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An assassin hired by the Yakuza in Johnny Mnemonic. He isn't named in the story, but in the film adaptation the character Shinji is based on him, played by Denis Akiyama.

Description[]

He looks deceptively like a mild little guy, meek and smiling; the kind who would cry while singing his corporate anthem; the tourist who would frequent to a bar that puts out miniature rice crackers with seaweed garnish, shakes hands endlessly with the bartender, and would most likely to wind up drunk on sake. A guy that would be pegged as innately conservative, left alone by pimps and dealers. Not up for much, and careful with his credit when he was.

We was dressed like a standard tourist tech, with plastic zoris and a Hawaiian shirt printed with blowups of his firm's most popular microprocessor.

Background[]

He must had modifications in Chiba City. Part of his left thumb was amputated somewhere behind the first joint; it was replaced with a prosthetic tip, and the stump was cored and fit with a spool and socket molded from one of the Ono-Sendai diamond analogs. The spool was wound with three meters of monomolecular filament. Additionally, his nervous system was jacked up "factory custom".

Johnny Mnemonic[]

He was hired by the Yakuza to assassinate Ralfi Face. He was outside the Drome when Ralfi was led out with Johnny. He sidled out of nowhere smiling, bowed lightly and his thumb fell hanging; then it arced out and cut Ralfi in pieces. Johnny lifted his gym bag and shot with his hidden shotgun, but he missed thanks to Shinji's enhanced reflexes.

Molly Millions and Johnny fled to Nighttown where the assassin traced them. He reached them to the top of The Pit, and the gallery of Lo Teks around became silent. He took in with a tourist's calm, and met Johnny's eyes and a memory of Paris clicked into place for him. As the assassin's eyes locked in Johnny, he felt shutters behind the assassin's eyes whirring. The Lo Teks parted to let him step up to the bench. He bowed smiling, removed his sandals which he aligned perfectly, and stepped down to the Killing Floor and calmly walked towards Johnny.

Then Molly appeared, hitting the Floor, making it moving, heaving and screaming. He rode with it, and judging its movement perfectly, he walked towards her. With the ease of a regular social gesture, he removed his fingertip and flung his filament at her, which she dodged. He retracted it filament and whirled it as a ghostly polychrome shield, which he spun in front of him. Then he took an expression of frustration, a combination of culture shock: revulsion of what he was seeing and hearing, incomprehension, frustration and disbelief. The "shield" shrunk as he was retracting the device, whipping his arm above his head; the thumb curved out for Molly as he brought his arm down. But that moment the whip-lashing Floor carried her down, missing the hit; and as the taut molecule thread passed over his head, he was lifted, and took his hand off behind the wrist, amputating him.

Johnny saw him gracefully dive in a gap in the Floor just in front of him, obviously to recognise his defeat and honorfully take his own life, and plunged down to Nighttown. The Lo Teks roared.

Later they searched the Floor for the severed hand, but it was never found; just cut marks of the molecule thread.

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