohama Liumang to invade Yokohama, crippling the Ijin Three's might and establishing itself in the city. Up to 30% of the Seiryu-kai defected to the Omi Alliance, the Geomijul's surveillance and counterfeiting operations were temporarily destroyed, and the Liumang was greatly weakened, resulting in the Chinese and Korean mafias merging. However, the Omi Alliance's move into Yokohama would prove short-lived, as the Great Dissolution ended the Omi Alliance as an institution, led to a civil war within the Tokyo Omi Alliance, and ultimately brought about the downfall of the Omi's top remaining leaders.
Background[]
The Ijin Three[]
In the years following World War II, the Seiryu-kai was one of many Japanese yakuza organizations to take form and exploit the country's social and economic chaos. The clan controlled most of the black markets in the Allied-occupied city and protected local businesses from looters in exchange for protection payments. During the 1950s, the Chinese Yokohama Liumang gang formed and became rivals with the Seiryu-kai. City councillor Yutaka Ogikubo stepped in to prevent bloodshed, instead mollifying them with the opportunity to jointly participate in a yen counterfeiting operation. Ogikubo acquired stolen plates from the Japanese treasury so that the gangs could print 10,000 yen bills; the Liumang imported specialized paper from China so that the Seiryu could produce the bills and Ogikubo would use his connections with the local government and police to keep everything covered up. The gangs benefited from the enterprise's large profits, Ogikubo's newfound wealth helped him rise in the ranks of the ruling LDP and become party chair, and the police never had to contend with gang warfare. Eventually, the Korean Geomijul moved into Yokohama and was brought into the counterfeiting scheme by Ogikubo; they were given the task of producing the counterfeit yen while the Seiryu Clan's responsibilities shifted to handling the bribery of key pubic officials. This trio of crime syndicates, the "Ijin Three," outwardly portrayed themselves as rivals, while their leaders were the only ones among them to know of their secret arrangement. The Ijin Three formed a "Great Wall of Muscle" to keep both the Kansai-based Omi Alliance and the Kanto-based Tojo-kai from moving into Yokohama, sparing the region from their frequent turf wars.
Internal and external threats[]
During the 2010s, the fragile peace in Yokohama was threatened by ambitious actors within the city and beyond.
Masato Arakawa, the handicapped son of lowly Tojo-kai officer Masumi Arakawa, faked his death in 2004 and reinvented himself as "Ryo Aoki" while attending Harvard University. With the help of American healthcare, he was able to regain the ability to walk, and he utilized his education and his acquaintance with Harvard classmate Hajime Ogasawara to form Bleach Japan as a grassroots anti-corruption movement. This non-profit organization soought to "bleach white" the "gray zones" across Japan where illegal behavior was tolerated by the police, especially prostitution, undocumented immigration, and homelessness. Supported by his father, boss of the Arakawa-gumi, Aoki bolstered his group's ranks in Tokyo and attracted idealistic and trend-chasing youths while hiring women to join the group and achieve gender equality. Bleach Japan was soon able to expand nationwide, and, in 2010, Aoki narrowly won election to the House of Councillors as an LDP candidate. Resentful of his previous dependence on others, and hateful of the vulnerable and marginalized despite having previously been one, he set his sights on the chairmanship of the Liberal Democratic Party, in which capacity he would serve as the power behind the throne of the prime minister and Japanese politics as a whole. He bribed policeman Juro Horinouchi and several other senior TMPD officers into assisting his rise to power in Tokyo politics, ultimately becoming Governor of Tokyo in 2017 with the help of Bleach Japan and the Arakawa-gumi. As Governor, he enacted the Kabukicho 3K Plan ("Keep them poor, keep them hungry, keep them out") against the Tojo-kai yakuza, threatening his father into leaking intelligence that allowed the plan to succeed. Tojo chairman Daigo Dojima, who tired of the Tojo-Omi wars, privately consented to Arakawa's supposed betrayal, hoping for both the Tojo and Omi to dissolve. Masumi Arakawa and his family formally defected to the Omi Alliance as it moved into the capital and drove the Tojo out of their Kabukicho heartland. By 2019, Aoki planned to utilize his 80% approval rating as Governor of Tokyo to oust LDP chair Ogikubo, hold a snap election, and achieve even greater power and influence for himself and his party.
