Yakuza (franchise)

• 1. Introduction

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  By 2024, Sega reported that the Yakuza series, known in Japan as Like a Dragon, had sold a combined 27.7 million units since its debut in 2005. Those buyers were playing games about organized crime. In the same games they could also sing karaoke, bowl, hit baseballs in a batting cage, or run a hostess club.

  Toshihiro Nagoshi created the series for Sega. It blends action-adventure, beat 'em up, and role-playing games. Its tone swings between a serious crime drama and side activities so humorous that they feel over the top.

  This documentary asks how a project like this ever got made. It follows the heroes who keep returning, and the real streets that the games rebuild with surprising care. It also asks why a crime drama keeps pausing for arcade games. Finally, it asks what happened when the games crossed into Western markets, where some material was cut and the name itself changed.

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• 2. A Hard Sell

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  Toshihiro Nagoshi first brought his story for Yakuza to scenario supervisor Hase Seishu two years before development began. Nagoshi wanted to tell the way of life of the yakuza, and he struggled to get the project approved. Stories about the Japanese underworld were common in manga and movies. They were not common in video games.

  Seishu had played video games since the days of Space Invaders. Over the previous four or five years, though, he had lost interest, because he cared more about story than about 3D visuals or gameplay. Nagoshi's pitch caught his attention anyway. He accepted the job even though it arrived at the busiest point of his professional writing career. Masayoshi Yokoyama, the writer on Sega's development team, worked under Seishu's guidance for the first two games. Seishu writes yakuza crime fiction as a novelist, and he consulted on those two games.

  The title was Nagoshi's idea. Ryū ga Gotoku translates as "Like a Dragon," and he felt that dragons carry a strong image. He hoped that players who sampled the game would get a feel for the strength and manliness of its main character.

  Inside Sega, the leadership was hesitant because the game seemed likely to appeal to a limited audience. They eventually approved it. Sony and CERO were also unhappy at first with the depiction of violence and adult material. Sony came around once Nagoshi persevered.

  The storytelling took its cues from yakuza films, among the most popular cinematic genres in Japan. The team looked especially to "V-Cinema," the direct-to-video titles that filled Japanese video rental stores.

  When Yakuza was first revealed, journalists often compared it with Sega's Shenmue series. Nagoshi knew about the comparisons and insisted that the two games were entirely different. Yu Suzuki, who created Shenmue and had worked with Nagoshi, said that the challenges he endured on Shenmue taught Nagoshi lessons that he gave back to Sega. Former Sega manager Hisashi Suzuki went further. He said Yakuza was only possible because of Shenmue, and he called it a "Sega-like" work.

  Other Sega games left their marks too. Yakuza inherited elements of the SpikeOut arcade games, which Nagoshi had worked on earlier. The development tools used to create the game's map came from Jet Set Radio.

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• 3. Kiryu and Kasuga

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  In December 2005, within the story of the first game, Kazuma Kiryu walks out of a ten-year prison sentence. He had taken the fall for the murder of his family's patriarch, in order to protect his sworn brother, Akira Nishikiyama. Kiryu belongs to the Kanto-based Tojo Clan. Waiting for him are two shocks. The clan's third chairman has been murdered, and ¥10 billion, roughly US$100 million, has been stolen from its accounts. Kiryu is also drawn into protecting a young girl, Haruka Sawamura, who seems tied to the missing money.

  The central theme across the series is Kiryu's wish to leave the yakuza for good. He wants to start over by raising orphans and living as a civilian. In Yakuza 3, set in March 2009, he runs the Morning Glory Orphanage in Okinawa, where he raises nine children, including his surrogate daughter Haruka. A business deal backed by members of the Tojo Clan threatens to tear the orphanage down. That threat sends him back to Kamurocho.

  In Yakuza 5, set in December 2012, Kiryu is working as a taxi driver when he reluctantly returns to his old organization. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life takes place in 2016. After three years in prison that he served willingly, he is released and finds that Haruka has vanished. She is later found comatose after a hit-and-run accident, and he travels to Onomichi Jingaicho in Hiroshima to learn the truth while protecting her infant son. Kiryu is playable in every numbered entry through Yakuza 6.

  He does not always carry the story alone. Yakuza 4 is told through four people, among them the loan shark Shun Akiyama, the former yakuza and convict Taiga Saejima, and the corrupt cop Masayoshi Tanimura. Yakuza 5 adds the disgraced baseball player Tatsuo Shinada. Yakuza 0 goes back to December 1988, where a young Kiryu is framed for the murder of a civilian. At the same time, cabaret club manager Goro Majima protects a helpless blind girl he was ordered to assassinate. Both incidents trace back to a mysterious place called the Empty Lot.

