Hondo City

Hondo from above, 2130s

Hondo City sprawls across the larger island of Japan, seeming to stretch from Hokkaido to Wakayama, and is one of the great powers of the 22nd century. While Hondo presents a calm, structured face to the world, there is endemic corruption within both society and the Judge ranks.

Most of its development comes from the Judge Dredd Megazine strips Shimura and Hondo City Law by Robbie Morrison.

Description

Hondo is the most technologically advanced of the Megacities, and its energy needs are supplied by orbiting nuclear power satellites.

Hondo, 2111

As with the other megacities, Hondo is beset with a high population that live in cramped, ever-taller buildings. Rare among the megacities, its population have a high level of employment. There is a judicially sanctioned "pleasure quarter" in Tokyo District called Yoshiwara ("the Nightless City"), with the intent of containing and controlling the sex industries. Underneath is Hondo's own undercity, the decayed and buried remains of the original Tokyo that are crawling with powerful oni-like mutants

Hondo boasts of its superiority as a society over foreign megacities, but it does this often by deliberately ignoring those considered outcasts and in poverty. Officially, these johatsu – "disappeared people", including everyone from homeless vagrants to those hiding from yakuza – don't even exist. The Sanya Sub-District, or Eta District (eta meaning "the filth", traditionally the Japanese underclass), is where those openly ostracised and discriminated against for non-conformity are driven to, including former criminals and most commonly the Burakumin, those whose professions involved them getting close to death (butchers, grave diggers, executioners). They are heavily discriminated against for cultural reasons and suffer criminal exploitation.

Hondo street in 2143

The yakuza societies run nearly all crime in Hondo, to the extent that they are sometimes seen as maintaining a balance. The yakuza have their fingers in almost all industries, both legal and illegal, and despite its pretences Yoshiwara is controlled by them. The psychotic thrill-killing bosozuki – street samurai – gangs bike around Hondo committing random acts of brutality and atrocity in the hope that the Yakuza will notice and hire them.

Several islands off the coast of Hondo live a traditional rural Japanese lifestyle.

The imperial family dwell on an artificial flying island called Ukiyo, which recreates a mythical past Japan that never was. They are guarded by elite samurai.

History

Trade was already going on between Hondo and Texas City in 2075.

Hondo gave aid to Indonesia when it was ravaged by mutated coral, with their world famous techno-wizard Masamune Taoka creating a "cybernetic serpent" that infiltratred the coral and allowed it to be manipulated into city block forms. In return, Hondo forced Indonesia to take tens of thousands of their "undesirables". When the coral Web became crime-ridden, Hondo military forces established a blockade.

The Hondo City Corporate Pension Fund bought the British Royal Family from the Gifthorse corporation in 2101 and developed "a time-share model" so multiple polities could share in having a monarch.

Lee visits Hondo

In 2106, the family of a yakuza Oyabun were kidnapped as leverage for a clan merger. As the resulting crime group would be more powerful than the Council of Justice, the Council called in the Culling Crew to murder the family.

In 2107, the notorious assassin Stan Lee visited Hondo for an assassination job - wiping out an entire yakuza household and the Judge guarding it. Judge-Inspector Shimura, then a cadet, was the only survivor.

Mega-City One had been a rival of Hondo's for years and had placed robot sleeper agents within the city in case of a war. One sleeper was accidentally triggered in 2111 and began murdering strategic targets, forcing Judge Dredd to try and stop the robot while making sure Judge-Inspector Totaro Sadu did not learn of its origin. Sadu came close to learning the truth.

The city joined Luna-1's "Global Lunar Partnership Treaty" sometime in the 2110s, agreeing to guarantee the neutrality of Luna-1 and provide Judicial assistance. In reality it hoped, like all Treaty members, to have influence in the lucrative colony.

Hondo's technological superiority was in part due to the corporate mogul Masumune Taoka, who had become a cyborg to stave off mutation; they even loaned him out to Indonesia to control their coral growth, and used that to force the country to accept unwanted citizens.

In 2113, Masumune Taoka had gone quite mad eand tried to conquer the city by mind-controlling its cybernetic infrastructure. He was slain by Judge-Inspector Shimura. Of equal significance, the Hondo Judges gained their first female member, Aiko Inaba, after (despite pressure) Shimura passed her and gave up a potential seat on the Council of Five to do. His friend Itami got the job instead.

Judgement Day summit.

During Judgement Day, Hondo's firepower was brought to bear against Sabbat's hordes. Skreemer sonic cannons were deployed to drive the zombies out, using all of the city's power supply in the process. Being the only secure city on Earth meant that Hondo was the site of the pan-judicial conference about the crisis and later the staging point for the strikeback. A Judge strikeforce donned Hondo's Samurai battle-armour to carve their way through the zombies, and Sadu died giving Dredd and Johnny Alpha their chance to kill Sabbat. (The victory came just in time as the zombie hordes had finally broken into Hondo, with Hilda McGruder and Chief Judge Ohno fighting side-by-side.)

