Sanjou

**Sanjou** (三条, *Sanjou*) is an executive of the Mutagawa Group. He makes contact with business partners and heads many of the group's operations in Fukuoka.

## Characteristics

### Appearance

Sanjou is said to have a normal salaryman's appearance with a kind, gentle, and young face. This has been useful to him, as it makes people easily place their trust in him, and with the support of the many business contacts he has made, he has boosted the Mutagawa Group's standing in the underworld.

### Personality

Despite his kind and gentle appearance, Sanjou is a criminal who is unmoved by proceedings in the underworld, calmly noticing stories of missing children in the news while ordering his own subordinates to abduct children for human trafficking and brainstorming revenge plots that place children in harm's way. While calculating and amiable, he is also cruel and solely in pursuit of his own interests.

## Background

While struggling to compete in the Japanese underworld's arms and drugs market and pay enough to the government to keep the group afloat, it has been Sanjou's ambition for several years to secure a human trafficking route between Japan and the Asian mainland to meet the market demand for Japanese children overseas. Just prior to the start of the story, he used his contacts to secure business with a dealer in Korea and arranged a trial shipment of five children, bringing only a handful of subordinates in on the deal. He blackmailed an orphanage employee into providing him with four of the children, and with the kidnapping of Rena Aikawa, they have enough for their first trafficking venture.

## Synopsis

### Avengers Arc

Sanjou meets his business associate Kunio Yamazaki and agrees to look into the death of Kunio's grandson, Shota, who had disappeared almost a year prior. He finds the video footage of Shota's murder online and shows it to his subordinates. Kase, a low-ranking subordinate, suggests the possibility of it being the work of an avenger, and he creates a post on Undergroundjobs.com seeking an introduction to an avenger.

By the following day, a man using the underground website has sold them the avenger's contact information, and a meeting between the avenger and Sanjou's trusted subordinate Ishihara is arranged for that evening at the Mutagawa-owned bar Smokin' Hot. Sanjou receives a call from Ishihara that night, however, and finds his subordinates slaughtered and hung upside-down from the bar's ceiling. Only Ishihara survived by hiding in the walk-in refrigerator, and he is shaken from shock and hypothermia when Sanjou questions him about the culprit.

Sanjou has to meet Kunio periodically to fill him in on the group's business that would affect his transportation company. With six of his men, including Carlos, the group's hitman, killed by the murderous clown, Sanjou reaches out for the best hitman in the area and hires Shunsuke Saruwatari. They meet near Hakata Station, and Saruwatari accepts the bodyguard position. He informs Ishihara of the change and entrusts the rest of the shipment to his subordinates. When the plan falls through due to the intervention of the avenger intent on rescuing his daughter, and Kase is found unconscious at the scene by police, Sanjou pays enormous sums of money to the police to keep the group's name out of the story, and the entire child kidnapping operation is pinned on Kase acting as a lone wolf.

Sanjou meets a furious Kunio several days later, apologizing for his group's mistakes and their damaged business relationship. As an apology, he suggests presenting the avenger's daughter to Kunio's daughter Mieko so that she can enact her revenge for her own murdered son. Kunio has an airtight plan that involves impersonating his own brother and going through the legal channels to adopt Misaki Tanaka, and Kunio agrees to it.

He pays his brother to borrow his identity for a short time and hires a hostess who resembles his brother's wife, meeting Jiro as prospective parents and impressing him with their qualifications and desires for Misaki's future. The evening of his meeting with Kunio, Sanjou and Mieko visit the park where Xianming Lin hands Misaki over to them. A short while later, as Sanjou drives and Mieko chats to Misaki in the backseat, she asks to call Jiro. Dropping all niceties, she threatens him over the phone and allows Misaki to ask for help.

Sanjou and his men wait inside the warehouse with Mieko and Misaki, who is bound to a chair. Misaki begins laughing when a car pulls up outside the warehouse, and Sanjou is chilled by her coolheadedness and ability to see through their trap. As she reveals that is was not Jiro's but another person's phone number she had given Mieko, Méqué enters the building, and Sanjou recognizes the description of the killer who had slaughtered his subordinates. Accepting Misaki's request to kill everyone, the clown throws a smoke bomb and kills Mieko first. When the smoke clears, Sanjou's subordinates are lying dead around him, and Misaki and the clown are gone. Sanjou rushes outside, intending to flee to wherever Kunio cannot find him, but the clown is waiting in the backseat of his car and slices his throat as he tries to drive away.