Bleach Japan (ブリーチジャパン, Burīchi Japan) is an organization created by Tokyo Governor Ryo Aoki and Hajime Ogasawara. The organization serves as the main antagonistic force in Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
Overview[]
Bleach Japan is a non-profit organization (NPO), founded by Ryo Aoki and Hajime Ogasawara. Their main goal is get rid of "gray zones" across Japan, in which illegal behavior is tolerated and to "bleach them white", hence the name. In practice, Bleach Japan is a right-wing puritanical, xenophobic organization, mostly targeting prostitutes, foreigners, and the homeless. Meanwhile, criminal activities from the Omi Alliance were virtually ignored as TMPD's Superintendent General Juro Horinouchi needed an organization to fill the vacuum and Aoki ordered Omi Alliance members join the group as both muscle and to intimidate anyone within who would question their behavior.
In 2023, Bleach Japan is reformed under the leadership of Masataka Ebina, who announces its return after disbanding the Seiryu Clan. Comprising of former Seiryu Clan members, their goal is to seemingly help former yakuzas to slowly reintegrated into normal lives via the Yakuza Rehabilitation Program, which they would propose to the goverment seeking permission and approval. In actuality, the new Bleach Japan is a front for Ebina's actual plan for eradicating Yakuza and anyone considered undesirable.
History[]
Bleach Japan was founded in 2004 to help Aoki gain support from the people of Tokyo. He used the Arakawa Family to bolster the organization's ranks, then promoted their slogans of fairness and eradicating corruption. They were able to attract uneducated youths and trend-chasers, and women were paid to join to achieve gender equality and make the organization look more appealing, leading to their surge in popularity as the people they recruited would bring in more like them, such as Sota Kume. With their attacks against gray zones, Aoki and Ogasawara were able to discover which politicians were corrupt and control them. Eventually, Bleach Japan was able to expand nationwide.
In 2010, Aoki appointed Ogasawara as director in order to enter his political race.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon[]
As of 2019, Bleach Japan has 500 employees and over 100,000 people participating in demonstrations.
Bleach Japan is actively campaigning against Yokohama's nightlife establishments like brothels. The Yokohama chapter of Bleach Japan is headed by Kume who led several protests at Otohime Land. Eventually, they would learn about the counterfeiting operations by the Ijin Three as Ogasawara would lead the group to expose the operation beneath, they were ultimately unsuccessful in revealing the details of the operation. For the failure, Ogasawara was murdered on Aoki's orders as he personally leads an effort to successfully eradicate a majority of nightlife operations in Ijincho. Thanks to the collected efforts of both Daigo Dojima and Masaru Watase, with the aid of Aoki's father, Masumi Arakawa, by disbanding both the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance, they can no longer call upon their Omi allies and their ability to intimidate the gray zones were severely diminished.
The organization would face turmoil at the eve of Aoki's successful election campaign when the press reveals his past as a Yakuza member's son. Kume, in a fit of rage at the betrayal, murders Aoki and later arrested and sent to prison but Aoki was posthumously shouldered the blame by the public, making the future of Bleach Japan uncertain without any true successor. Despite their ambiguous situation however, the police who were not implicated in Aoki's corruption took advantage of the situation and installed a new gang called RK which would been run by former Nikkyo Consortium executive candidate members in a bid to control the criminal underworld of Yokohama.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth[]
At some point prior to 2023, Masataka Ebina, a former police officer and Bleach Japan sympathizer, and Eiji Mitamura, a former Bleach Japan member, plotted to prevent Japan's yakuza from being reintegrated into society. Mitamura (through the Tatara Channel) began to manufacture stories that framed former yakuza for continued criminal activity in order to ensure they wouldn't successfully transition into civilian life, while Ebina infiltrated the Seiryu Clan with the aim of taking it over in order to control yakuza activity.
By 2023, Ebina managed to become Captain of the Seiryu and, after he orchestrated the arrest of Chairman Mamoru Takabe, he became Acting Chairman. Now fully in control of the Clan, Ebina made a deal with Bryce Fairchild, Sage of the Hawaiian religious sect Palekana; a deal which Ebina aimed to use to condemn all former yakuza to death. Bryce ran a toxic and nuclear waste disposal site in his sect's private island but expanding it like he wanted would require deeply unsafe working conditions where the workforce would inevitably suffer radiation poisoning. Ebina offered to supply this workforce by tricking former yakuza by offering them legitimate work in the Seiryu's own legal waste management business, then sending them to Nele Island to work in Bryce's disposal site, where they would be kept prisoner by the sect's armed guards and forced to slave away in the disposal site until they died of radiation poisoning.
Ebina and Bryce began negotiations with the Japanese and American governments to ensure this plan could be enacted, promising both governments that it would allow them to offload their nuclear waste easily and thus facilitate the running of profitable nuclear energy plants. When the deal was approved, Ebina made a public broadcast through the Tatara Channel announcing it and also announcing that the Seiryu Clan would disband and reform as a continuation of Bleach Japan.
However, before their plan could come into fruition and the former yakuza could begin getting sent to Nele Island, Ichiban Kasuga and his friends sailed to Nele Island, fought their way into the dumping site, defeated Bryce in battle and Chitose Fujinomiya made use of the Tatara Channel to expose the true unsafe, environmentally hazardous nature of Bryce's supposedly clean disposal site. This, coupled with Ebina's subsequent defeat by Kazuma Kiryu and his party, put a stop to Bleach Japan's reformation. Bryce and Ebina would both be arrested and Mitamura turned himself over to the police after he was persuaded to do so by Kasuga.
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