Shimizu Slashes Sekine

Shimizu Slashes Sekine is an attack on Gen Sekine by Shimizu, a junior member of the Takada-gumi, at Sekine’s African Kennel shop. The assault turned the investigation into an immediate contest over Sekine’s safety: Sekiguchi had to establish what Shimizu had done while persuading Takada that further violence would bring serious legal consequences. The episode shows that Sekiguchi’s work was not simply to investigate a suspect, but to manage the unstable boundary between police procedure and yakuza power.

The Attack and Its Setting

The assault occurred while Sekiguchi was away from his home, where Jake Adelstein had expected to remain on a week’s leave. He returned within four days after Shimizu cornered Sekine at the African Kennel shop and slashed him. Sekiguchi was assigned to interrogate the suspect. The attack thus brought the investigation into the domestic space where Adelstein and Sekiguchi often spoke: after eating ice cream with Sekiguchi’s family, Adelstein heard the officer discuss the case at the table.

The assault also belonged to the unsettled investigation into the disappearance of Endo. When Endo first went missing, people suspected that Sekine, known as Kennel, was responsible, but Takada had initially refused to believe that a civilian would kill a yakuza member. As Sekiguchi’s investigation developed, Takada began to reconsider his position, though he remained dissatisfied with the evidence accumulating around the case. In that context, an attack on Sekine by a member of Takada’s group carried significance beyond the admitted act: it raised the question of whether the assault was an independent move or part of a larger escalation.

Shimizu’s Statement and Takada’s Denial

Shimizu admitted that he had used a box cutter against Sekine, but denied involvement in anything beyond the attack. After writing up the formal confession and obtaining Shimizu’s signature, Sekiguchi questioned him separately. He made clear that he would neither resume the questioning nor rewrite the statement, then asked whether Takada had ordered the assault. Shimizu denied that Takada had instructed him to act.

Sekiguchi did not treat that denial as enough to settle the matter. He went directly to Takada, as he did from time to time to keep the situation under control, and asked whether Takada had sent Shimizu. Takada answered without hesitation. His response was not a straightforward reassurance that Sekine was safe: he said that if he had ordered Shimizu to kill Sekine, he would have expected the younger man to carry out the order effectively, and would have punished him for failing. The distinction mattered. Shimizu’s account denied an order; Takada’s reply presented the assault as an inadequate attempt at violence rather than evidence that he had commissioned it.

Sekiguchi’s Balancing Act

Sekiguchi described his objective as making it appear that the police were doing everything possible to keep Sekine alive. That appearance was intended to persuade Takada’s men that any further harm to Sekine would bring a forceful legal response. Sekiguchi was therefore using the perceived reach of the law to restrain a possible act of retaliation. His handling of the case depended not only on gathering testimony, but on shaping what Takada believed would follow if Sekine were attacked again.

This was a precarious strategy. Takada periodically told Sekiguchi that he might shoot holes in Kennel and offered to remove the principal suspect from the equation. Sekiguchi responded by politely asking him not to kill Sekine. The conversations had become a kind of two-man routine, but the danger behind the routine remained real: Takada’s casual threats could not be dismissed as mere talk, and Sekiguchi had to maintain a working channel with him while making clear that Sekine was not to be touched.

Consequences and Narrative Significance

The attack exposed how closely the investigation’s progress depended on Sekiguchi’s management of relations with both the suspect and Takada. Takada had once rejected the possibility that a civilian could kill a yakuza; now he was considering Sekine’s responsibility, while Sekiguchi tried to stop that suspicion from turning into vigilante violence. By keeping the investigation active and insisting on restraint, Sekiguchi sought to preserve Sekine’s life without surrendering the case to Takada’s authority.

A later call sharpened the same tension. After Adelstein passed information to Sekiguchi, Takada contacted the officer and disclosed that he had Sekine in his custody, offering to let Sekiguchi listen while he questioned him. Sekiguchi declined the invitation and instead warned Takada not to kill Sekine, asking to be told what was learned. Takada gave his word. That exchange did not erase the danger created by Shimizu’s attack; it showed how the investigation continued to rely on personal assurances and careful negotiation where formal police control was uncertain. The episode’s central reversal is that the officer’s visible effort to protect Sekine served partly as a deterrent, while his private dealings with Takada were essential to making that effort credible.