Yakuza Series: How to Become Kazuma Kiryu
Like a Dragon: Yakuza, an Amazon Originals live-action drama series based on Sega’s long-running game franchise, will premiere on Prime Video on October 25. Directed by Masaharu Take (The Naked Director), the series partially follows the story of the first game, 2005’s Yakuza, but also tells an original story. The series follows the series’ protagonist, Kazuma Kiryu, as he misadventures in the Japanese underworld, set in the fictional Tokyo red-light district of Kamurocho in the mid-1990s and 2005.
The stoic antihero Kiryu is played by actor Ryoma Takeuchi. Takeuchi played the title role in Kamen Rider Drive in 2014, quickly gaining a wide audience in Japan before going on to star in several acclaimed drama series and films. He voiced Justice Smith’s character Tim Goodman in the Japanese dub of the 2019 Detective Pikachu film adaptation, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a Pokémon trainer. A very physical actor with a football background, Takeuchi is a sensitive performer who has gained recognition for his roles in the theater. Like a Dragon: Yakuza will be the actor’s first leading role in a global drama series.
“I was surprised to be offered this role,” Takeuchi told IGN Japan shortly after the series was announced at the historic Gajoen Tokyo hotel in Tokyo’s Meguro district. “I knew the game series and had played the first game at my uncle’s house. It’s a real challenge to play a character from an existing work, and I thought very carefully about whether I was suitable for the role of Kiryu and whether it was right for me. From the beginning, I knew that I had to give it my all, otherwise I would never make it.”
Takeuchi explains that he saw Kiryu as a “strong, well-built, heroic character,” but he acknowledged that simply copying those traits wouldn’t be enough – not least because Like a Dragon: Yakuza’s story is part adaptation and part original story. He says his mission was to portray the character with great respect for the original game, but essentially create his own version of Kazuma Kiryu. “Instead of becoming Kiryu himself, I had to create Kiryu from scratch – that’s when he and I started to bond and become one,” he says.
Takeuchi saw Kiryu as a man who was “hungry for love.” Just like in the games, Kiryu grew up in the Sunflower Orphanage in the series after the death of his parents.
“I think we all subconsciously chase what we lack in life, and we all want to be loved,” says Takeuchi. “With that in mind, I thought about what Kiryu might be looking for in Kamurocho as he strives to become the Dragon of Dojima. He wants a family, he wants love, and he doesn’t even realize how much that drives him. He’s a hero who lives his life in honesty, but he fights when he has to fight, and he sometimes makes mistakes.”
Despite Kiryu’s popularity among Like a Dragon fans around the world, Takeuchi says he avoided the pressure of meeting the expectations of the games’ fans.
“I have a lot of respect for fans’ feelings,” he says. “But when I play a character, I have to express it in my own way, so I can’t pay attention to other people’s prejudices. I researched the games for myself to identify Kiryu’s qualities and embody them in my own way. Of course, I hope fans are happy with my portrayal – but I can say with confidence that I did my best to play Kiryu. There’s no point in trying to outdo the original game; rather, I wanted to pay respect to the games while creating something new as an artist.”
Takeuchi is 1.85 m tall and has an imposing figure, which he perfected for the role through hard training and a carefully controlled diet of his own design.
In the series, we see Kiryu in 2005 as the Dragon of Dojima, a fierce fighter who sculpted his body through a decade of training in prison, while scenes set in the mid-1990s show him in his late teens, just starting out. Takeuchi was careful to highlight the contrast between these two eras, partly through his clothing and makeup (the 1990s Kiryu has bleached highlights and smoother skin), but also through his physique, altering his training accordingly so that the younger version of Kiryu appears less well-built.
“If we had more time between filming in the 1990s and 2005, I would have gone even further and had a different physique in each era, but I worked hard in the time we had,” he says. “For scenes where I would show skin, I adapted my training to that scene.”
Beyond his appearance, Takeuchi wanted to portray the difference in Kiryu’s behavior before and after his ascension to the underworld. In the 1990s, when Kiryu and his friends are young and inexperienced, Takeuchi reflects that their emotions are more intense and their desires are more powerful.