Meanwhile, in Yokohama, the ambitious Chinese gangster Akira Mabuchi, founder of the Yokohama Trading Company, discovered the importation of specialized Chinese paper (unbeknownst to him, for the Geomijul counterfeiting operation) and utilized it to counterfeit Chinese yuan, which would be sold at moneychanging houses. The increasingly rich Mabuchi, who held economic sway over Yokohama Chinatown, harbored ambitions of taking over Yokohama for himself. When, in 2019, Aoki sent Ogasawara to Yokohama's Isezakicho neighborhood to search for weaknesses in Ogikubo's political rule over the district, he came into contact with Mabuchi. Mabuchi proposed that he start a gang war with the Seiryu Clan through murdering soapland owner Isao Nonomiya on their turf and goading the Seiryu Clan to retaliate; while Ogasawara was hesitant to support bloodshed, Aoki gave his full support to the plan.
At the same time, the Seiryu Clan experienced its own form of dissent as Yamato Totsuka, patriarch of the clan's Ryūto Mutsumi-kai subsidiary, utilized his Sunlight Castle retirement community for pension fraud. He had family members pay top-dollar for their elderly relatives to be moved to the "Excellent Area," where they supposedly received top-tier medical care, but where they were secretly murdered and their pension funds rerouted to the care center and Totsuka rather than to the dead patient. Totsuka operated this business without the knowledge of his boss Ryuhei Hoshino, who instead believed it to be a simple scam not involving murder.
Slide to war[]
Just as Mabuchi and Ogasawara began to concoct their conspiracy to take over Yokohama, former Arakawa-gumi yakuza Ichiban Kasuga was released from prison after taking the blame for a murder carried out by family captain Jo Sawashiro. Kasuga immediately set out to find his former boss Arakawa and rejoin the family, a right that had been promised to him by Arakawa, and he met former policeman Koichi Adachi along the way. Adachi sought Kasuga's help with uncovering Horinouchi's organized crime connections, a journey that would take them to Isezakicho, Yokohama. Kasuga learned from Adachi and former associates that the Arakawa-gumi had gone over to the Omi Alliance and that Kabukicho was not the same place he had left behind on 1 January 2001, but, after spotting Arakawa paying his respects to the late Omi chairman at a Tokyo cemetery, Kasuga - with the help of Adachi - attempted to break into an Omi officers' meeting to confront Arakawa.
Unbeknownst to all but Daigo Dojima, Masumi Arakawa was conceiving a plot of his own. Aware that his son was planning to take over Yokohama, Arakawa planned to force Kasuga to go to Yokohama, join forces with the Ijin Three, and thwart Aoki's efforts. To this end, Arakawa shot Kasuga when the latter reunited with him at the Omi officers' meeting. He stuffed a counterfeit bill gifted to him by Hoshino years earlier into Kasuga's jacket and had him dumped at a homeless camp in Isezakicho where yakuza bodies were disposed of and living yakuza were able to fake their deaths. Kasuga, thinking that Arakawa had betrayed him, was aimless until he met Yu Nanba, a homeless man who took an interest in the counterfeit bill Kasuga carried. After noticing the bill, and after Kasuga fought off Liumang lieutenant Zheng Tei's attempt to extort the homeless camp, Nanba explained the concept of the Ijin Three and the "Great Wall of Muscle" to Kasuga. The two of them, intent on leaving homelessness behind, got jobs at the Shichifuku brothel through Hello Work and were soon joined by Adachi, fired from the police after helping Kasuga storm the Omi meeting. The trio were then employed at Nonomiya's Otohime Land soapland shortly after, unaware that Mabuchi was planning to use the soapland to trigger a war.
War[]
Death of Isao Nonomiya[]
The fight at the Yokohama Trading Company warehouse
As a favor to Nonomiya, whose top prostitute Nanoha Mukoda was repeatedly calling in sick to make money from her own clients, Kasuga, Adachi, and Nanba investigated her absence and traced it to her father's stay at Sunlight Castle, which was scamming her. On discovering the "Excellent Area" and Director Totsuka's crimes, they fought their way into the Seiryu-kai headquarters until they met Chairman Hoshino, whom they revealed the castle's murderous deeds to. Hoshino expelled Totsuka from the Seiryu-kai and had the castle shuttered as a result.
