biography
From humble beginnings, Kenji Ota had set out to make a successful life for himself at an early age. He was the top graduate in his classes and excelled in extracurricular studies, a significantly skilled pilot with the Japanese military, and when his service ended, spent his livelihood becoming the CEO of Ota Heavy Industries, an empire formed from an expansionist strategy and numerous business acquisitions over the years. When his family expanded to include two children, a boy that would inevitably become heir of the corporate empire when Kenji Ota met his fate and his younger sister, Yuriko, it was no trouble to financial stability and yet another piece to the puzzle of keeping it that way for years to come.
Born on August 6 of 1985, Yuriko was easily overlooked by Kenji who favored his first-born son more than his second-born daughter, though neither child had been left wanting while growing up. While Kenji spoke fondly and frequently of his son, Yuriko was often left in the background, kept quiet and hidden behind decorum, disappearing behind the walls of private schooling, piano recitals, ballet lessons, and any number of “proper” activities that would keep her occupied and away from the business side of the Ota Family. It wasn’t a place for a woman in Kenji’s mind, and especially not with the company he kept behind the taxes and payrolls files readily available to those responsible for oversight.
The truth was that Kenji’s activities weren’t as legal as he wanted everyone to believe, his lifetime of success shadowed by Yakuza operations and bank accounts padded with money made from illegal activities. Sōkaiya, stockholder extortion and protection rackets, were a favorite operation of Kenji and his men, and jiageya, consisting of real estate schemes, accounted for quite a bit of the company’s property holdings with all the right lips sewn shut if they wouldn’t outright stay shut from the organization’s threats. Semi-legitimate as the organization was, it didn’t account for all of Ota Heavy Industries profits, investing quite a bit of money into cooperative businesses like railway structure and operation and electric and technology companies, and easily reaping the rewards which served to make sure the Ota Family lived in the lap of luxury.
While it may have been fine and well for another to live life blindly, Yuriko wouldn’t settle for it and in her own subtle way, found herself in the midst of everything her father had tried to hide while, all at once, remaining on the outskirts enough to go unnoticed. After graduating from the London College of Fashion in 2007 with a Bachelor degree that only touched upon her involvement in the industry through her modeling career with Elite Model Management, Yuriko returned to Tokyo with the intent to focus her fashion business in the city she had grown up in only to find herself in what could easily be called a whirlwind romance with one of her father’s associates—if he could even go so far to be called that when sides were only determined by the right price.
Burning hot and fast as it did, it was a relationship that didn’t serve future potential. It was fun, no holds on what they could do together or the time spent together as long as it stayed out of watchful eyes, and it was dangerous when one considered the king of the empire wouldn’t have wanted his daughter to entangle herself with someone he may have deemed worthy in another life, but would only ever consider dangerous given the work he did. As volatile as it was and bound to end on its own without intervention, it was a relationship that had become a distraction to the malintent of others, particularly an undercover bosozoku hired by a rival organization who seemed to easily go under the radar of such familial troubles, and when all seemed to come to a head—Yuriko's relationship coming to an end, loud and furious as it was, and the uncovering of the snake in their midsts—Kenji Ota was left dead in a pool of his own blood.
Retaliation was immediate by her brother who had no intention on allowing her to stay in Tokyo with an inevitable gang war looming over their heads. Instead, he sent Yuriko to New York in 2009 where she could, in most cases, avoid the trouble going on in Tokyo while her brother took the reins. She returned to her modeling career with another agency, walking the runway and posing for shoots whenever there was a casting call that actually considered her a perfect fit for their line or campaign, continuing to make her money through a primary stake in Ota Heavy Industries which padded her bank account significantly and made sure she wasn’t left without financial backing in the Big Apple. Living in Manhattan, after all, was not cheap, but as far as anyone else had to know beyond her organization-assigned accountant, Yuriko made a considerably sum modeling—enough to afford her lifestyle.
While New York City had treated her well for the years she had called it home, 2015 brought about a wind of change that Yuriko couldn’t seem to ignore. With her modeling career slowly waning, transitioning away from the runways and photoshoots as a mainstay source of work and shifting into a facet of the industry that aligned more with her degree of study, surely a result of her growing age and the upstarts much younger than her coming up into the modeling world in an ever-changing cycle, Yuriko felt a change of environment was needed. She didn’t have to be in the city to work even if it might have made for something more substantial, perhaps even something with a more well-known fashion house, and after discussing the move with an associate known through her work with Ota Heavy Industries’ office in New York, Boston was soon to become home. She found herself an apartment in Boston’s Theater District, not far from potential employers and social venues, and for reasons she couldn’t explain then and still can’t explain now, it felt like just the place that Yuriko needed to be.
The following four years would make for the roots Yuriko has made in the city, becoming a regular fixture among Boston’s high echelon—be it because of her connections with Ota Heavy Industries, the fashion industry, or, in some cases, the person she may have been arm-in-arm with at the time. Though unofficial by many means, Yuriko has made it her business to represent her brother’s company and the Ota Family in Boston, networking in light of a possible future where the youngest daughter of Kenji Ota would be required to fill her her brother’s shoes as the current next in line and in 2020, with a move to San Francisco, California, Yuriko Ota has finally found herself on the cusp of what could be with Ota Heavy Industries.
Yuriko Oyama (小山 ゆり子) is the daughter of Kenji Oyama, a former Japanese kamikaze pilot during World War II, whose face was horribly scarred in a failed suicide attack on an American battleship. Later becoming the head of Oyama Heavy Industries, Kenji had Yuriko and her two brothers privately tutored by Marcy Stryker, wife of an American soldier named William Stryker. Kenji felt much shamed by his failure decades earlier, and as a result he ultimately scarred the faces of his three children in a ritual design. Becoming the criminal scientist Lord Dark Wind, Kenji developed a means for bonding the virtually indestructible metal Adamantium to human bone, a procedure he hoped to use in creating an army of super-soldiers for Japan. However, his notes were stolen and it took him years to rediscover the process.