“I was aware of the passion and enthusiasm that only young people have,” he says. “It’s the kind of energy you only have on the cusp of your twenties. I wanted to bring out warmer emotions when Kiryu is young and then leave them out for the 2005 part to create a contrast.”
As you’d expect from the Like a Dragon game series, the Amazon Original series promises plenty of action – and Takeuchi performs fight scenes himself. He says that when learning martial arts for the role, he first focused on Kiryu, the Dragon of Dojima who has become a skilled fighter after serving his prison sentence, and then worked backwards from there.
“When the story begins in 1995, Kiryu’s fighting style is still rough and not very effective because he has not learned any martial arts and only follows his instincts,” says Takeuchi. “I wanted to show how he grows as a fighter and is gradually able to defeat his opponents. Therefore, his fighting style is very different in the two eras.”
Instead of specific references, Kiryu’s fighting style in 2005 is partly based on the game and partly developed from scratch.
Like a Dragon: Yakuza is actually not Takeuchi’s first collaboration with Masaharu Take, having appeared as an extra in the director’s 2014 action comedy In the Hero. “I was on screen for about two seconds,” he laughs. He describes Take as a director who can fill his sets with passion and positivity. “Sometimes he gives us complicated instructions, and sometimes he lets us do what we want, which creates a fulfilling environment for us actors,” he says.
“I don’t think anyone else could have made a show like this,” he continues. “Take was able to capture the feel of Kamurocho, a city with a vibrant population. He made a point of casting extras as Kamurocho residents through a lot of auditions so we could just immerse ourselves in the world he had brought to life. That was a luxury.”
Kamurocho is truly alive in the games, almost a character in its own right, and Takeuchi says great care was taken to recreate it for the screen. Kamurocho was originally based on a real-life Tokyo nightlife district; the version we see in the series was mostly shot on production sets and depicts the area slightly differently in each of the series’ two eras.
“Kamurocho in 1995 is a vibrant, warm, sparkling place full of energy,” says Takeuchi. “The set was so detailed, from every passerby to every street corner, that I felt like I had gone back in time. It didn’t feel like a set at all. Yes, there is some computer animation, but I think it was the people who really brought it to life. You can’t fake that.”
“On the other hand, after Kiryu was released from prison and returned to Kamurocho in 2005, there were various changes in the law and the atmosphere is colder than when he left in 1995. While the Kamurocho of 1995 features warm colors like orange, the one in 2005 features cooler grays and blues. It reflects Kiryu’s loneliness and feeling of being out of tune with the people around him.”
When Like a Dragon: Yakuza launches worldwide on Prime Video in October, it will follow in the footsteps of global hit series set in Japan, such as Shogun and Tokyo Vice, as well as game adaptations like Amazon’s own incredible Fallout series. The Like a Dragon game franchise is already highly acclaimed and sells well around the world, but the drama series is sure to reach an even wider, more diverse audience. While the production itself requires collaboration with Amazon’s global teams, the series was written, filmed and produced in Japan, so Takeuchi is cautiously excited about the show’s reception overseas.
“I’m excited to see what happens,” he says. “The games are popular overseas, but the show has elements that may be uniquely Japanese, and Kiryu is a very Japanese character. The show also has a specific feel that may be different from other successful game adaptations, so I’m excited to see how it’s received.”
“The series is set in the underworld of Kamurocho and tells stories about the Yakuza, but it is also very lively. It is dark but also light-hearted. Its story is driven by hope, and although it contains strong depictions of violence, it also raises questions about the meaning of family, parenthood, love and so on. These are universal themes that everyone can identify with.”
Although the show’s story doesn’t exactly mirror that of the games, Takeuchi says that even when developing the show from the ground up, references to the game were inevitable. “I think that’s the appeal of the original game series – it’s impossible to stray too far from the original story,” he says. “The game developers at Sega told me that the show was faithful to the games and that my portrayal was faithful to Kiryu, so that’s enough for me!”
Daniel Robson is Editor-in-Chief of IGN Japan. Find him on Twitter Here.
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