Tsukasa Sagawa (2024)

Tsukasa Sagawa (1937-January 1989) was a Japanese yakuza crime boss who served as patriarch of the Omi Alliance's Sagawa-gumi subsidiary during the 1980s. He played a major role in the "Empty Lot dispute" of 1988, during which he conspired with Futoshi Shimano of the Tojo-kai's Shimano-gumi to obtain the Empty Lot for the Omi Alliance, and served as the handler for Shimano's former associate Goro Majima, whom Sagawa used to run the Cabaret Grand and attempt to murder Makoto Makimura as a precondition for his reinstatement into the Shimano-gumi. However, when Shimano decided to betray the Omi Alliance to save his life after Masaru Sera of the Nikkyo Consortium discovered Shimano's treachery, the plot fell through, and Sagawa was executed by three Omi Alliance hitmen for failing to obtain a foothold in Tokyo for the Omi.

Biography[]

Early life[]

Tsukasa Sagawa was born in Osaka, Japan in 1937. He grew up in a strict household; when he was ten, he took home an injured sparrow from the street, nursed it back to health, and named it Mametaro, only for his parents - who forbade him from keeping pets - to feed the sparrow to the family's cat in front of a horrified Sagawa. This left Sagawa with a desire to impose his will on others, and he murdered his parents' cat in revenge; he later became a yakuza affiliated with the powerful Omi Alliance.

Overseeing Majima[]

By the 1980s, he had become a retainer to the Omi Alliance's fifth chairman and was made patriarch of his own family, the Sagawa-gumi. In 1986, he was given responsibility for the expelled Tojo-kai member Goro Majima by his oath brother Futoshi Shimano, and he promised to reintroduce Majima to the Tojo-kai if Majima could make ¥100 million for the Omi Alliance by managing the Cabaret Grand in Dotonbori for Sagawa, its owner. Majima made ¥100 million in a year, so, on 12 December 1988, Sagawa raised the requirements to ¥500 million or another job - a hit - from him. Majima was sent to assassinate Makoto Makimura, whom he was told was an evil man exploiting young women, but he reneged on the contract when he discovered that Makoto was a blind girl. Sagawa saw through Majima's lie when Majima claimed that he was still working on the hit when he visited Majima, pretending to go along with the lie. Homare Nish*tani executed a lookalike of Makoto and dumped her in the river in an attempt to goad Majima into admitting his guilt; meanwhile, Wen Hai Lee's former ally, a Chinese doctor, told Sagawa where the real Makoto was being held. Sagawa captured Majima and Makoto after killing Lee with a car bomb, but he was shot in the back and hand by Nikkyo Consortium president Masaru Sera, who took Makoto for himself and the Tojo-kai. Shortly after, Sagawa tortured Majima for his betrayal before releasing him and warning him against crossing him a second time.

Empty Lot dispute[]

Sagawa and Majima then worked together in a bid to find Makoto, and they confronted Sera at Camellia Grove and found out that he had handed over Makoto to Kazuma Kiryu, causing Sagawa to shoot Sera in the back. The two men travelled to Kabukicho in search of Makoto, and they met with Shimano, who told them that he knew that Majima would not kill Makoto, and had planned for Majima to convince Makoto to hand over the empty lot to him, so that he could sell it to the Omi Alliance as part of his plan to betray the Tojo clan. The plot was foiled when Sera - who survived the gunshot - convinced Majima not to kill Dojima-gumi boss Sohei Dojima and to kill Shimano instead; Majima spared Shimano out of a desire to return to the Tojo clan, and Shimano murdered an Omi Alliance envoy to "prove" that he was not involved with the Omi Alliance.

Death[]

These events in Kabukicho had reverberations which were felt back in Osaka, as Majima later informed Sagawa that Makoto had sold the Empty Lot to the Nikkyo Consortium, leaving the Omi Alliance with no room to squeeze into Tokyo. He had a light-hearted farewell with Majima and invited him to visit him should he ever return to the Kansai region, but Majima told Sagawa that, if he never saw his face again, he would be good. Before Majima left, however, Majima thanked Sagawa for helping him to pursue a lifestyle of tenacity, giving Sagawa a bittersweet farewell. Seconds after Majima left, three Omi Alliance men (Kojiro Nagaoka, Joji Samejima, and Jotaro Hamamoto) arrived, and they proceeded to shoot Sagawa dead from behind as punishment for his failure to obtain the Empty Lot through Shimano. Before being shot, Sagawa quipped, "Well, time to go. Isn't it," and turned to face his killers.

Gallery[]