What follows is a brief history of the founding of Azuma Zaibatsu and its history until the present day. The information was compiled and written by Rakon Kido, and thus it is written from his (limited) perspective.

Sometime in the month of December, 2007, Kotaro Yunero and Seiru Yamura were playing games called Tenchu (one of several in a series of games) and Tekken 5. Being acquaintances, and also players of the game Jedi Academy, they thought that creating a ninja clan in Jedi Academy would be a cool idea. The word Azuma was taken from the Azuma Ninja clan in the Tenchu universe, and the word Zaibatsu, whose meaning was unknown at the time, was taken from Tekken. It was later discovered that a zaibatsu is “a powerful family-controlled commercial combine of Japan” or “a Japanese conglomerate or cartel” (American Heritage Dictionary).

Although this fact is disputed, most sources agree that it was Kotaro Yunero’s idea to call it Azuma Zaibatsu. It is also claimed that it was Seiru’s idea, but there is no way to solidly substantiate two competing claims made by two people who spoke privately. What has not been disputed thus far, however, is that the clan was, in general, Kotaro Yunero’s idea. Nevertheless, we owe our existence to Kotaro and Seiru.

Originally, Kotaro didn’t act upon his idea, but Seiru took the idea to someone who had a server, Yoshi Akamatsu. Kotaro soon found out and was admitted into the clan at the highest rank, Kage, meaning Shadow. Yoshi and Seiru also took that rank, and admitted two more Kages with whom they were friends, Satoru Kido and Makoto (slobkilla). A ranking system based off of the five ninja villages of the Naruto universe was constructed (by whom is currently unknown); Yoshi took Fire Guild as the Hokage (Fire Shadow), Seiru took Lightning Guild as the Raikage (Lightning Shadow), Kotaro took Root Guild as the Tsuchikage (Earth Shadow), Makoto took Water Guild as the Mizukage (Water Shadow), and Satoru took the Wind Guild as the Kazekage (Wind Shadow). A forum was then set up by Yoshi and Kotaro, and Kotaro made some ninja-themed packages for the clan such as its weapons pack.

The five Kages now had a forum, a server, and a small handful of followers. The date then was December 26th, 2007, and Azuma Zaibatsu was born. That was also the date that I saw the clan server for the first time and fought Satoru Kido. I could not beat him, and along with the unique theme of ninja in a Jedi game, I kept coming back.

At my next visit I met Kotaro Yunero, who fought me and recommended that I apply to the clan. I was not the first applicant but probably the third or fourth. I applied and was accepted, and decided that since I knew Kotaro Yunero best, I would join his guild. I still, however, coveted the skill held by the reclusive Satoru. Eventually, my friendship with him led to my joining his family, Kido, though I would never once leave Root Guild.

The clan grew at a decent rate. We played on some unique Japanese-themed maps such as Redcell Temple and the Forest, and Kotaro gave me some rudimentary training. I had a lot of fun in his guild because we did “ninja”-type things. Over the next few weeks I took my Genin exam, Chuunin exam, and Jounin exam, passing all of them. Another early member of the clan, AchiYami was also progressing at about the same rate. Around this time, the clan JC was falling apart, and since its leader Shinji was good friends with Yoshi, we decided that our clans would merge, and Shinji was given the title Hoshikage (Star Shadow) and a sixth guild, the Star Guild. Also around this time, Aves was accepted into the clan.

Along the way, we had lost track of Makoto, the Mizukage. He had seemingly disappeared, so the Water Guild was without a leader. Seiru and Yoshi were conducting interviews to search for a new “Sannin,” though of course this was a cover-up as they were actually searching for a new Water Guild Kage. This was all happening at about half-way through the first month of the clan’s existence, so very few of us were very well acquainted with the leaders, making interviews a necessity. I had never even spoken directly to Yoshi up until this point.

I was interviewed and expressed interest in the empty guild, but nothing happened because soon, about a month after the clan’s birth, the Tsuchikage got into an argument with the Raikage, leading to the Tsuchikage’s demotion to Sannin. I accepted the offer to lead the Root Guild in Kotaro’s place, though I was not initially well-received due to my unknown status. I even found out later that a small group in the clan had initially intended to “assassinate” me (well, RP-style… so I’m not really sure what that would have meant).

