The series' seventh main installment, Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, is the final game to feature him as a playable character (and he is the only one in the game), and concludes his story arc. Kiryu was the sole playable character for the first three games in the next three, additional playable characters are included, causing him to take on a smaller role. Nagoshi stated he was created to appeal to a broad audience. Sega producer Toshihiro Nagoshi created Kiryu alongside Hase Seishū, a novelist who helped write the plotlines of the series' first two games. Besides the two Yakuza live-action films, the character has also appeared in other video games including Project X Zone 2 and as downloadable content in the spin-off game, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise.
He is voiced by Takaya Kuroda in Japanese and by Darryl Kurylo in the English version of the first game which he reprises 15 years later for Yakuza: Like a Dragon. After leaving prison, he fights against the new threats in his life, during which he meets Haruka Sawamura, to whom he eventually becomes an adoptive father. He was introduced in the series' debut 2005 game, where he took the blame for his boss's death to protect his best friend Akira Nishikiyama, resulting in his expulsion from the clan and a ten-year stay in prison. He is popularly known as "the Dragon of Dojima" ( 堂島の龍, Dōjima no Ryū) due to the tattoo of a dragon on his back and him originally being a fearsome member of the yakuza group known as the Dojima Family, a subsidiary of the Tojo Clan.
Kazuma Kiryu ( Japanese: 桐生 一馬, Hepburn: Kiryū Kazuma) is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Sega's action-adventure beat'em'up Japanese role-playing game series Yakuza.