Morishita

"fire"

- Peace? Peace for whom? With all due respect, Your Majesty, my family has lived on this land for generations! This city was built on our blood and sweat! We have as much a right to be here as anyone else!

Mayor Morishita was the Fire Nation authority in charge of the city of Yu Dao, a Fire Nation colony in the western Earth Kingdom. Descended from a colonist family that had served the Fire Lord for generations, Morishita was a staunch opponent of the Harmony Restoration Movement. His wife was an Earthbender, as was his daughter, Kori.

History
During the Harmony Restoration movement, Yu Dao started the process of decolonization. However, the age of the colony, as well as its status as the first of the Fire Nation colonies, led to particular problems. After his daughter, Kori, attempted to assassinate Fire Lord Zuko, Zuko himself came to Yu Dao to personally oversee the dismantling of the colony. However, Morishita refused to leave the city, telling Zuko that he was wrong to let the Earth King and Avatar bully him into doing something so obviously bad for his people. After Morishita compared him to Fire Lord Ozai, unfavorably, Zuko attacked him; nonetheless, he continued to speak his mind, saying that Zuko was clearly not his father, because Ozai, despite his flaws, was never a coward or a traitor. This enraged Zuko; luckily, at this moment Morishita's wife intervened with Earthbending to save him. This, combined with the revelation that Kori too was an Earthbender, shocked Zuko enough that he reconsidered his position on the colonies and withdrew his support for the Harmony Restoration Movement.

Personality
Morishita was a caring, if outspoken man. He was devoted to his family, and clearly did not hold to the theories of Fire Nation superiority held by some other, marrying an Earthbender woman. He was shown to love his family very much, defending his daughter after her attempted assassination of the Fire Lord even in the face of Zuko's threats. Highly concerned with the well-being of his city, he strongly opposed the Avatar-led efforts to remove the Fire Nation colonies from the Earth Kingdom, believing that because the families had lived there for so long, they were as much citizens of the place as the Earth Kingdom people. For this reason, he did not think too highly of Zuko, considering him weak for not standing up to the Earth King and Avatar in defense of the Fire Nation colonists in the Earth King, even going so far as the call him a traitor to his own nation.

Trivia

 * Morishita (森下) is a fairly common Japanese surname.