Kazuma Kiryu and the Burden of Leadership: Difficult Decisions and Loneliness
Video taken from my PS5, Video Credit: RGG Studios, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, 2024, Thanks for making such a great game!
Major Spoilers for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. You have been warned!
I have great respect for Kiryu-san and this video shows how close friends of his talk about him as Kiryu is presumed dead. Several things touched me in this video.
1) Even years later, his friends still talk about him glowingly and how important he was to life in Japan and how vital he was to the Yakuza.
2) his best friend is going out of his way at great risk to himself to help Kiryu feel a sense of community which has been elusive for Kiryu for his life.
3) As Kiryu faces death, he still is being invited to grow and build an ability to trust other people which he has not done before.
With these points in mind, I want to do a deep dive on this video to think about what leadership looks like in unorthodox contexts. Kiryu’s code of honor for his actions is important because this code makes him strong but has also made it harder for him to trust others. Given my own roles of leadership, I found a lot in Kiryu’s story which resonated with me and I want to take time to share that with you all and then reflect on what this means for the type of leaders I want to develop with Phenomena Gaming.
Screenshot taken from my PS5
Context for Video
Kazuma Kiryu or Kiryu-san as he is called in the video above is in the tough position of being well-respected and beloved, but having to hide his identity as an agreement made with the Daidoji Faction at the end of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life. The Daidoji faction held Kiryu as a contractor to do their work and his public name became Taichi Suzuki. Joryu was also a name given to Kiryu. In addition to this name change, Kiryu was no longer allowed to have contact with anyone who knew him when he was “alive.” However, his best friend Masamune Date, a detective, as a gift, decides to provide situations where Kiryu can listen to stories from his old friends about their feelings towards him. The above video is one of those conversations.
Leadership Can Be a Lonely Road
Leadership is full of difficult decisions. Guiding dozens if not hundreds of people at a time is a huge responsibility especially when your decisions affect the welfare of large amounts of people both inside and outside of your organization. Kiryu has numerous monumental decisions throughout the course of the Like a Dragon series. He also has regrets and has struggled to count on anyone throughout his long career. He served as the fourth chairman of the Tojo clan. In addition, he was instrumental in the dissolution of the Tojo and Omi clans as well after the events of Like a Dragon 7. The higher the scope of decision making, the fewer people one can really count on to understand the gravity of the decisions which need to be made. This is especially true in hierarchical structures because information is restricted based on one’s position in the organization. Hierarchies have strict secrets and there is little room for discussion of people’s feelings in the organization other than those at the top. Kiryu’s responses in previous Yakuza games were wanting something different for the Yakuza but being unsure of how to build it. This led Kiryu to push a lot of people away who were wanting to help him and who greatly admired him.
Death and Sharing Our Feelings
Far too often, we are afraid as people to share how we truly feel about each other as the vulnerability required to be honest with ourselves and our emotions is excruciating. It is also hard to discuss feelings in general because hard feelings require time and a slower pace to process which is exceptionally difficult to find. Cultivating dispositions for vigil and waiting are hard when the pace of social media, working, and living is at a breakneck pace. I have a full-time job and office which was once 10 people twenty years ago, and most people I know who are working have had multiple sets of job responsibilities combined into one position as a cost-saving measure. This constant frantic pace makes it easy to continue with the humdrum of living and not reflecting with the people around us, even those closest to us.
The video at the top is filled with regret of people who still feel Kiryu’s impact day after day. Everyone has that one friend who is unique and takes a different lens on how they live their lives. Some people will push away that one friend or be unable to provide support because the issues they are describing are so large and poignant. For a select few who do embrace the leaders who can embrace compassion and knowing when things need to change, those connections become the best relationship. Kiryu’s main flaw as a character is that he was never able to accept help and closeness from people who really cared about him. He did bring a lot of challenges because he was dealing with major issues. But in the conversations Date facilitates, all of the people he finds really love Kiryu and wish he would have been more connected to them. All of them are also hoping he comes back somehow, even though death is permanent.
My only piece of advice is to try to remain open for those friends who have a unique view of the world and be patient through the trauma of those friends feeling safe to open up and find rest with you. Don’t take for granted that these people will be there to respond to difficult issues without support. There are certain people who feel a strong moral compass to respond to issues in society and they have often suffered greatly. These are often the same people who have borne a huge burden by having oppressive structures respond harshly when their evils are exposed. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth highlights Kiryu’s traumatic struggles and loss while also giving him a new base of friends who fight hard to have him feel included. It takes a long time but he warms up to the idea of delegating leadership and gives Ichiban Kasuga control of the mission in Honolulu part way through the game. This character growth and space given for Kiryu to reflect on himself is so important as we think about our own contributions both good and bad to the world.
Why Kiryu and Why Now?
Kiryu’s story made me almost cry several times and I resonated with his position because he has gained leadership and wanted to fight oppression. I’ve been in my own career field for almost 12 years and I have gained a lot of different leadership responsibilities. I’m at a weird spot though. As I’m engaging with people, I don’t understand a lot of people and I don’t feel like they understand me. I’m not sure how to carve out my unique contribution in a public space, which is why I haven’t written in a while. Kiryu gave me a perspective that highlighted my major challenges in a unique way. Happily, I am starting to build some stability with some new friends and the letting go to trust that we can support each other is feeling better than it has in a while. However, there are a lot of social conventions, fear, and dispositions I don’t fully understand and even the language used in a lot of conversations is weird for me online at this point. I know I need to rethink my approach if I am going to develop leaders to support work for the common good. However, like Kiryu, I’m a bit confused as to what my contribution can be as things have changed so drastically even in the last two years. I know what my end goals are and those haven’t changed but the how is a lot more murky. My goal is to ponder with you all to think about how to adjust my own content approach. For those friends old and new who have supported me being a relatively difficult person to love because I have a heavy focus and struggle with feeling isolated, like Kiryu, I am grateful. Thanks for the space you provide me to reflect and grow.