Fortunately I was never “assassinated” so I continued helping the clan grow with my fellow Kages. We soon decided to promote Aves to Mizukage because he had shown promise. Kogetsu’s Banshou clan merged with us shortly afterward, and it is around this time that the Burning Dawn samurai clan became vocally opposed to us. In the end, like most wars, the war was fought over property, specifically, the server files that BD believed belonged exclusively to them. We won a decisive victory in the TFFA that decided the outcome of the war. Winning the war meant that are permitted to use all of BD’s files.

It has been observed that within the fictional confines of the Tenchu universe, the Azuma Ninja clan also fought against the Burning Dawn clan. This was not intentional. It begs the disclaimer, “Any similarity to persons, real or fictional, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.”

After this early time of glory, when AZ was seemingly in its prime, the numbers really started picking up, and we added professions into the ranking system. At some point, either shortly before the war or shortly after, we accepted Genjo, Kato, Wodec, Gouken, Kimahri, and KuroRyukei into the clan, all of whom had bright futures ahead of them as Kages. Satoru stepped down from leadership and was replaced by KuroRyukei about 3 to 4 months after the clan’s founding, and at some point, Seiru and Shinji had made some poor choices and were forced to step down as well. The Star Guild was disbanded.

Also, at least three different members had incited three separate rebellions against the clan, none of which were very successful but led to some removals. We also fought another small-scale war against a clan called ANBU, which had literally copied and pasted the HTML from our website to its own, copying our entire clan structure. They failed. Aves left to start his own clan and was replaced by Wodec, who did well but hated the job and stepped down soon after.

Water Guild was, unfortunately, the guild without a Kage-level leader for the majority of its time, though its Sannin Zu’Shan and his right-hand man Gairu did excellent jobs keeping it in order. Thus, at this point, we had two guilds, Lightning and Water, without leaders. From my personal experience, the Shadow Council operated most efficiently with three leaders (Yoshi, me, and KuroRyu), but that may have been because we all got along so well and that we were online at the same time, and not necessarily because there were three of us. Nevertheless, we could not leave the Water Guild and Lightning Guild leaderless forever, so KuroRyu eventually became the Mizukage, Satoru was reinstated as the Kazekage, and Kato became the Raikage. Yoshi also briefly stepped down from Hokage position with Genjo as his replacement, but this was short-lived.

When the clan had been around for approximately a year, we reached an all time high of 90 members. This is more than most clans ever achieve before they die. We were still growing, so we felt that we needed to add another guild. This time, instead of taking one from Naruto, we went off the suggestion given by Jurobei and his friend Gouken, who suggested the concept of a Time Guild. Gouken, who showed promise in leadership, was added to the Shadow Council as a Jikokukage after weeks of deliberations.

A little while after this time, Kogetsu completed Azuma Zaibatsu’s first official map, AZ Street. On the day of its unveiling, February 15, 2009, I made the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my eight years of leading Jedi Knight clans: for mistaken personal reasons, I resigned. I don’t think I’ve ever resigned before, from anything.

I occasionally checked in to see how the clan was doing. Kimahri took my place as Tsuchikage. A World of Warcraft guild was created in the clan; at this point, I knew it would die. As I suspected, within a few months, AZ version 1 was gone. Since some members wanted to keep it alive, Gouken, Kimahri, and Kogetsu worked to keep it up and running. They even managed to quell a rebellion. But that clan, AZ version 2, was killed when it abruptly lost its server. And that was the state I found it in when I returned from my 6-month hiatus from computer games.

I contacted Kimahri, the only person I was able to immediately get in touch with at the time, and set up a small AZ clan with Yakuza-style ranks. We started out as a base clan. Then, I found out that base doesn’t exist, for all realistic purposes, so we switched to JAE, which still didn’t work because it lacked some security patches, and finally succumbed to making it a JA+ server again.

Kimahri had to back down from leadership in AZ version 3 for personal reasons, so I found myself in a place I hadn’t been in for a long time, the sole leadership position. This was a kind of wake-up call, because it was then I realized that it was all up to me to keep Azuma Zaibatsu, a candle in the wind, alive.

I then went researching MMORPGs to figure out why they were so popular. There is actually an entire scholarly blog devoted to MMOs. I learned that people derive pleasure from gradually accumulating wealth, even if it is virtual, and that people in MMORPGs are as productive (game-wise) as they are in real life. So, I tried a demo of an MMORPG. I played it for about five days, and then at work one day, realized what I had to do, and what AZ is missing, and in fact what most clans in the game are missing.

Based on what I have learned, I constructed a framework that is so radically different from any previous iteration of AZ that it is apt to call us AZ version 4. That is where we are now, and maybe this time, it will last.