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31_days2015-09-03 11:58 pm
issen4.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2015-09-03 11:58 pm
[3 Sept] [Viewfinder/Tokyo Crazy Paradise] [Off Trajectory 3/?]
Title: Off Trajectory 3/?
Day/Theme: 3 Sept/ All the sheep have followed the spoken word
Series: Viewfinder/Tokyo Crazy Paradise
Pairing: Asami Ryuichi/Takaba Akihito, Tsukasa/Ryuji
Notes/warnings: Timelines for both series have been viciously tweaked to create the scenario I have in mind.
Two hours later, Takaba was not much wiser. He had tried to get in touch with his contacts, but half of them were not answering their calls (or possibly, not answering his calls). Takaba would bet his newest lens that if they were keeping tabs on the yakuza world, news of the bomb explosion would have definitely grabbed everyone's attention. Initial investigations showed that it was a home-made bomb, and the police were hoping to trace its maker.
Takaba continued digging. According to his investigations, the bombed house was held under the name of a local trading firm, which was in turn held by another company, which was the subsidiary of yet another corporation. Takaba's experience told him that those layers of holdings were almost certainly shell companies to disguise the actual ownership of the house. It was one of the many strategies that Asami himself used, so that most people were in the dark about the extent of Asami's dabblings and influence in both legitimate and illegitimate businesses.
From the shell companies Takaba traced the connections as far as he could – companies registries and business news archives could be very informative if you knew what you were looking for – into an organisation that seemed to be involved in a variety of businesses: convenience stores, pachinko outlets, construction firms, a chain of onsen hotels, two private hospitals and even a company producing educational toys for children. There was even a couple of private hospitals in Osaka that had links to the same organisation. Most of the businesses were held by a number of proxies, but eventually Takaba noticed that a name cropped up with regularity.
Sandaime.
Strictly speaking, it was not a name at all. It was just a title that meant "Third generation head". Head of the organisation, Takaba speculated. But what organisation?
Takaba was about to give up when he found an old news archive of a now-defunct newsmagazine (it had been bought out by a bigger, more monied media company and then put to sleep, metamorphically speaking). There was the news of the destruction of New Heaven Tokio, which Takaba remembered hearing about when he was a child. He'd always had the impression that it was destroyed by an earthquake, such was the magnitude of the destruction, but it seemed from the extremely short report in the archive that the fact was that the destruction was from... terrorists?
Home-grown terrorists, whose alliances were never mentioned and whose intention were equally obscure. Takaba puzzled over that for a moment, and with a flash of insight, realised that the editor at the newsmagazine had been effectively muzzled from writing that the so-called terrorists were really yakuza and the destruction of the New Heaven Tokio was result of an intense yakuza war. It was news that had all been hidden from the rest of the world. Even now, Takaba knew how Asami pressured news editors to sanitise reports or to write in a way that suited his plans (really, the bastard had no respect for any sort of journalistic integrity). It was clearly not the newest trick in the book.
At the very end, the news report said that "Kuryugumi's Sandaime" helped in the rescue efforts. It was a benign and harmless mention, which was probably why it went undetected.
Finally, a connection that Takaba could make sense of!
More than thirty years ago, the Kuryugumi had been, arguably, the largest and the most powerful yakuza family in the Kanto region. Due to its sheer size, there were very few people at that time who did not at least know of it. It was rumoured that Kuryugumi comprised of at least nine smaller houses, and had tens of thousands of followers at its peak. The head of Kuryugumi was rumoured to be Shirogami Tatsuya, more often referred to as the Nidaime. Literally, second generation head: that was obvious enough. So Sandaime meant his successor.
That was all that Takaba could find. After the Nidaime died, he was succeeded by his son, known only as Sandaime, but there was no name attached anywhere. In fact, in the following years, there were hardly any reports - official or not - of the Kuryugami, and even less so of the Shirogami family. Takaba had a very strong suspicion that there had been other hands at work to suppress the information. What was even more surprising was that it appeared that the Kuryugumi had gone to ground about ten years after Sandaime took the helm. The Kuryugumi seemed to focus more and more on legitimate businesses, leaving their yakuza roots behind and even withdrawing from Tokyo entirely.
But what did that have to do with Asami? Takaba pushed his laptop to the side, frustrated, and rubbed his eyes. He had started out as a photographer and investigative reporter; this kind of in-depth research was something he had had to learn through the years, if only because it was a way to avoid any inadvertent crashing in on Asami's businesses. Damn the bastard, anyway. He glanced at the clock and judged that it would be at least a few more hours before any of his contacts got back to him (if they were going to), and flopped back into bed.
