Who is Kazuma Kiryu?
A man whose entire story is other people trying to make him come back, and Kiryu trying, politely, to be left alone.
Kazuma Kiryu is the protagonist of the first six numbered games, of Zero, and of half of everything since. Raised in the Sunflower orphanage by yakuza captain Shintaro Kazama, he joins the Dojima Family, earns the tattoo and title of the Dragon of Dojima, and spends 1995 in the series' founding catastrophe: taking the blame for his boss's murder to shield his sworn brother, and losing the woman he loves and the brother both to the decade that follows.
THE ARC
1995 · todayThe prisoner and the chairman
Released in 2005 into the missing-ten-billion-yen affair, Kiryu ends the first game as the Tojo Clan's Fourth Chairman, and immediately resigns. Nearly every sequel is the underworld trying to hand him the job back.
The father
From Yakuza 3 his center of gravity shifts to Morning Glory, the Okinawa orphanage he runs, and to Haruka, the girl he raised. The series' emotional engine is a legendary fighter who would rather be cooking for nine children.
The ending that wasn't
Yakuza 6 (2016) was billed as the end of his saga; he faked his death to protect his family and vanished. The modern games keep finding him anyway: a dying guest star in Like a Dragon, the lead of Gaiden (2023), co-lead of Infinite Wealth (2024).
The voices
Japanese: Takaya Kuroda, for twenty years. English: Darryl Kurylo in the 2006 dub, silent (subtitled Japanese) for a decade after, then Kurylo again from 2020, a full-circle piece of casting.
Yakuza 6 · Western box (PS4)
The cover of his billed farewell: the dragon tattoo, and in front of it Haruka holding her son. Everything the series says Kiryu is actually fighting for, arranged on one box.