Ryuujin Hashimoto's seventh birthday should be a joyful occasion. Instead, his parents are murdered by five men who break into their modest home in Tacoma, Washington, as the young boy hides under the kitchen table. The boy finds a new home in Tokyo with his uncle, Jiro Asano, an aikido master and director of the Cabinet Research Chamber (postwar Japan's CIA). Asano recognizes in his nephew the potential of a skillful assassin and trains him expressly for that purpose, encouraging him to eschew all emotional attachments that might distract him. Dressed head to toe in the bloody rags he has...