Hisatoshi Mio

Hisatoshi Mio enters the book not through a direct encounter but as a name that links the loan-sharking network around Susumu Kajiyama to the narrator’s investigation of Tadamasa Goto and liver transplants involving yakuza figures. Identified as the founder of the Mio-gumi and a backer of Kajiyama, Mio becomes part of the evidence suggesting that the Goto case may not have been isolated.

Identity and Connections

The book identifies Mio as the founder of the Mio-gumi and a backer of Susumu Kajiyama, known as the Emperor of Loan Sharks. It does not provide a biography, describe Mio’s dealings with Kajiyama in detail, or recount a meeting with him. His significance rests instead on the connections attached to his name and on the questions those connections raise.

A Lead in the Goto Inquiry

Before his death in 2007, Shibata gave the narrator Mio’s name and identified him as a backer of Kajiyama. The narrator connected that lead to Tadamasa Goto’s role in teaching Kajiyama how to move money through Las Vegas. On that basis, the narrator concluded that Goto also knew Mio and began to suspect that the Goto case was not an isolated matter. The suspected connection is presented as an investigative inference, not as a fully documented account of Mio’s relationship with Goto.

Liver-Transplant Disclosures

In an anthology published on August 9 under the title Heisei Japan Taboo Compendium 2008, the narrator included the names of three other yakuza figures who had received liver transplants. Mio was among them, placed after Yoshiro Ogino and before Saburo Takeshita in the account. That disclosure widened the inquiry beyond Tadamasa Goto: taken together with Shibata’s lead and Goto’s connection to Kajiyama, Mio’s name contributed to the narrator’s suspicion that something unusual was happening at UCLA. The book establishes Mio’s place in that emerging pattern, but does not resolve the questions surrounding it.