  Ichiban Kasuga takes over as lead in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, set in 2019. He is released after eighteen years in prison for a murder he did not commit, expecting a welcome. Instead he learns that his former patriarch has aligned himself and his family with the Omi Alliance and the police to destroy the Tojo Clan. The man Kasuga looked up to as a second father shoots him and leaves him for dead in Yokohama. Kasuga recovers and gathers companions, including a homeless nurse, a disgraced cop, and a hostess who lost her employer to gang violence. Up to six of them fight beside him in combat, and Kiryu appears only as a non-playable character before returning to playable status in later installments.

  In Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, set in 2023, Kasuga learns that his biological mother, Akane, is alive in Honolulu. He allies with Kiryu to protect her from local criminal organizations. Kiryu, meanwhile, has contracted cancer, with an undetermined amount of time to live.

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• 4. Streets Drawn From Life

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  Kamurocho, the main stage of the series, is a fictional district based on Kabukichō, a real red-light district of Tokyo. From the second game onward, the series also rebuilt other cities. Dotonbori and Shinsekai in Osaka appear as Sotenbori and Shinseicho in Yakuza 2, 5, 0, Like a Dragon, and Gaiden.

  Yakuza 3 recreates the downtown area of Naha in Okinawa as Downtown Ryukyu. Yakuza 5 stretches across Japan. Nakasu in Fukuoka becomes Nagasugai, Susukino in Hokkaido becomes Tsukimino, and the Nishiki district of Sakae in Nagoya becomes Kineicho. Yakuza 6 features Onomichi in Hiroshima. Isezakichō in Yokohama appears as Isezaki Ijincho in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment, Like a Dragon Gaiden, and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Honolulu is the setting for Infinite Wealth and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

  Each district reflects how its real counterpart looked in the year the game came out. Newer games often renovate and remodel those places. Specific stores and buildings frequently differ from reality. Developers replace them with fictionalized branding, real-life product placements, or locations that the plot needs.

  Some fans have been inspired to visit the real counterparts of these places. One reviewer praised the detailed recreation of specific districts, down to "trivial, incidental stuff," which makes virtual exploration of real locations possible. Another reviewer wrote that the series offers "the best opportunity to really get engaged with a country and its people" that he could think of. The series was not explicitly marketed as virtual tourism. Writer and producer Masayoshi Yokoyama sees Yakuza 5 in particular as a game that delivers all the fun of modern Japan.

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• 5. Fists, Heat, and Karaoke

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  Walk down a Kamurocho street in any Yakuza game and a gang of punks will eventually pick a fight. These random encounters trigger combat, in which the player uses hand-to-hand moves such as combos, grabs, throws, and finishing attacks. Some games let the player choose among several fighting styles. Objects lying on the street can be grabbed and used as weapons, and so can weapons dropped by enemies or bought in shops.

  Goro Majima and Tatsuo Shinada fight with styles built around their trademark weapons, which never wear out. Fights can end faster with powerful finishers called Heat Actions, which become usable once the player fills the Heat Gauge. Some of these include quick time events. Winning battles earns experience points to strengthen the character, along with money and items to sell or spend. Yakuza: Like a Dragon changed the formula by turning combat into turn-based role-playing battles with recruited party members. After its success, Sega confirmed that future main titles will stay turn-based, while the Judgment series keeps its action gameplay. Sega added that no solid plan exists, and the style is chosen to suit each story.

  The real sprawl lies in the side material. The series has a large number of sub-stories, which are side missions that often complement the main plot and award extra experience. Yakuza: Like a Dragon alone offered 24 different minigames. Some are quick, such as bowling, darts, and arcade games. Others are demanding professions that can take hours across several sessions. The wider list of diversions includes golf, batting cages, karaoke, poker, blackjack, Cee-lo, and Koi-Koi.

  In Cabaret Club Management, the player runs a hostess club in three-minute sessions. The goal is to earn as much money as possible by pairing the right hostess with the right client and answering their calls for help quickly. Coliseum Fights put the player through three-round mini championships to earn points for unique items. Crafting asks the player to collect components and blueprints to build powerful gear. Pocket Circuit involves self-powered cars racing in fixed lanes, much like Tamiya's Mini 4WD scale models, and Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami both include several race series and related side stories. Club Sega recreates the real Sega arcade chain, with UFO catchers, darts, and playable emulations of classic titles such as Fantasy Zone and Virtua Fighter. Some entries even offer Master System games.

