Compared to the Kondo Group, which had the Doma Family backing it, Kotaro Katsura was ultimately on his own. Even if he had secretly built up some forces, in a straight-up fight, his men could only be called The Crowd... To put it simply, as long as the Doma Family didn't fall and both Kondo Isao and Hijikata didn't go down at the same time, the Kondo Group could afford to fail countless times, but Katsura could only afford to fail once.
But just how hard would it be to bring down the Doma Family? Never mind its armed forces in the shadows; its public influence alone was enough to intimidate anyone. The fifth of the Four Great Zaibatsu wasn't a joke!
Unlike in the Celestial Empire, in this country, once capital reached the level of the Four Great Zaibatsu or the Doma Family, even the government was reluctant to provoke it. You could even say that the government was controlled by these capital interests. If a zaibatsu of that scale fell, even the mildest consequences would probably include... an economic setback of at least several decades!
Unless they brought it on themselves or failed to grasp the pulse of the times, no one could shake the foundations of the Four Great Zaibatsu.
One thing affected everything! In fact, the reason the Shinomiya Family was still holding on was that the government—or, more accurately, the other major zaibatsu—had their reservations. Of course, they had reservations, but they were still making plans. There was no helping it. To avoid causing turmoil, the Shinomiya Family couldn't be allowed to collapse overnight. It had to be a gradual process, chipping away at them bit by bit... If they didn't do that and the Shinomiya Family went bankrupt all at once, what would happen