'Giri/ Haji': Why did Yuto flee to London? The story behind his crimes explained
This story contains major spoilers for Season 1 of 'Giri/ Haji'.
There is murder at the beginning of the Anglo-Japanese saga 'Giri/ Haji'. Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira) discovers that thousands of miles away in London, the nephew of the powerful Yakuza head, Saburo (Masaya Mimura) is found dead. And much to his surprise, the killer is his younger brother Yuto (Yôsuke Kubozuka), who has been presumed dead for almost a year.
Now before the Yakuza breaks into a full-blown war, disrupting the peace that has prevailed for years, and tears apart Tokyo, Kenzo must bring Yuto back home.
Yuto single-handedly throws Tokyo into this dark pit when he leaves Fukuhara's (Masahiro Motoki) ancestral sword into the back of Shin Endo's (Katsuya Kobayashi) nephew. Fukuhara and Shin Endo, the heads of two gangs, find themselves at the brink of war should Yuto not return to Tokyo.
But sitting in London, why would Yuto want to start a gang war? Why would he care to begin something like this in Tokyo when he is no longer even remotely connected to that place?
The answer lies in Yuto's past. Episode 4 and 5 of the series spends a lot of time telling us how and why Yuto fled to London and why he faked his death.
When working for Fukuhara, Yuto falls in love with his daughter Eiko (Anna Sawai). Their relationship doesn't take long to bloom — their passion is fierce and love, tender. But when Yuto tells Fukuhara about their romance, it comes to threaten his life. And so after one thing leads to another and the Yakuza head moves to kill Yuto, he is forced to fake his death and flee Japan lest he is killed. When he leaves, he takes along Fukuhara's sword along with him.
But that is not before Eiko is already pregnant with their child. But even as Yuto fled Japan, he swore he would be coming back for his family — the love of his life and his son, Sora. And working with Endo just happened for him.
"He (Fukuhara) took (Sora) from me. So I decided to take everything from him," Yuto tells Kenzo when the entire revenge scheme is revealed.
Yuto exacts his revenge on Fukuhara and successfully reunites with his family. Tokyo will not see the Yakuza gangs warring for murder on foreign soil.
All episodes of Season 1 of 'Giri/ Haji' are currently streaming on Netflix.