Saki (Yakuza 4)

Saki (咲) is a character featured in Yakuza 4.
== Background ==
During the 1980's, Saki used to be part of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, working as a junior detective under the division's star, Taigi Tanimura. She and Detective Tanimura were also good friends with Yusuke Kaga, a member of the department's Foreign Affairs division.
In 1984, she and Tanimura started to investigate a series of murders which she came to believe were connected with a mysterious human trafficking ring called the "Bridge Syndicate". However, the case did not progress very far until Detective Kaga approached them with a confession: He had actually been deeply corrupt and had been paid off for years by this syndicate to let them smuggle women from China, Thailand, Korea and the Philippines to serve as coerced sex workers. However, he'd recently fallen in love with one of these Thai women, fathered a son with her and wanted to not only help her escape her life as a slave to the syndicate, but he also wanted to help bring down the operation all together. In exchange for taking in his son as his own to protect him from the syndicate, Kaga promised Tanimura evidence which could help take down the Bridge.
Unfortunately for Kaga, the syndicate's leaders caught wind of his betrayal after he helped smuggle his Thai lover back home and killed him before he could get the promised evidence. Nonetheless, Detective Tanimura kept Kaga's baby as his own son as promised, only for the Detective to be killed a year later while investigating the 1985 Yoshiharu Ueno hit. Saki was distraught by the death of both her closest friends in the force and soon after decided to abandon it entirely when her superiors refused to proceed with the Bridge investigation any further.
Saki would then become a rogue detective, helping trafficked sex workers escape from their captors and sabotaging all manner of human trafficking and sex slavery rings whenever she could. Eventually, Saki would also come to realize that she was actually a trans-woman and would come out as such. This revelation about herself would prove advantageous to her investigations, as being a trans-woman helped her more easily infiltrate prostitution rings by posing as a sex worker.
== Yakuza 4 ==
In 2010, Saki would come to meet her old friend Kaga's son, now a fully-grown detective in the TMPD himself: Masayoshi Tanimura. Tanimura had caught wind of the Bridge Syndicate's activities from the residents of Little Asia and contacted Saki due to her reputation for helping out Kamurocho's sex workers. The two decided to join forces to finally put down the Bridge Syndicate, which had continued to operate in the shadows for the past 24 years.
Ultimately, the duo discovered that the syndicate's leader was Yuji Katsuura, the Chairman of the Asian Women's Friendship Association; a government sponsored foundation supposedly meant to help women in impoverished Asian countries get access to healthcare. Katsuura had been using this organization as a front in order to trick foreign women into coming into Japan with forged papers so that they could then exploit them as sex workers in the streets of Tokyo. Using evidence acquired from Katsura's various lackeys whom they'd confronted, Tanimura and Saki confront Katsuura while he's leaving his office in Millenium Tower, leading to a fight his his goons and then a chase through the streets of Kamurocho. Ultimately, the pair manage to arrest Katsuura.
Through their investigation, Tanimura would come to learn the truth about his parentage from Saki. Despite the investigation being over, Tanimura asks Saki to keep meeting with him, since he would like to hear her stories about both his fathers from back in the day; something Saki gladly agrees to do.
Category:Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department
Category:Yakuza 4 Characters