The explosion of the Yokohama Trading Company warehouse
As the Seiryu-kai experienced a split, Mabuchi made his move. As Nonomiya was on a phone call with Nanoha's sister Saeko Mukoda, Mabuchi and his triads entered Otohime Land and murdered Nonomiya, whom they hanged to make it appear as though he had killed himself. Unbeknownst to them, Mukoda attended Nonomiya's funeral and told Kasuga and his friends that, over the phone, she had heard the murderers repeat the name "Lao Ma," which Adachi recognized as the Chinese name of Mabuchi. Thus, the anticipated response to Nonomiya's death came from this group of friends rather than from the Seiryu-kai, to whom Nonomiya had paid protection. The friend group investigated Mabuchi through interrogating Zhang Tei and infiltrating the Yokohama Trading Company, where they discovered Mabuchi's counterfeiting operation. They were later discovered attempting to steal a counterfeit yuan from the company, resulting in a fight and the destruction of the warehouse by an oil truck crashed into a wall by one of the Liumang guards in an attempt to kill Kasuga. The explosion of the warehouse gave Mabuchi the casus belli for war with the Seiryu-kai, and Mabuchi took Kasuga and his friends captive in the underground dungeons of Kabukicho. Unbeknownst to Mabuchi, Geomijul second-in-command Yeonsu Kim witnessed the explosion from a nearby bench.
Mabuchi preparing to shoot the two yakuza
Mabuchi interrogated Kasuga and his friends, filming their responses to his questions and doctoring the footage to make it appear as if Kasuga had confessed his allegiance to the Seiryu Clan. While Kim rescued Kasuga and company from the triads, Mabuchi was one step ahead of them, publicly gunning down two young Seiryu-kai yakuza who had been close to clan captain Mamoru Takabe. Takabe decided to retaliate against the Liumang with a decapitation strike aimed at their leader Tianyou Zhao.
Averting a war[]
Kasuga overlooking a defeated Takabe
Zhao was persuaded of the Seiryu Clan's determination for war by Mabuchi's video, and he made preparations to defend Restaurant Row from the yakuza attack. Meanwhile, Takabe and three truckloads of yakuza cruised into Restaurant Row in preparation for a bloodbath. Kasuga and his friends rushed to Restaurant Row to prevent violence from breaking out, and they arrived just as Takabe prepared to enter the Qing Jin restaurant, Zhao's base; by then, several triads had already been shot dead in the street. Kasuga pled with Takabe not to play into Mabuchi's hands, but Takabe remained insistent on avenging his dead friends. Kasuga was forced to beat down Takabe and his fellow yakuza, and Zhao emerged from the restaurant to take Takabe hostage. Kasuga then attempted to persuade Zhao of Mabuchi's treason, but Mabuchi threatened to execute Takabe unless Kasuga could provide him with solid proof that Mabuchi intended to betray him.
Kasuga and friends fighting the Geomijul
Kasuga and his friends looked to the Geomijul for help, and they promptly visited Koreatown to seek out the gang's leader. Seonhee, the group's leader, greeted them and took them into the Geomijul's dilapidated hideout, offering her help with preventing a war. However, she disappeared and forced them to fight off several Geomijul ambushes before they ran into her and Yeonsu Kim in the headquarters itself; there, they approved of Kasuga's passing of their trial. Kim then introduced Kasuga and his friends to the gang's intelligence-gathering operation and showed them surveillance footage proving that Mabuchi had murdered Nonomiya. Having learned about Kasuga's own counterfeit bill, Seonhee showed Kasuga the gang's counterfeiting operation before demanding to know where he received the bill. While she believed Kasuga's explanation that a stranger must have placed it in his pocket, she angrily turned to Nanba, aware that he had arrived in Isezakicho six months earlier and posed as a homeless man in a bid to locate his brother Shoichi Akiba, an investigative journalist kidnapped by the Geomijul for investigating their counterfeiting operation. While Seonhee ordered Kim to take Nanba away, Kasuga chose to defend his friend rather than work with his potential allies, fighting off the Geomijul as Nanba fled.
