Shintaro Kazama

Shintaro Kazama is a Main Protagonist in Yakuza and Yakuza Kiwami. He is the Patriarch of the Kazama Family and a father figure to Kiryu, Nishiki, and Yumi.

Appearance
Kazama is a man of average height and weight. He has short, gray (Black, in his younger days) slicked back hair and a mustache. He most often wears a dark colored suit with a white dress-shirt and black dress shoes. Kazama utilizes a wooden cane in Yakuza 1/Kiwami 1, due to a leg injury.

Personality
Kazama is a man of dignity who is highly trusted and respected by his men, as well as those who he takes into his care. He was a role model to both Kiryu and Nishiki, being the reason the two wished to become Yakuza, in which Kazama disapproved of. Kazama is known to be kind for a Yakuza, having taken Yumi back in to his protection to guard her, and even sacrificing himself for Haruka. Kiryu, Nishiki, and Yumi see Kazama as their father, to the point that Kiryu exclaims that he was his true father as he died, even with the knowledge that Kazama had assassinated his biological father, along with all the other parents of the children in Sunflower Orphanage.

History
Kazama began his life within the yakuza as a hitman for the Tojo Clan's Dojima Family, gaining a reputation for being an incredibly skilled, cold-blooded assassin and accumulating a sizable body-count. Despite his infamy as a merciless killer, Kazama's regret over his killings eventually drove him to open the Sunflower Orphanage, where he would finance the upbringing and education of all the children of his victims. Kazama would also often visit the orphanage and spend time with many of the children, becoming like a foster father to them. Kazuma Kiryu, Akira and Yuko Nishikiyama, and Yumi Sawamura were amongst those children with whom he had close bonds.

Within the Dojima Family, Kazama was constantly at odds with his fellow lieutenant, Futoshi Shimano. Kazama disdained Shimano for his brutish, thug-like approach to running his businesses, while Shimano despised Kazama because he saw him as an obstacle for his own ambitions within the Family. This enmity between both men would outlast their years together in the Dojima Family and continue when both men started yakuza families of their own.

In 1980, while the Tojo Clan was in the midst of a violent war with the Jingweon Mafia, Sohei Dojima received a tip informing him that the Jingweon's leaders would all be at a Christmas party to be held in an office building behind one of their clubs. Aiming to gain prestige and power within the Tojo Clan by quickly ending the war in their favor, Dojima ordered Kazama and Shimano to attack the party with several of their men and assassinate every Jingweon member they could find. Due to the scale of the massacre, Kazama hesitated but eventually complied and carried out the attack. Regardless, Kazama disobeyed his boss by sparing the lives of Yukio Terada and Wataru Kurahashi, two young Jingweon bodyguards he ran into during the massacre and whom he took pity on.

The massacre ended the war and catapulted the Dojima Family to a position of great power within the Clan, since most other families now feared Dojima's might. Horrified by his own actions and by his boss' ruthlessness, Kazama started to secretly undermine Dojima's organization from within to keep Dojima from becoming too powerful.

At some point, Dojima and Kazama attacked Elder Chen's mafia. The resulting actions left many women and children killed, and the mafia was confined into Little Asia, which caused Chen and his community to be distrustful of Kiryu later on.