gakuto oshiro. cis man. he/him. bisexual. ⇝ hey, isn’t that hirokazu 'kaz' amuro ? i think that the forty-six year old from okinawa, japan works as a city council member & owner of dracula's coffin club, but outside of that people describe them as shelves of leatherbound books, artworks hanging in gilded frames, expensive vintage wines in their rack and not a thing out of place; a dark room illuminated only by the flicker of candlelight; an old photo album, full of snaps from a disposable camera, hidden away in the back of a forgotten closet; crisp suits, expensive jewellery, an image so perfectly designed as to be uncanny; strong posture, total control of the room, a gaze sharp enough to dissuade any arguments . i hear they are manipulative & a control freak, but they are also known to be sentimental & artistic . consider giving them a visit at their home in the winterwood estates and get to know why they’re called the tormented.
IMPORTANT LINKS: will be added when they're ready!
TW: emotional neglect in childhood, disappearance/death of a loved one??
just to make my intentions with this character very clear before we get any further, this guy SUCKS. he's meant to be somewhat antagonistic and just all-round not that great a guy. sure, he probably has his redeeming features & he was a decent person at some point but :) time changes ppl, i guess! i feel like he's probably pretty amicable and decent on the surface but he's also very two-faced so it's like...Be Careful <3 also, i have no particular want to plot any active ships for this character. this isn't because of a lack of interest on his part, it's just because i don't necessarily want to write, or think it's appropriate to rp, what would definitely be a very toxic relationship! also he's definitely still in love with a person who's been missing for twenty years so there's also that. anyway, that's my little note done. read away! also! unlike most of my other muses (except ash), this is a new character i'm writing just for anchorage so please keep in mind a lot of stuff is generally subject to change. i'm going to try and work out the kinks as i go but this intro might not stay 100% totally accurate.
BASICS.
His full name is Hirokazu Amuro (安室洋一) but he started going by Kaz for short once he moved to the States in his late teens. It just kind of stuck. I imagine his nickname growing up would have been 'Hiro'.
Kaz was born in Okinawa City, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan and is of direct Okinawan descent. Kaz may describe himself as Japanese for simplicity's sake but he considers himself Okinawan first & Japanese second. (Okinawans/Ryukyuans are an unrecognised ethnic minority in Japan & are ethnically/culturally distinct from the mainland Japanese majority BUT that's all I'll say on the matter bc this is a topic on which I am not qualified to speak & that presumably requires far more nuance than should be squeezed into an rp intro hehe)
He speaks Japanese (standard & Okinawan dialects) and English fluently, and he knows a little Uchinaaguchi. I imagine he knows some other languages too, I just haven't settled on that. I think he's very interested in cultures and language.
As a council member, he dedicates a lot of his attention to the Arts sector, having taken it upon himself to oversee the relevant funding and the like. He's very invested in the arts and considers it a matter of great personal interest. Kaz is also a known patron/doner of the Hanging Arts Gallery and paid out of his own pocket to financially support certain productions of the Single Carrot Theatre, especially due to his history with the venue. This has given him a reputation for being philanthropic but it largely comes from a place of self-interest and satisfying his own wants and needs.
Similarly, he's donated money to publications such as the Anchorage Daily Diem under the guise of support but the reality is that he has built up a good rapport with news outlets so as to give him more control over how he's portrayed in the media. Money speaks. And money can make sure that you don't speak.
This is a recurring issue, for the record. He very much needs to be in control of things. He's not especially power-hungry, and is quite content to sit back and let things play out without him lifting a finger, but he likes to be the one putting pawns in their places to ensure things go his way. Obviously, his success here will vary but, again, this is just how he likes things to be.
All this to say, he's kind of a known eccentric, hence his ownership of the Coffin Club. What can I say? He likes spooky shit. On top of that, the way he presents himself in public is so particular and perfect and poised that it's a little uncanny. I think he probably comes off a little unsettling.
I imagine he might clash with his fellow council members at times because he prefers to speak directly and he's kind of condescending, especially if he disagrees with you on something. He holds grudges too and is the type to start playing Devil's Advocate just to rile someone up because he happens to dislike them. He also doesn't have much issue just insulting people SO UH....
He likes screwing with people. I really picture him as the type of guy to pour a glass of red wine over someone's head in order to humiliate and belittle them.
Insufferable rich man.
CHILDHOOD
Hirokazu was born, on 13th October 1978, as the second of two children, the only son, of a wealthy family. His father was in business, as his father had been before him, and his mother was a homemaker who had also come from a wealthy background. It was tolerant but largely loveless marriage, the couple having come together at the behest of their respective families (who had been primarily concerned with what the union might do for their collective reputations). It is hard to say that the Amuro children grew up surrounded by much warmth but they were comfortable.
The expectations placed on the two Amuro children were high, particularly for Hirokazu who had been deigned the obvious sucessor to his father's work. They were raised in a strict home where studying well to impress the parents was the be-all-and-end-all. They had strict curfews and were forbidden from the sort of hobbies their parents considered frivolous and a waste of time. If the children weren't working to improve themselves for future job prospects, they were wasting time.
Fortunately for Hirokazu, he was a clever and studious child and never struggled much in this regard. He was also a voracious reader and, to his good luck, this was considered an acceptable hobby. He was known to spend hours at the library down the road from his family home. It was just about the only source of entertainment to which he had easy access.
