Kaoru Sayama (born 1981) was a Japanese police detective who served as Lead Detective of the Osaka Prefectural Police, Division Four (Organized Crime) during the 2000s.
Biography[]
Kaoru Sayama was born in Osaka, Japan in 1981, the daughter of the Japanese policeman Jiro Kawara and his Korean wife Suyeon Jung; she was the half-sister of Ryuji Goda on her mother's side, from her mother's previous marriage to slain Jingweon Mafia boss Sang Sang-Min. Her mother was murdered by Jingweon when Kaoru was just a year old, and while her father was on assignment in Hong Kong. To keep his infant daughter safe, Kawara reluctantly placed Sayama under the care of the snack bar matron Tamiyo Sayama. She attended tech college and passed her public service exam at the age of 20, and she went on to join the Osaka Prefectural Police's high tech crime unit under the Foreign Affairs Division as an engineer under state's recommendation. She was promoted to assistant inspector in just four years, breaking a record, and she was then transferred to the Fourth Division (organized crime) and promoted to lead detective, serving under Tsutomu Bessho. Sayama developed a hatred for yakuza and became known as the "Yakuza Huntress"; she was fearless, even when the mobster Utemaro Sakane attempted to resist arrest after she concluded that he was guilty of extortion.
In December 2006, upon hearing that Bessho had been tasked with taking the Tojo-kai yakuza Kazuma Kiryu under protective custody to prevent a war between the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance, Sayama volunteered for the task, as she privately sought to get closer to the Tojo Clan to learn more about its role in the Jingweon massacre, and how her late mother and missing father were involved. Bessho reluctantly allowed the over-zealous Sayama to take over the case, and she arrested Kiryu shortly after the brawl at the Omi Alliance headquarters during Ryuji Goda's coup on 17 December. She was wounded by a sniper after driving Kiryu back to Dotonbori, so Kiryu brought her to Sayama's snack bar to recover. When Sayama recovered, she resolved to tag along with Kiryu as he attempted to rescue the kidnapped Daigo Dojima from the Omi, and she and Kiryu traveled back and forth between Osaka and Tokyo many times. They discovered that the Jingweon massacre had been covered up by the officer presiding over the case, and that some Jingweon members may have survived. Over time, Kaoru's attitude towards Kiryu evolved from hatred and generalization to a strong love and affection. She fell out with Kiryu after discovering that Kiryu was the adoptive son of her birth father's killer Shintaro Kazama, and that a young Kiryu had been present at the scene of the massacre, albeit as a civilian. However, they reconciled after she learned that she was the daughter of the Jingweon boss' wife and Jiro Kawara (who died in her arms shortly after this revelation, as former Jingweon member-turned-policeman Wataru Kurahashi shot him dead) and was the half-sister of Ryuji Goda, and she decided to take it upon herself to bring down the Jingweon and arrest Ryuji.
She was thus present at the final showdown between Kiryu and Ryuji at Kabukicho Hills, and she tried to halt their fight; she was unsuccessful until both contenders collapsed from fatigue. The three of them initially expected to die together after discovering that the construction site had been rigged with bombs, but they discovered that Yukio Terada had disarmed the bombs before being killed; unfortunately, Ryuji was shot dead by Ryo Takashima, whom Ryuji was able to kill before he succumbed to his wounds in Sayama's arms.
Sayama and Kiryu were the only two survivors of the final standoff, and they would be in a relationship until 2007, when she left Japan to take part in a Metropolitan Police training program in the United States. She suggested that she and Kiryu should follow their own paths for the next few years, but she promised that she would return to Japan one day. She later fell in love with an American policeman, and she never saw Kiryu again.