  An optional superboss named Amon appears in most of the games. Some titles have more than one. Yakuza 5 gives each playable character an Amon of their own, including an idol version for Haruka to face.

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• 6. Voices and Translation

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  The Japanese voice cast reads like a guest list from across the entertainment industry. It mixes voice actors, singers, tarento, film and television actors, and radio and television celebrities. Cabaret girls and similar characters have featured models, gravure idols, and adult actresses as voice actresses and likenesses. Since the 2008 spin-off Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!, the main characters' faces have been modeled in 3D after their voice actors. Western characters speak English, as in the Virtua Fighter series, and minor Chinese and Korean characters often speak their native tongues.

  The music has its own roster. Hidenori Shoji and Hideki Sakamoto, among others, composed the three original soundtrack albums, which Wave Master published. Songs also come from Japanese artists including Crazy Ken Band, Zeebra, Ketsumeishi, and Eikichi Yazawa.

  The first game was dubbed into English for release outside Japan. After criticism of that English voice acting, every Western release through Yakuza 6 kept the original Japanese voices. That changed with the 2018 spin-off Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise. From then on, all new entries have shipped in the West with dual-language voice support.

  Translation involved cuts as well as words. The Western release of Yakuza 3 controversially removed several aspects, including the hostess and cabaret clubs, where the player fills a hostess's "love" gauge by talking, ordering the right food and drink, buying gifts, and choosing accessories until she agrees to a date. Critics said Sega was ignoring Western players' desire to experience Japanese culture. The remastered version restored that material.

  Yakuza 4 tried to repair the damage. Producer Noguchi said there was an attempt to "bring a more complete localization that was more faithful to the source material." Several name changes were reversed. Kiryu, who had been called mostly by his given name in earlier Western versions, became Kiryu by family name, closer to the original dialogue. The Yakuza Remastered Collection later brought re-translated scripts and most of the removed material back, although some missions in Yakuza 3 featuring a transphobic character depiction were dropped from every version.

  The name itself has been unstable. Like a Dragon has been the Japanese branding since 2005, while Yakuza served as the main international branding from 2006 to 2022. After the reveal of three titles at RGG Summit 2022, Sega announced the rebrand to Like a Dragon outside Japan, beginning with Like a Dragon: Ishin! in 2023. Journalists still call the franchise Yakuza, and re-releases such as Yakuza 0 Director's Cut and Yakuza Kiwami 3 keep their original title treatments.

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• 7. Spin-offs and Remakes

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  Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan!, the first spin-off, reached Japan and Asia on the 6th of March 2008. It follows the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi in Kyoto in 1605, during the Edo period. Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin! followed Sakamoto Ryōma through Japan's Bakumatsu period, between 1853 and 1867, and launched on the 22nd of February 2014 for PlayStation 3 and as a PlayStation 4 launch title. Both fictionalized historical figures are modeled after Kiryu.

  Kurohyō: Ryū ga Gotoku Shinshō, once called by the working title Project K, follows the street punk Tatsuya Ukyo. He lands in trouble with the Tojo Clan after accidentally killing one of their captains. Syn Sophia co-developed it, and it came to the PlayStation Portable in Japan on the 22nd of September 2010. A sequel followed on the 22nd of March 2012.

  Yakuza: Dead Souls is a non-canon story set during a zombie outbreak in Kamurocho. Its Japanese release was scheduled for the 17th of March 2011. The Tohoku earthquake struck on the 11th of March 2011, and the release slipped to the 9th of June 2011. The West received the game in March 2012.

  Judgment steps into the same world with a legal thriller. Takayuki Yagami, a lawyer turned private detective, investigates a serial killer in Kamurocho and uncovers a conspiracy. Japanese actor Takuya Kimura portrays him, and Greg Chun voices him in English. The game adds an investigation mode in which the player searches crime scenes for evidence, alongside fighting styles similar to Yakuza 0. It reached the PlayStation 4 in Japan on the 13th of December 2018, with the West following in June 2019.

  Lost Judgment, released in September 2021, sends Yagami to investigate bullying at a private school in Isezaki Ijincho. The case overlaps with a murder victim's discovery and a highly publicized sexual assault case in Tokyo. Its expansion, The Kaito Files, is a self-contained four-chapter story following Yagami's friend Masaharu Kaito. Kaito's multiple fighting styles stress strength that is "unrefined and reckless" rather than agility.

  Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise adapts a manga by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara, using the Yakuza formula. Its hero Kenshiro, an expert martial artist, crosses the post-apocalyptic land of Asura looking for his lost fiancée Yuria. Many of its characters are voiced by actors who play recurring roles in the main games, and Kiryu appears as an equippable skin. Streets of Kamurocho was a side-scrolling beat 'em up minigame inspired by Streets of Rage, made by Empty Clip Studios. It was available on Steam between the 17th and the 19th of October and the 13th and the 16th of November 2020, as part of Sega's 60th anniversary celebration.

  Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name stars Kiryu as a secret agent working for the Daidoji faction after the end of Yakuza 6. It arrived on the 9th of November 2023. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, released on the 21st of February 2025, stars an amnesiac Goro Majima who becomes a pirate captain hunting hidden treasure. Stranger Than Heaven is a prequel set across five Japanese districts in five different eras. It follows Makoto Daito, a young Japanese-American outcast who travels to Japan and eventually founds the Tojo Clan.

  Remakes and re-releases have kept older games in circulation. Yakuza Kiwami, a remake of the first game, came out in Japan on the 21st of January 2016. It took the top two sales spots of its release week, with 103,256 copies on PlayStation 4 and 60,427 on PlayStation 3. Yakuza Kiwami 2 added The Majima Saga, a prequel story with Majima as a playable character. Like a Dragon: Ishin! remade the original Ishin on Unreal Engine 4 in February 2023.

  Yakuza 0 Director's Cut launched on the 5th of June 2025 as a Nintendo Switch 2 launch title. It added an online horde mode called Red Light Raid, where players choose from 60 characters. Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties, released on the 12th of February 2026, adds a storyline before the events of Yakuza 3 with Yoshitaka Mine as the playable character.

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• 8. Adaptations and Acclaim

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  Takeshi Miyasaka directed Like a Dragon: Prologue, a short original video made during the Western promotion of the first game. It shows Kiryu, Nishikiyama, and Yumi growing up at the Sunflower Orphanage and leaving for Tokyo. Director Takashi Miike then made Like a Dragon: The Movie, based on the first game, which opened in Japanese theaters on the 2nd of March 2007. It premiered in the United States on the 23rd of June at the IFC theater. A stage play based on the events of Yakuza ran in Tokyo from the 24th to the 29th of April 2015.

  Television followed. A series based on Kurohyō began airing on TBS on the 5th of October 2010 and ended after 11 episodes. Its sequel in 2012 also ran for 11 episodes. A four-episode drama called Yakuza: Soul Song premiered in 2016, starring Shono Hayama. Like a Dragon: Yakuza, a Japanese and American co-production, premiered on the 25th of October 2024. Ryoma Takeuchi plays Kiryu, Kento Kaku plays Nishikiyama, and Munetaka Aoki plays Majima. The project began as an announced film before it became a television series. In February 2026, a three-episode live-action series with the drama series Nihon Touitsu aired on Amazon Prime Video. Japanese voice actors Takaya Kuroda and Hidenari Ugaki have also run a radio drama since September 2008.

  The original game was heavily acclaimed in Japan for pairing innovative gameplay with cinema-like storytelling about the country's criminal underground. Weekly Famitsu gave the series high scores. The first game earned 37 out of 40, and Yakuza 2, Yakuza 3, and Yakuza 4 each earned 38. Yakuza 5 scored a perfect 40 out of 40, the highest of any installment. Yakuza 6: The Song of Life scored 39. Each installment earned an excellence award at the Japan Game Awards, and Yakuza 3 won in the Games of the Year Division in 2009. Western versions arrived between one and three years after the originals and received generally favorable reviews.

  Reviewers have criticized the portrayal of female characters, and some noted that important women such as Haruka Sawamura and Makoto Makimura are underused. Judgment staff member Scott Strichart said players can empathize with the sexism experienced by characters such as Saori Shirosaki in the English localization.

  Sales grew slowly and then quickly. The series sold 3.2 million games worldwide as of 2009 and 4 million by September 2010. After Yakuza 4, Sega blamed slow sales in North America and Europe on "the adverse market condition" and "sluggish personal consumption." By June 2015 the series had passed 7 million units, and by 2023 it had passed 21 million. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth sold 1 million copies in the first week after launch.

  The series also found a second life as an internet joke. In 2020, a meme emerged that used deepfakes to make people and fictional characters sing the chorus of a song that first appears in the karaoke minigame of Yakuza 5. Most versions use a template from 2017, a video uploaded by the English YouTuber Dobbsyrules, who lip syncs the Taxi Driver version of the song.

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