Kōzō Tahara
Gender	Male
Race	Human
Birthplace	Japan
Relatives	Mai Kashiwagi (Daughter), Unnamed wife
Professional Status
Occupation	Scientist
Behind The Scenes
First Appearance	The New Star Twinkles in the Dawn Sky...
Last Appearance	The New Star Twinkles in the Dawn Sky...

Kōzō Tahara, is Mai's father, and the only survivor of the first investigative team that went into the Hell's Gate.

Role in storyEdit

Tahara receives a phone call from her school. In a hurry to get there, Tahara has Li drive him. While waiting outside the school in the car, Li gets paid a visit by Mao who reports that employees of the Meyer & Hilton Company have arrived at a Shinjuku hotel. These men are under the watch of Huang and had been talking about needing Tahara’s power. Li is actually listening in on the conversation going on inside the school through the special watch that he switched with Tahara’s earlier. Mai, who has a very strained relationship with her father Tahara, is denying that she burned anything and claims that it was burning in front of her when she came to her senses. Hearing this, Tahara finally speaks up and drags Mai out of the principal’s office. On the car ride home, he asks Mai if it what she claimed is true and then peppers her with questions about if this is the first time or if it’s been happening frequently. She doesn’t answer him and instead says that it’s unusual for him to be talking to her. Tahara responds to this by trying to grab her, but she frees herself from his grip on her bandaged arm.

When Mai ends up excusing herself by saying that her father might come home today. However, Mai finds no one at home, so she runs back out into the city at night. At that time, Tahara is in his office angrily rejecting a phone call invitation from the Meyer & Hilton Company men. After hanging up, Tahara notices that the flower he has on his windowsill is glowing and goes to water it. Mai meanwhile attempts to shoplift a CD and gets caught, but Li happens to be in the store and saves her. He then helps her out again when she gets stopped and questioned by the police for being out alone at this late hour by pretending to be her brother. Thinking that her father told Li to come watch over her, Mai yells a bunch of hateful things before she starts crying. Li wipes a tear from her face and when she says that she doesn’t want to go back to that dark and empty home, he suggest that they play until morning.

As Tahara hangs up the phone, he hears Li asking him if it’s true that he used his daughter as an experiment. Li also questions what Tahara put into her wrist. Starting from the beginning, Tahara explains that he is the only person remaining from the first investigative team that went into the Hell’s Gate. He had taken from there a certain substance that he discovered could seal a Contractor’s ability when embedded into a Contractor’s body. At the time, he had been employed by the Meyer & Hilton Company. When he found out about his daughter’s ability, he tried to seal it off by putting the substance into her wrist. He continued his research because the seed would someday decay and her abilities would activate again. Tahara realized that it was impossible to completely seal off the powers, and what’s more, the person embedded with the seed would be transformed into a Moratorium. Thus, he now feels guilty about having changed her into a monster because he didn’t want her to become a Contractor. Continuing his explanation, Tahara says that all the data was destroyed, Mai’s memories were deleted with the ME, and he left the company. When Tahara claims that he really didn’t want to make Mai an experiment, Li accuses him of abandoning everything and running away. This gets Tahara mad enough to pin Li to the bookcase and declare again that it’s impossible to seal off the abilities, so he couldn’t continue with the meaningless experiment that his daughter became. As he calms down, Tahara reveals that he had two seeds. One was the one in Mai’s wrist and the other was planted to grow a new plant for when the seed in Mai’s wrist decayed. He had hoped that this would allow him to seal off forever the Moratorium that Mai would become.

Tahara then tells Li that the only time he was able to rest his mind was when he was watering this plant. However, that’s over now because the seed was not able to bear fruit. As Li starts to walk out, Tahara admits that he was scared of the moment where he would see the result of his mistake. That night, Hei attacks kidnapper’s warehouse and forces his way through until he comes face to face with Luke. Hei manages to keep from getting sliced apart by Luke, but he does get his mask cut off. The fight gets interrupted when Kenneth sees Tahara come in and ask for his daughter back. Although he refuses to return to the company, Tahara is willing to hand over his research. Since Tahara wants Mai back first, Kenneth lets her go back to her father, but Mai says that she doesn’t want to because she doesn’t know who he is. Tahara then walks up and grabs her arm, causing her flame powers to flare up again. With his daughter back, Tahara tosses Kenneth the remains of the plant that he had been growing. Kenneth thinks that this is a joke, but Tahara insists that this is all his research. Before Kenneth can take the flower though, it burns up because of Mai’s power. Even after Tahara hugs her, Mai continues to resist her father’s grasp, saying that her real father is cooler and more amazing. When Tahara admits that her father is a cruel person, Mai actually rejects this notion and says that she loves her father. Having heard this, Tahara tells Mai that he loves her too, but, unbeknownst to her, he’s also holding a dagger ready to stab her.

Before Tahara can kill his daughter, Luke fires at his hand and forces him to drop the weapon. Since they have no more use for him, Luke follows this up by impaling Tahara with a projectile. By now, however, Hei has managed to get behind Luke and him. In his final breaths, Tahara tells his daughter that his work is finally finished and says to her that he’s home. With tears in her eyes, Mai welcomes him back.