The Omi invasion[]
Kasuga arriving at the Ijin Three meeting
As predicted by Seonhee, Nanba's escape would usher in the downfall of the Ijin Three. As Seonhee sent the Geomijul to assassinate Nanba before he could help the Ijin Three's rivals publicize the counterfeiting operation and destroy the Geomijul, Kasuga and his friends were told to meet the Ijin Three at the Heian Tower at 2 AM the next morning. Along the way, Kasuga and his friends gathered Nanba's belongings from the homeless camp and discovered articles on his computer tying the counterfeiting operation to Ogikubo, the local congressman and the power behind the throne of Japanese politics. At the Heian Tower, the Ijin Three swapped their intelligence, causing Zhao to realize that Mabuchi was treacherous after all. When Kasuga arrived, the Ijin Three's leaders reiterated the need for Nanba to die, as he posed a threat to their secret operation. Zhao also warned Kasuga that Liumang assassins were after Nanba, and they could not be called off. Hoshino offered to explain the significance of Kasuga's misprinted bill if he would bring Nanba back. Encouraged by the crime bosses to look for Nanba at the Bleach Japan offices in Yokohama, Kasuga and his party traveled to the Hakuryo Building.
The confrontation at the Hakuryo Building
Kasuga and his friends arrived at the Hakuryo Building not long after, finding Nanba meeting with Bleach Japan chapter leader Sota Kume and director Ogasawara. By then, Nanba had already informed Bleach Japan of the counterfeiting operation, hoping that Bleach Japan could, in turn, rescue his brother from the Geomijul. Ogasawara then called on Mabuchi and his assassins, who were waiting in the other room, to deal with Kasuga. Kasuga defeated him as the Bleach Japan members fled, and Mabuchi was forced to reveal that the Omi Alliance would invade the next day, and that Ogasawara had ordered him to murder Nonomiya to facilitate the invasion; Mabuchi would sell Isezakicho to the Omi the same way as Arakawa had betrayed Kabukicho to the alliance.
The Omi protesters in Koreatown
Ogasawara, now in a safe position, called Aoki, revealed the Geomijul's counterfeiting operation, and asked for Omi reinforcements. The Omi promptly sent in Reiji Ishioda, Yosuke Tendo, and their Omi subsidiaries to pose as Bleach Japan members and besiege the vulnerable Geomijul. Kasuga and his allies came up against Totsuka and his small faction of former Seiryu Clan henchmen as they harassed the owner of the Shichifuku brothel, defeating them and forcing Totsuka to stay far from the bar district. By then, Totsuka was not the only Seiryu Clan member to have left the organization; between 20% and 30% of the Seiryu-kai's membership defected to the Omi after learning that Hoshino was friendly with Zhao in spite of Mabuchi's murder of two of their fellow yakuza.
The wrecking ball being deployed against the Geomijul wall
At the same time, around 1,000 "Bleach Japan protesters" (most of them Omi yakuza from Kansai) marched on the Geomijul headquarters. Zhao, desperate to fight off an all-out coup by Mabuchi, offered to forget about Nanba if Kasuga could rescue the Geomijul. Kasuga and his party attempted to infiltrate the Bleach Japan crowd as it attacked the Geomijul headquarters' wall with a wrecking ball, but they were discovered by their old rival Kume, resulting in a fight with the local Bleach Japan leader. Kasuga was also forced to battle Ishioda, who used the wrecking ball in combat, and he was able to fight off the machine before he and the rest of his party fled, disguised as protesters.
The burning of the Geomijul base
Yeonsu Kim helped Kasuga and his friends access the Geomijul hideout through a top-secret tunnel beneath the Eomeoni's Vow restaurant, and he and Seonhee asked them to stall the Omi as they torched their underground counterfeiting and surveillance systems under orders from Ogikubo. After the Omi battered down the Geomijul wall, Bleach Japan intruders arrived, led by Ishioda, Ogasawara, and Nanba. Kasuga and his friends battled Ishioda, Nanba, and the Omi thugs, beating them all down as the Geomijul's "spider web" was destroyed. Though devastated by the ultimate failure of his brother's investigation into the Geomijul, Nanba was reassured by the Geomijul that his brother was alive and well in their custody; he even married his Geomijul chaperone. Meanwhile, Kim captured a fleeing Ogasawara, who, under threat of torture, revealed Bleach Japan, Aoki, and the Omi's plans to Kasuga and his friends while in captivity at the homeless camp.
The Liumang coup[]
Kasuga defeating Zheng
The Omi Alliance was ultimately able to track down Ogasawara, beating up the chief of the homeless encampment and enabling Ogasawara to escape. Shortly after, Aoki confronted Ogasawara and, on learning that he had given up vital information to his interrogators, murdered him and portrayed his death as being a consequence of the burning of the Geomijul headquarters, making him a martyr for the cause of Bleach Japan. Meanwhile, Takabe quelled the rebellion within the Seiryu-kai, but he warned Seonhee that Zhao was out of reach. Kasuga persuaded Seonhee to loan him Kim as he and his party headed to Restaurant Row to rescue Zhao, whom they believed to be facing an all-out coup from Mabuchi. Nanba rejoined the party, ashamed of having joined forces with Nonomiya's killers. The team fought their way past Zheng Tei and a group of henchmen as they entered Restaurant Row, and they became aware that Mabuchi had placed a ¥100 million bounty on each of their heads.