/TBC
Day/Theme: 3 Sept/ All the sheep have followed the spoken word
Series: Viewfinder/Tokyo Crazy Paradise
Pairing: Asami Ryuichi/Takaba Akihito, Tsukasa/Ryuji
Notes/warnings: Timelines for both series have been viciously tweaked to create the scenario I have in mind.
Two hours later, Takaba was not much wiser. He had tried to get in touch with his contacts, but half of them were not answering their calls (or possibly, not answering his calls). Takaba would bet his newest lens that if they were keeping tabs on the yakuza world, news of the bomb explosion would have definitely grabbed everyone's attention. Initial investigations showed that it was a home-made bomb, and the police were hoping to trace its maker.
Takaba continued digging. According to his investigations, the bombed house was held under the name of a local trading firm, which was in turn held by another company, which was the subsidiary of yet another corporation. Takaba's experience told him that those layers of holdings were almost certainly shell companies to disguise the actual ownership of the house. It was one of the many strategies that Asami himself used, so that most people were in the dark about the extent of Asami's dabblings and influence in both legitimate and illegitimate businesses.
From the shell companies Takaba traced the connections as far as he could – companies registries and business news archives could be very informative if you knew what you were looking for – into an organisation that seemed to be involved in a variety of businesses: convenience stores, pachinko outlets, construction firms, a chain of onsen hotels, two private hospitals and even a company producing educational toys for children. There was even a couple of private hospitals in Osaka that had links to the same organisation. Most of the businesses were held by a number of proxies, but eventually Takaba noticed that a name cropped up with regularity.
Sandaime.
Strictly speaking, it was not a name at all. It was just a title that meant "Third generation head". Head of the organisation, Takaba speculated. But what organisation?
Takaba was about to give up when he found an old news archive of a now-defunct newsmagazine (it had been bought out by a bigger, more monied media company and then put to sleep, metamorphically speaking). There was the news of the destruction of New Heaven Tokio, which Takaba remembered hearing about when he was a child. He'd always had the impression that it was destroyed by an earthquake, such was the magnitude of the destruction, but it seemed from the extremely short report in the archive that the fact was that the destruction was from... terrorists?
Home-grown terrorists, whose alliances were never mentioned and whose intention were equally obscure. Takaba puzzled over that for a moment, and with a flash of insight, realised that the editor at the newsmagazine had been effectively muzzled from writing that the so-called terrorists were really yakuza and the destruction of the New Heaven Tokio was result of an intense yakuza war. It was news that had all been hidden from the rest of the world. Even now, Takaba knew how Asami pressured news editors to sanitise reports or to write in a way that suited his plans (really, the bastard had no respect for any sort of journalistic integrity). It was clearly not the newest trick in the book.
At the very end, the news report said that "Kuryugumi's Sandaime" helped in the rescue efforts. It was a benign and harmless mention, which was probably why it went undetected.
Finally, a connection that Takaba could make sense of!
More than thirty years ago, the Kuryugumi had been, arguably, the largest and the most powerful yakuza family in the Kanto region. Due to its sheer size, there were very few people at that time who did not at least know of it. It was rumoured that Kuryugumi comprised of at least nine smaller houses, and had tens of thousands of followers at its peak. The head of Kuryugumi was rumoured to be Shirogami Tatsuya, more often referred to as the Nidaime. Literally, second generation head: that was obvious enough. So Sandaime meant his successor.
That was all that Takaba could find. After the Nidaime died, he was succeeded by his son, known only as Sandaime, but there was no name attached anywhere. In fact, in the following years, there were hardly any reports - official or not - of the Kuryugami, and even less so of the Shirogami family. Takaba had a very strong suspicion that there had been other hands at work to suppress the information. What was even more surprising was that it appeared that the Kuryugumi had gone to ground about ten years after Sandaime took the helm. The Kuryugumi seemed to focus more and more on legitimate businesses, leaving their yakuza roots behind and even withdrawing from Tokyo entirely.
But what did that have to do with Asami? Takaba pushed his laptop to the side, frustrated, and rubbed his eyes. He had started out as a photographer and investigative reporter; this kind of in-depth research was something he had had to learn through the years, if only because it was a way to avoid any inadvertent crashing in on Asami's businesses. Damn the bastard, anyway. He glanced at the clock and judged that it would be at least a few more hours before any of his contacts got back to him (if they were going to), and flopped back into bed.
/TBC