Sagawa, oyaban of the Igakashi Society, used an ambush on Hondo Judges (including Judge-Inspectors' Shimura and Itami) at Chiba District to secretly have his mind swapped with Judge Itami - thus escaping terminal cancer. This mean he ended up on the Council, while Shimura was presumed dead.

Shimura survived (having washed up on the Nii-Shima island) went ronin to take down Sagawa's clan. Instead of slaying Sagawa, Shimura would kill his friend Itami while the real Sagawa used his judicial authority to send Inaba after him in 2116. With the aid of Inaba and Sagawa's own daughter Michiko, Shimura prevented Sagawa from killing Chief Judge Ohno and replacing him as 'Itami' - though Michiko would go on to inherit the yakuza, and Inaba was aware that various yakuza-run Judges had known of the plot and intervened to preserve their status quo.

The 2116 International Mega-City Sumo Championships was held in Hondo but won by Cal-Hab.

Shimura spent the late 2110s pursued both by Hondo City Justice and various criminal organisations, and left a trail of dead crims behind him. In 2117 he put a contract out on himself to lure out the Kyohen Assassination Network - literally run by the robot Network, a Taoka creation. This succeeded and Shimura gained the information, but not before Nii-Shima had been massacred in pursuit of information and children sold off to slave markets. Shimura would now have to track them down. While raising funds for this in 2118, Shimura was captured by the mutant druglord Ryujin, who used his own blood as the narcotic Dragonfire; the ronin was forcibly addicted and sent after the psi courtesan Asako Takumi, who had stolen a geneprint from him. This would backfire as Shimura was instead save Takumi and slay Ryujin. In the process, Shimura briefly took a ward in the young psi Junko.

In 2119, Hondo hired criminals from the Web to travel to Mega-City Two's ruins and loot the judicial data vaults. This gave Hondo access to sensitive MC-1 information, with that city none the wiser.

The mercenary Reiver stole Mega-City One military surplus in 2119 and flogged it to the Onada Yakuza Clan. Dredd visited the city and worked with Inaba to track it down, first shaking down the Kurosawa Clan; their leader said the clans had too much honour to buy those weapons and cause a city-destroying war, seconds before the Onada's shot him dead. To quickly resolve the issue, Inaba unofficially gave Dredd his lawgiver (not allowed in Hondo limits) and the two of them wiped out most of the Onada.

Dredd in the slum "Ronin District", watched by bosozuka

During the 2120s, a slum area of the city had become known as Ronin District after Shimura began defending it from street criminals.

Hondo was one of the victims of Ula Danser's terrorist attacks.

In 2123, Hondo joined Mega-City One and Brit-Cit in presenting a united front against the alien Law Lords. In the event of the Lords arriving on Earth, Hondo will go to war against them.

Judge Dredd made a return visit to the city in 2126 after the Shogun's Executioner, Judge-Inspector Yoji Sesoku, had covertly murdered yakuza witnesses under Mega-City protection. Dredd recruited Shimura to kill the Executioner on the city's behalf. (Inaba had been Dredd's escort and to her irritation she was busted down to traffic duty for losing him) After Shimura slaughtered Sesoku's allies in the Tsunashima Yakuza Society, Sesoku took Inaba hostage to draw the ronin out. This, of course, led to his death.

Taoka's daughter, former vid-star Amber Taoka, had inherited her father's company and by the 2120s had a public desire to seperate it from his legacy, which by this point included a murderous cyborg cult named Deus X that worshipped him. The organisation made a public display of terror by butchering everyone onboard the bullet train before targeting Amber, who was defended by Shimura and Inaba. She took the ronin as her personal bodyguard and lover, being powerful enough that Justice Department looked the other way.

The Justice HQ in the 2130s, complete with Judge statue

In 2127, Amber Taoka used the resources of the Corporation to reclaim and detoxify the Radlands of Ji in the hope of making it liveable again. Stan Lee led a coalition of Radlands' gang emissaries in a retaliatory strike, battling Shimura, Inaba, and Dredd before he was defeated.

Chief Judge Kobayashi (or "Shogun Judge") took office in 2131. Within a year, he celebrated Hondo's lowest crime statistics in 25 years which definitely weren't ignoring various yakuza actions.

Justice Department liaised with the Otomo Institute to create a generation of high-power psi Judges, culminating in Judge Junko Asahara. The program ended in 2132 when Inaba and Asahara discovered that Gideon Otomo was a madman plotting to install his pupils in strategic places across Hondo, so he could potentially take over.

