
Joji Kazama (1949-) was a Japanese-American policeman and intelligence officer who served as an Officer in the Foreign Affairs Division of the National Police Agency (NPA) of Japan and as a Central Intelligence Agency agent. The brother of yakuza boss Shintaro Kazama, he played a central role in a 2007-2009 plot to lure out and destroy the rogue "Black Monday" faction within the CIA by attracting them to a military base expansion project on Okinawa. With the help of Kazuma Kiryu, Kazama was able to both destroy Black Monday and deal with their chief backer, the yakuza boss Yoshitaka Mine.
Biography[]
Joji Kazama was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1949, the younger brother of Shintaro Kazama. He and his brother were very close, but his brother's decision to pursue a life of crime as a yakuza vastly differed from Joji's own career track, as Joji became an elite policeman with the National Police Agency's Foreign Affairs Division. In 1979, the NPA discovered Joji's familial ties to a yakuza boss, and, as Japan's then-conservative attitude towards employing family members of yakuza negatively affected Joji's career prospects, Joji decided to emigrate to the United States, where the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited him into their East Asia Division. Kazama became known as a determined, result-oriented man who was not averse to killing, and he was steadfastly loyal to the CIA, comparing the CIA to his "Chairman" (in yakuza terms).
In 2007, Kazama was assigned to destroy the "Black Monday" arms trafficking organization, a rogue faction within the CIA which took its name from the 1987 stock market crash it was believed to have created in order to make a profit. The CIA and the Japanese Defense Minister Ryuzo Tamiya concocted a plan to authorize the expansion of the American military base on Okinawa to include an experimental weapons development facility, which they were sure would attract Black Monday to Japan, where they could be destroyed. However, Tamiya's rival minister Yoshinobu Suzuki had the Diet combine the military base expansion bill with his bill to create a new resort on Okinawa, increasing the amount of land required to enact the project. This forced Tamiya and the CIA's hand, and Tamiya's initial attempt to persuade the yakuza boss Shigeru Nakahara and his tenant Kazuma Kiryu to sell their land for the project was unsuccessful. In 2008, the CIA switched its tactics, attempting to persuade the Tojo-kai to use persuasion or force to acquire the land in question. Kiryu and Nakahara fought off the Tamashiro-gumi's attempt to force Nakahara to hand over the deed, postponing the land acquisition for another year.
In 2009, Kazama and his partner Andre Richardson (secretly the leader of Black Monday) were forced to personally fly to Okinawa to obtain the deed to the land. Richardson shot Nakahara when he refused to hand it over, and Kazama took the deed and flew out to Tokyo with Richardson, confronting Tojo Chairman Daigo Dojima at the Tojo HQ. There, they attempted to persuade Dojima to hand over Nakahara's land, but, when Dojima refused, Richardson shot him and critically wounded him, removing another obstacle to the land acquisition.
However, Kazama sought to protect Daigo's mentor and his brother Shintaro's adoptive son Kazuma Kiryu, whom he and Tamiya viewed as an ally in the fight against the yakuza who partnered with Suzuki. Kazama shot Lau Ka Long to rescue Kiryu and Rikiya Shimabukuro from the Snake Flower Triad, before disappearing. Kiryu learned of Joji's relation to Shintaro from Minister Tamiya, who met with him at the Diet Building to enlist his help. At the same time, Kazama was assigned to kill Tamiya's former secretary Shoyo Toma after Toma betrayed Tamiya to work for Suzuki, taking with him the knowledge of the ulterior motives behind the military base expansion bill. Tamiya asked Kiryu to save his former employee, whom he did not believe was deserving of death, and Kiryu and Kazama met again at a strip club on Okinawa, where Kiryu thwarted Tamiya's attempt to gun Toma down. Kazama said that he could not go against orders from his superiors, just as Kiryu couldn't go against his chairman, but Kiryu was able to change Kazama's mind after fighting him off in a long fistfight. Kazama proceeded to tell Kiryu about the CIA's role in the base expansion bill and enlisted his help with taking down Yoshitaka Mine, Black Monday's main yakuza ally, who had flown back to Tokyo, likely to meet with Black Monday. Kazama flew Kiryu to Tokyo on his CIA jet, and he managed to secure the CIA's cooperation with Kiryu's initiative, although he was unable to reach one CIA team and warned Kiryu that he might have to come up against them. Kazama made preparations to arrest Richardson as Kiryu fought his way past Mine's Hakuho-kai guards at the Touto University Hospital, where Mine was hold the unconscious Daigo hostage. Ultimately, Mine was made to feel regret for his betrayal of Daigo and sacrificed his life to throw himself and Richardson from the hospital's roof; Kazama arrived in a helicopter moments later, too late to arrest Richardson, but after Daigo shot the other Black Monday leaders dead.