Come on, don’t be such a buzzkill. Have some fun and give me some suspension of disbelief.
Uh ... no?
I'm sorry, but while your explanation works for you, and for your game, it simply doesn't work for me - it doesn't
hang together with what we
do know of the personalities involved. Hitori Hanzo has the reputation of a thug, because he responds with a thug's responses, he takes a thug's actions. He
had a brain, a handler, in the personality of the guy who
did rise to the top - Watada. Watada kept him close by both to keep an eye on him (because he knows the danger of ambitious, violent, but stupid underlings) and to use him as the blunt object Hanzo was. You're thinking that Hanzo ascended to a leadership position, when - according to the information given on long-term relationships in the Yakuza - in all likelihood he
rode into that position on Watada's coattails. He was a leg-breaker, and when you get down to it, his position
remained a leg-breaker, just one that was very close to the throne.
You want there to be someone manipulating Hitori Hanzo from the shadows, when clearly the only person who held his leash was Watada. The guy was such a moron he
refused the 'invitation' from the guy (Great Dragon) who made his own boss into such a criminal powerhouse - and subsequently paid for the insult with his life.
In regards to Shotozumi, which is where all this (in my mind) really hinges, it still and simply doesn't make sense. He's still getting his own house in order after having broken away from Watada; the
only reason this could possibly make sense is for him to decide that in order to settle the issues in Seattle, it would be better to claim the reins of the organization that the dissidents want to return to - so that he can essentially say, 'You can be on my side, or you can be on
Watada's my side, your choice. Doesn't matter to me.'
Shotozumi doesn't need an offer to be an 'acknowledged equal and partner'; Watada isn't going to give him that, and Shotozumi
knows that's not likely to happen, because the Great Dragon pulling Watada's puppet-strings isn't about to acknowledge Shotozumi as being its equal in
anything. And, as I said in regards to your suggestion,
if Shotozumi got some message for 'secret peace-talks meetings', he would show up in Japan practically with a brass band and loudspeakers announcing his visit, because 'killed at a secret meeting' means 'too stupid to live', and really, Shotozumi ain't that.
And I don’t pretend to be an expert in Japanese customs. Customs which, to my understanding, aren’t hold high in modern Japan of our time and world. But as far as I got it, in this set of etiquette age is a rang of itself. And I don’t think that it would look all too favorable to make an sick, dying, old man travel. I would imagine that, even if you are or want to be a equal, coming to him would be the honorable thing to do. And one could expect that he would apologize deeply for making you coming to him.
Which is why I said previously, and say again, that if Shotozumi was going to accept such a meeting, he WOULD travel to Japan - but he would not be a frickin' idiot. He'd make his presence known to everyone and their grandmother, passing the trip off as a last visit to his old, dying superior, yadda yadda. And if Hanzo actually
did send messengers to the various Japanese
oyabun, then Shotozumi's visits to them would wind up spiking that little plot right then and there.
In any case. You can plot reasons however you like; IMO, it was a screwup that I'll either gloss over or ignore, depending on whether I'm writing or playing.