Kasuga confronting Mabuchi and the Omi
Kasuga led his party in an assault on Qing Jin, defeating several Liumang thugs, the restaurant's manager, and even a tiger sent after them by the manager. On the top floor, they confronted Mabuchi, Ishioda, and Tendo, and Mabuchi told the Omi officers to stand back and watch as he proved himself to them by dispatching Kasuga. After a hard fight, Kasuga was able to defeat Mabuchi, and Tendo, believing Kasuga not yet ready to fight him and seeing it as a dishonor for the Omi to murder a weaker man, decided to leave Qing Jin. Ishioda saw opportunity in killing Kasuga where Tendo did not, but Kasuga bested him as well. With Mabuchi's coup defeated and the Omi forced to retreat, a tortured and weakened Zhao reintroduced Kasuga to his old yakuza friend Mitsuo Yasumura, who told Kasuga that Arakawa was about to make a big play and would need allies soon. Zhao then told Kasuga that he intended to step down as Liumang leader and leave the organization in Seonhee's hands, as the Geomijul needed a new home.
Aftermath[]
Although Mabuchi had failed to seize control of Yokohama and the Omi invasion was repelled, Hoshino predicted that the Seiryu-kai would succumb to the Omi in due time due to a third of their number having already defected. At the same time, Aoki utilized his knowledge of the Geomijul counterfeiting system to force the Prime Minister to call a snap election and replace Ogikubo as party chair and appoint Aoki. In return, Aoki promised to secure a two-thirds majority for the LDP by sending Bleach Japan activists to districts where the LDP was weakest. Ogasawara's perceived martyrdom, as well as the media's crediting of Bleach Japan for the downfall of the Geomijul, bolstered Bleach Japan's popularity and Aoki's personal popularity, enabling him to take the controversial step of serving both as LDP party chair and as Governor of Tokyo.
Through both Hoshino and the homeless chief, Kasuga learned that he had ended up in Isezakicho by Arakawa's design, renewing his faith in his former boss. As the snap election neared, Bleach Japan opened centers for prostitutes to receive free housing as part of a publicity stunt, while they secretly deported undocumented immigrants like all of Shichifuku's employees. Meanwhile, the Seiryu-kai planned to prevent Aoki from electing Sota Kume as Kanagawa's new representative, choosing to invest ¥3 million in establishing Kasuga as an opposition candidate. The looming Great Dissolution interrupted the election campaign, drawing Kasuga and his friends to Osaka to help the Tojo and Omi leaders Daigo Dojima and Masaru Watase jointly dissolve their alliances. This process would result in Arakawa's murder by the ambitious Tendo, who coveted his position as acting Captain of the Omi Alliance. Jo Sawashiro would found the Tokyo Omi Alliance as a continuation of the original alliance, and he vowed to avenge Arakawa, leading to war with the murder suspect Ishioda. Sawashiro would murder Hoshino on Aoki's orders to prove his claim as chairman of the Tokyo Omi Alliance, only for a regretful Sawashiro to allow for himself to be arested by the police. While Ishioda was poised to take over the Tokyo Omi Alliance, he was killed in a bombing masterminded by his rival Tendo. Though Kasuga would lose the Kanagawa election to Kume, he was able to track Tendo down to the Millennium Tower and defeat him before retrieving a recording that would incriminate Aoki in organizing several murders. As the Prime Minister of Japan gave a victory speech for the election, a breaking news report revealed an arrest warrant for Aoki, and Aoki was murdered by a disillusioned Kume at the Kabukicho coin lockers as he confronted a victorious Kasuga. Not long after, a USB flash drive obtained by Adachi revealed a list of figures on the Arakawa-gumi payroll, including Horinouchi, resulting in a series of high-profile arrests. Sawashiro was sentenced to life in prison, while Aoki and his father received a joint funeral. Kasuga ultimately opted to return to his home in Yokohama rather than join Watase and Dojima's new Osaka-based security company.