Mariko Yashida (Joint Venture)

Mariko Yashida is a Japanese heiress and former love interest of Wolverine's. This is the Joint Venture Universe version of the character.

Learning the Game
Mariko was born the youngest child and only daughter of Shignen Yashida, head of the Yashida Clan, a powerful Japanese family with a history that dated back to before the Sengoku Jidai. All her brothers were warriors born and bred, but Mariko learned to hold her own on a different level. She studied the ways of poltiics and diplomacy in Japan, and learned how to achieve as much with a look or a stray word as any samurai's blade or hitman's gun. Shingen noticed this apititude of his daughter's, and named her the heir to the Clan, to the consternation of her brothers, save for her oldest brither, Kenichiro, who swore to protect her with his life.

The Westerner
Mariko's life changed one night in a garden in Agarashima when she met a man named James Logan. He was everything she was not: rugged, combative, uncompromising, unflinching in the face of combat. But at his core, Mariko could see a man in search of purpose -- someone who had once known the value of strength, not of the body, but of the spirit. They grew close, and eventually fell in love.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Mariko, her father Shingen was starting down a dark path. He had already disposed of her uncle, Saburo, who had gotten too close to his ties with the Japanese underworld, and exiled her cousins, Shiro and Rei, as well. Her other uncle, Tomo, had been cowed into submission. When he learned of Mariko's attraction to a gaijin -- a Westerner -- Shingen was infuriated, and began wielding his power over his clan like a cudgel.

Claiming political necessity, Shingen forced Mariko into marriage to a crime lord in his service, Noburo Hideki. He was a selfish man who did not love her, and a cruel man who abused her, and Logan immediately tried to save her. However, Mariko had been raised under the principles of giri -- duty -- and so was bound to obey her father's wishes without complaint. Shingen then had Logan poisoned, then beat him badly in a sword duel, banishing him from Agarashima, forbidding Mariko from ever laying eyes on the man she loved again.

The Gilded Cage
The following weeks were hell for Mariko. Though Shingen did not strip her status as heir to the Clan, he deferred instead to Hideki, so much so that it was clear that Hideki was only interested in the power a marriage to Mairko would give him. Imprisoned by her own sense of duty, obligation, and her principles, Mariko could do little to prevent her new husband from abusing his power the same way he abused her. She appealed to Shingen to allow the marriage to be annulled, because of the disrespect Hideki showed the Yashida legacy, but her father had reasons of his own for wanting her tied to the odious man, and he refused.

As much as it galled Mariko, she had no choice but to endure. More than once she considered ending her own life, the only blow she saw that she could strike against her husband and her father. Thought might have turned to deed, had she not met Yukio.

The Wild One Frees The Flower
To Be Disclosed (see also Wolverine)

Powers
Mariko Yashida is an ordinary human woman, albeit incredibly intelligent and politically adept.