Japanese Association of Assassins

As the dominant assassination authority in the country, the JAA holds what amounts to a monopoly over the trade. It is enormously wealthy, and its Tokyo Bureau is built out on such a scale that the grounds read like a section of a city in their own right. Membership sits at roughly a thousand, with a little under four hundred of those being working professional killers. When Slur and his organization began targeting the association, more than a quarter of its assassins were wiped out.

Beyond arranging contract kills, the association handles a surprisingly broad menu of services, from manufacturing weapons to repairing public property wrecked during missions. Clients pay a fee, and the JAA routes each job to whoever is best suited to it. Assignments reach assassins through deliberately obscure channels such as pricey movie rentals and coded scratch cards. According to Uda the pay and benefits are good, though the organization is said to skim thirty percent of an assassin's take, with refusal to hand it over ending in death. The JAA can also farm work out to member agencies for a cut, the sole named one being Dondenkai, and Nagumo notes that at least thirty such agencies existed before Slur's attacks left them defunct.

Becoming a licensed killer normally means formal schooling, with rare exceptions like Osaragi who never attended any institution. The training academies cover firearms, close combat, poisoning, and more, and successful students earn assassin licenses that expire only when the holder dies. Two schools are known, Japan Clear Creation and the Kansai Region Assassin Institute, and per one JCC student no assassin can legally take work without going through the JAA. Sitting at the top of the structure is the Order, a tiny cell of the association's very strongest members tasked with keeping the peace whenever trouble threatens the industry.

The association's leadership has passed through several chairmen, including the former head Soichi Amo and the later chairman Sei Asaki. Its elite Order has counted Oki as leader alongside Torres and Tanabata, while a long list of figures such as Sakamoto, Nagumo, Shishiba, Osaragi, Kamihate, Kanaguri, and Kindaka have all served within it before departing. Rank and file assassins tied to the JAA include Boiled, Obiguro, Tatsu, and the freelancer Heisuke Mashimo, and the prison side of the operation is run by staff like head guard Jo Shackles.