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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Let me tell you this in your final moments. The one who killed those eighteen men all the way back in 1985... Well, it was me. | „ |
| ~ Katsuragi revealing to Masayoshi Tanimura that he is truly the one behind the Ueno Seiwa hit. |
Isao Katsuragi is one of the overarching antagonists in the Yakuza Saga of the Like a Dragon (Ryū ga Gotoku, formerly known as Yakuza in the west) franchise. He is one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Hiroaki Arai) of Yakuza 4.
He is the slimy, manipulative and ambitious captain of the Ueno Seiwa Clan who is one of the masterminds behind the clan's massacre in 1985, which he framed Taiga Saejima for. Wanting to get rid of anyone who knows the truth behind the hit, he manipulates Saejima's stepsister Yasuko into murdering various members of the Tojo Clan's Shibata Family with the false promise he would allow Saejima to be released from prison.
He was voiced by Fumihiko Tachiki.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
Past[]
- In 1985, he conspired with his Ueno Seiwa oath brother Junji Sugiuchi, and Kazuo Shibata, a member of the Tojo Clan, to set up a massacre on the Ueno Seiwa so can raise up in the ranks. He has Taiga Saejima carry out the hit, and secretly replaced the bullets in the guns he used with rubber ones, and so when Saejima shot the eighteen men, they were merely wounded instead of outright killed, allowing Katsuragi to actually kill them. This also means Katsuragi is indirectly responsible for Saejima getting arrested and spending 25 years in prison, made worse as Saejima was moved to a prison in Okinawa that was illegally funded by Seishiro Munakata, the corrupt deputy commissioner of the Tokyo police, where he was brutally beaten by a prison guard.
- Saejima was originally planned to be joined by his oath brother Goro Majima for the hit, but Majima was stopped when Shibata forcefully took him out of commission by having his men torture him, leading to Majima to lose his left eye, which Katsuragi is indirectly responsible for.
- He's also indirectly responsible for Shimano punishing Majima by exiling him to Sotenbori, Osaka under the leash of Tsukasa Sagawa, which would lead to Majima's depression to further worsen.
Yakuza 4[]
- He manipulates Yasuko Saejima, Taiga's stepsister, by saying that he can prove Taiga is innocent if she brings him 100 million yen or agrees to murder. Seeing as that amount of money is too high for her, Yasuko, on Katsuragi's orders, murders various people who know the truth about the Ueno Seiwa hit, including Hiroshi Kanemura of Kanemura Enterprises and the owner of an okama bar known as Drama Queen, along with various members of the Shibata Family,
- He has Ueno Seiwa clan member Masaru Ihara, who has just been promoted to the clan's lieutenant to cause havoc at a hostess club and then orders Kanemura Enterprise's captain Hiroaki Arai to murder him. All of this was to was to bargain with Daigo Dojima, the Tojo Clan's Sixth Chairman, and get his hands on Kamurocho Hills, a large building built by Goro Majima and the Majima Family, which he would claim as worth compensation for Ihara's death.
- He has Arai kill Shibata, who deems Shibata no longer useful to his and Katsuragi's plans.
- When Masayoshi Tanimura attempts to make a deal with Katsuragi, giving him the knowledge of Yasuko's whereabouts and the 100 million yen she needs to pay him in exchange for more information on the Ueno Seiwa hit, Katsuragi instead sets up a trap for Tanimura where Ueno Seiwa members ambush him. After revealing himself as the true murderer of the eighteen Ueno Seiwa men all those years ago, Katsuragi then tells Tanimura that he has ordered his men to kill Zhao, the owner of Homeland, a Chinese restaraunt where Tanimura resides, alongside his daughter Mei Hua.
- He has Takeshi Kido, a member of Kanemura Enterprises, to steal 100 billion yen from Sky Finance.
- He has his men raid Purgatory, a pleasure district underneath Kamurocho, and manages to capture Saejima. He eventually is able to kidnap Yasuko as well.
- When Kazuma Kiryu contacts Isao Katsuragi and offers to trade a file that contains proof of the illegal prisons that Munakata and his conspirators set up, which Kiryu knows Katsuragi desperately wants, in exchange for freeing Taiga and Yasuko Saejima and giving back the money Kido stole from Sky Finance, Katsuragi agrees to on the condition that Kiryu has to fight his way through the entirety of the Ueno Seiwa clan to meet him. When Kiryu reaches the top of Kamurocho Hills and meets with Katsuragi and Kido and hands Kido the file, Katsuragi has Kido pull a gun on Kiryu and Yasuko, although this backfires as Kido instead shoots Katsuragi and reveals he is on Arai's side.
- After Saejima is saved from being tied up by Yasuko, and Saejima refuses to kill Katsuragi despite knowing all of the things he's done to him as he views him as too much of a scum to be worth killing, Katsuragi tries to shoot Saejima, only for Yasuko to shield the bullets. When Yasuko approaches him with a gun, he cowardly begs her to stop, but this fails as she ends up shooting him, getting revenge on him for using her as a pawn for his schemes, but ends up dying as a result.
- While Katsuragi is desperate to free himself from Munakata’s control as Munakata blackmailed him into being his pawn following the 18-hit incident, it was Katsuragi’s fault for betraying his family and his shortsightedness in his approach led to inconsistencies which Munakata was able to coerce him with into service.
- And even then, Katsuragi planned to use the file to not only free himself from Munakata's control, but to force him into giving him control over Tokyo, further showing his power-hungry and ambitious nature.
External links[]
- Isao Katsuragi on the Villains Wiki.
- Isao Katsuragi on the Yakuza/Like a Dragon Wiki.
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 Pure Evils
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