Dark_RP

On the island of Tanegashima in 1899, the 31st year of the Meiji Emperor's reign, Yamamoto Shinzo was born to a former samurai family serving the lords of the island.
By this time however the samurai were no more, swept away in the new Emperor's great modernization of Japan, their arts and traditions however lived on and it was according to these principals that Shinzo was raised and educated.
His childhood on Tanegashima was strict and idyllic in equal measure. Days learning calligraphy, poetry and kenjutsu with the other Shizoku children were followed by evenings playing games among the meadows or down by the sea shore. Upon turning eighteen Shinzo traveled to Tokyo and enrolled in the Army Academy to train as an officer in the infantry. His father, Tsunetomo, had joined the newly created Imperial Japanese Army with the abolition of the old warrior class and Shinzo was determined to follow in his footsteps and uphold the military honour of his family. Passing his exams with flying colors he was assigned to the Kwantung Army and soon rose through the ranks.

Clean new uniform
blood drips upon fallen leaves
down a shining blade



It was during this time that the games of his youth became nothing more than distant memories as the Japanese occupation of China began. His unit fought hard and won bloody battles against both Russian and Chinese troops, but as they did so Shinzo found himself falling victim to a madness that was gripping many of his fellow soldiers. The belief that they, the Japanese people, were somehow superior to their neighbors and destined to conquer them. Arrogance and cruelty eclipsed the old sense of personal honour as the Kwantung Army began to cut a bloody swathe through Manchuria. Treating the peasants there no better than foreign cattle, to be either herded or slaughtered as they pleased, it wasn't long before they were wading through rivers of blood in the name of the Emperor. Tenno Heika Banzai!

The summer has left
pride and joy, our work done well
a field of the dead

By the time the Pacific War with America and the European powers broke out Yamamoto Shinzo had risen to the rank of captain, but the fighting had grown harder, and arrogance had turned to tenaciousness as Japan's enemies multiplied. Still, as the possibility of defeat remained unthinkable Captain Yamamoto led several detachments of Kwantung Army troops as they participated in Operation Ichi-Go. It was to be a great and daring offensive, their objective was to rapidly storm through the length of China, capturing every single air base from which American bombers had been attacking the Japanese Home Islands. The operation would be their last great victory, neither the Chinese armies nor the U.S Air Force could stop them as city after city fell before the assault, but the year was now 1944 and defeat was closer than they thought.



Rays of the rising sun
rightful farmer works his land
alas his time is short

The final defeat of his nation's Empire was a day that Shinzo would never see, advancing with his troops through the devastated streets of Guilin Captain Yamamoto was caught in the blast of a well aimed mortar round fired by retreating Chinese soldiers. His body was blown to pieces as his comrades ran for cover and his soul was dragged down to hell for his crimes. There, far from the material world above his soul was tortured for long years with pain and penance its only companions. In the darkness of Kakuri he fought the demons of Emma-O and his fellow damned souls with equal ferocity, even as the icy winds flayed him to the bone. All in that realm were equally deserving of the punishment he thought, even himself.
After decades in Yomi the battle scared soul of Yamamoto Shinzo fought it's way back up to the Middle Kingdom to rise again as one of the Kue-Jin, the hungry dead. After awakening in China as a Chih-Mei his tortured Po drove him back toward Tanegashima taking blood where he wished it, but in passing through Tokyo he was intercepted by watchful Kue-Jin mandarins and instructed in the dharmic path of the Devil Tiger to tame his dark side before eventually reaching home. Back in Japan and on his home island Shinzo swore himself once again to the old Bushido code taught to him by his father and rarely left its shores aside from occasional visits to the Bishamon Court in Tokyo. He has lost none of the brutality gained in his later years of life, but now through his dharma and the Bushido code it was, in his eyes, directed at the deserving.