I’ll be posting ideas on how to make combat blazing fast here in the comments. This is leading up until I make a multipage document of this adventure.
Initiative: I have to look at how important the initiative roll is. I know there’s a technique Tactical Assessment that lets you spend opportunities on your initiative roll, but… I don’t know if that’s so important that the following will break anything.
Session-start initiative roll, have the players roll initiative once and then that’s their value for the rest of the session.
Or, every combat the players go first, then the enemies. This allows the players to go into a combat, and say that the Shugenja always gets to set up and then the Bushi get to follow up with their attacks. Also makes sure the enemies don’t just straight up gank the players before they have a chance to set up.