Tamotsu Yoshizawa

A goatee paired with short, dark hair gives Yoshizawa his look. His standing in Blue Ship shifts dramatically between the two versions of the tale. The feature film keeps him to the margins, little more than Matoba's muscle, hauled out whenever raw force is required.

The novel hands him real weight. There he ranks as the organization's deputy chief, seated directly beneath Daisuke Matoba and above the rest of the membership, a position that puts him at the heart of nearly every scheme the group attempts.

Yoshizawa first turns up during the raid on the Nikaido research lab, where Maki Nikaido's flight up the stairwell leaves him battered by a hurled fire extinguisher that catches him square in the face. Ordered to break open a safe in her father's study, he defeats its lock and software within minutes using nothing but a laptop and a pair of alligator clips, only to discover his quarry has fled through a hidden hatch. When Matoba wonders aloud who the scientist would have entrusted his data to, Yoshizawa points to the daughter, then floats releasing the virus with no antidote at all, an idea Matoba slaps down as reckless terrorism.

Later he reads aloud the rules of the captured Death Note and proposes that Konishi test the thirteen-day clause on someone he wants gone. With the undercover Kujo feeding him tips, he turns a planted listening device back on its owner to learn of a meeting between Maki and Kujo, then moves to seize both the girl and the supposed antidote. He is among those who confront L and Suruga demanding the notebook; convinced of its power after a staged suicide leap, he and Hatsune permit Suruga to write his own delayed death into its pages.

His own death arrives aboard a Los Angeles-bound plane. Kujo hijacks the flight with Konishi and Robert Fairman, revealing that she has already infected everyone with the virus, and Matoba crumbles in terror as blood-tears betray the symptoms. Disgusted, Hatsune walks off, and Yoshizawa rounds on Konishi to berate him one final time. It proves fatal: Konishi, gun drawn and at last done absorbing the insults and mockery, ignores the frantic apologies and puts three rounds into him.

Blue Ship runs as a registered non-profit masking apocalyptic aims, and Yoshizawa sits near its summit. Daisuke Matoba commands the group outright, the cool head who refuses to let panic or greed derail the master plan. Beneath the leadership tier sit operatives like Konishi and Hatsune, the former a resentful underling Yoshizawa loved to mock, the latter the cold woman who carries out the group's dirtier work.

The wider cast includes Kujo, who plays a double game from inside the Pandemic Task Force, and Robert Fairman, both of whom turn on Matoba in the air. The membership appears across the feature L: Change the WorLd and the novel adapting it, the latter giving each figure far more room to scheme.