In his early teen years, he grew irritated with this constrictive lifestyle, of only doing and reading and even thinking this that had been approved of by his family. The first step in breaking free was a very, very small one indeed: he deliberately hunted out the pulpiest, schlockiest book he could find in the entire library, a beaten-up and dog-eared old copy of some horror anthology, and found himself hooked. The entire genre was such a far cry from the world in which he lived, full of freaks and weirdos and people who obeyed none of the rules. This led to him reading more and more horror, and then to him sneaking away to the local arthouse cinema where they'd show strange and splattery flicks imported all the way from places like Italy. Here, he learned that he didn't really want to follow in his father's footsteps. Business bored him but art fascinated him.
In his first year of high school, at the age of sixteen, Hirokazu took it upon himself to form and appoint himself leader of the school's new Horror Literature Club. The membership was small but the attendance was strong. (It should be of note that the small attendance was also what justified his position as leader, despite being a first year.) This was also Hirokazu's very first taste of leadership. He'd never been an outgoing child and was usually left alone by other children but he found that, suddenly, people listened when they believed he was important. This stint lasted until halfway through his second year of high school, at which point his father found out what he'd been doing and forced him to withdraw from the club altogether.
The new opening in his schedule would be filled with more studying. After all, he needed to get into a good uni if he wanted to maintain any respect in this family and his father wasn't just going to pay his children's way. If they couldn't earn their education on their own merits, they were no children of his. And, so, Hirokazu studied and studied until he secured himself a spot at a top university in Tokyo, studying Business (a decision made for him by his family). Because his sister had also gotten into a good women's university in the city a couple years prior, the family left the tropical climate of Okinawa behind and moved to Tokyo.
EARLY ADULT YEARS
Two years into his time at Uni, at the age of nineteen, he was offered the chance to take part in an exchange program that would send him to New York for a year. Eager, if not desperate, to get away from his parents, Hirokazu jumped at the opportunity. His father considered it a good chance for Hirokazu to branch out and network and so he approved it. Along with a good friend from Tokyo, Hirokazu made the move and immediately set to work on forging his own path, living his own for the very first time.
His actual education was of minor concern and Hirokazu immediately threw himself into the nightlife. He found himself at home in more alternative groups and more artistic spaces, even beginning to dabble in poetry himself. He surrounded himself bands and poets and artists, adopted the name Kaz and stayed out all night shoving fuck know what kind of substances into his body. He'd become a free sprit; the idea of rebellion had long since crossed his mind, so far had he come from those repressive beginnings.
And, then, he met them. They were just another member of Kaz's wider circle but, from the moment he laid eyes on them, he was infatuated. They would often break free from the rest of their circle in the wee hours of the morning to steal away private moments. At age twenty, Kaz had fallen in love for the first time and he fallen quite hard.
It was 1999 now and the two had been officially dating for quite some time. Kaz had made the decision to remain in New York and finish out his education there, having graduated that very year. He ignored his father's demands that he move back home and take up a position working alongside him. His partner mentioned wanting to up north somewhere for New Year's Eve, in the hopes of seeing the Northern Lights as the new millenium rolled in and, so, Kaz surprised them with a two week trip up to Anchorage.
During this trip, the two grew very fond of the strange town and decided to take root there, having found themselves feeling otherwise lost in life after graduating. Thanks to Kaz's wealthy background, they were able to buy a home in Delilah's Gated Den without any trouble. Kaz took up a job handling the finances for the Single Carrot theatre, believing it to be the ideal way to pursue his love of the arts while still making good use of his business degree.
In 2004, when Kaz was twenty-five, their partner disappeared. Another statistic in Anchorage's endless list of missing people. The news hit Kaz like a ton of bricks, his reality seeming to chip and crack around him. He was forced to watch, helpless, as those in charge seemed to do nothing, not a finger lifted for any casuality in the town. Unable to let go of his missing loved one and determined to prove that they were still out there, Kaz left his position at the theatre behind after five years of work and moved into local government. He would work his way up the ranks and find the answers he was after.
ADULT YEARS
After years of hard work, such hard work that it had bordered on obsession, Kaz had become a member of the Anchorage City Council. He was on top and he had access to everything he needed. That was when he learned about the Miroir, and that was when he had learned about their miroir. The cracks that had formed all those years ago splintered beyond repair. Shattering. The vague hopes onto which he had clung for so long twisted and contorted into something like rage and resentment. The journey he had taken to get to this point had already changed him for the worse, the years spent following only one trail blinding him to anything that did not serve his own interests, but this would only push him over the edge.
Separately from this, somewhere along the line he took it upon himself to start a small business of his own: Dracula's Coffin Club. Of course, his love of horror was never forgotten and this little shop is a testament to that. He's often too busy to do any work in the shop itself but it's sort of a little passion project for him. He still likes to write poetry in his own time too but that's a very private business. (SORRY THIS IS SUCH A SHIFT IN TONE LMAOO I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE ELSE TO PUT IT </3)
As for his family, they fell out with him during his Single Carrot years but, having caught wind of his successes in local government, they eventually changed their tune. Kaz was understandably not impressed with this but has tried to stay in their good books out of a desire to remain on his father's will. (His belief is that he deserves to be compensated for having this man as a father.) His sister has since taken his place as their father's successor, having proven herself a perfectly capable businesswoman, and has a family of her own whereas his mother has had some success in launching her own jewellery business. Kaz does not take any interest in their affairs.