After an attempted yakuza takeover of Mega-City One's Low Life, Dirty Frank was given permission to take a "Long Walk" to Hondo and take down the gang in question, as well as arrest and return corrupt Judge Aimee Nixon. The yakuza were aware he was coming and he only survived his first minute due to ex-undercover Judges Yukiji and Inamoto, who were at war with the same syndictae; Yujiji was not happy Frank was sent and not someone more obviously competent. The group tracked yakuza hed Masahisa Yamaguchi to a mansion in Otomo province. Yukiji and Inamoto died saving Frank from execution, and Frank sentenced Yamaguchi to death before forcibly extracting Nixon via the MC-1 embassy. Hondo Justice attempted to stop them but was tricked into thinking they were dead.

The mythical Forty-Seven Ronin were resurrected as monstrous undead in 2133, butchering their way across Hondo.

In 2140, the Mongolian mutant Warlord Chang had led his forces to the China Sea and was now preparing to assault Hondo. Intelligence reports forewarned Hondo that his first strike would be on Ukiyo and the imperial family, planning to psychologically shock the city, and the Judges planned to evacuate the young Emperor Sashi to Mega-City One for safety - only for Chang's forces to attack before this could happen. The samurai Mizo & Sukonami fought off the first two waves of minions, only for Sukonami to be possessed by Chang's warlock Kabal and slaughter the guards. Mizo and Sukonami's love for each other disrupted the possession long enough for them both to die together, giving the Emperor a chance to escape to Hondo.

When the Four Horseman manifested in 2142, Hondo was one of the megacities whose nuclear missiles began to try and fire themselves.

Judges

Judge-Inspector Sadu, in the original McCarthy uniform design (art by Colin Macneil)

The Judge-Inspectors are highly disciplined and well-armed, and are similar in mindset and culture to ancient samurai. Their uniforms have bio-circuitry links allowing them to use their tendo stave weapons (a form of bludgeon and also a hidden built in laser rifle.) and laser-shuriken discs as extensions of their own bodies. In following their samurai leanings, energy-based sabers, futuristic nunchucks and traditional katanas are also used.

Unlike foreign Judges, they wear no badge with their name on; their names are printed on the rising sun symbol on their uniforms, viewable only through the visor on another judge's helmet, with the intent that the citizens see justice as one entity rather than a group of individuals. Originally they piloted high-speed Japanese versions of Mega-City One's Lawmaster cycles, but they have recently upgraded to hovercycles. Traditionally the city was ruled by a chief judge but in more recent stories the head of state is now known as the Shogun Judge.

The Judges rarely visit Ukiyo and have to be granted special audience.

Shimura, in the Frank Quitely version of the uniform

Despite their high discipline, the judge-inspectors have the freedom to conduct sexual relationships unlike their American counterparts, and the law in Hondo seems slightly less harsh.

The Justice Department suffers from infiltration by elements of the yakuza societies, leading to corruption and inefficiency – nearly every District House in Hondo has a yakuza judge in its command strata. The yakuza societies and many elements within the judiciary view each other as a necessary evil in order to maintain a balance in Hondo. In an encounter with yakuza infiltrators, Inaba was told that the Chief Judge was a mere figurehead and it was those around him that wielded the real power.

Intense institutionally sexism meant it took until 2113 for the first female Judge to be drafted. While others would follow, Inaba and others could be given the crapper jobs.

Hondo's Tokko Division

Hondo's equivalent of the Special Judicial Service is the Tokko Division, which can enforce seppuki. They wear a black version of the usual uniform. As with the Council of Justice, they were often more concerned with the look of things than following the actual law: in 2217, they allowed a conflict between Shimura and a crime syndicate to play out to rid Justice Department of the 'shame' of a ronin.

There is an equivalent of Wally Squad.

Notes

• The earliest Hondo stories have some dated jokes at Japan's expense ("Our Man in Hondo" having captions written stereotyped 'Japan speaking English') and the very first mention was as "Nip-Cit", which was never used again.

• Former editors and creators have said that Hondo rebuilding Mega-City Two was related to a planned storyline which was then discontinued. When a reader questioned why it was being ignored in prog 1738, Tharg the Mighty (actually Matt Smith) said he had made "an emerald executive decision" that the Hondo story did not count, because nobody had paid any attention to it since; in 1741 he had say he would "rather forget the idea was ever mooted", viewing it a mistake. Michael Carroll, who had written the story in 1738 that ignored Hondo, wrote a later story saying the Hondo Cluster was an abandoned white elephant.

• When Tiger Sun Dragon Moon was originally published, the 2140 setting was fifteen years ahead of the contemporary Dredd stories. The Hondo Judge depicted wore a very different uniform that other Dreddworld strips have not depicted as they catch up with, and pass, 2140.