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Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility."
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The story of the Hero of Yokohama Ichiban Kasuga from the Like a Dragon Saga.
Past[]
Ichiban was born on New Year's Day, 1977. Born and abandoned within the soapland by a prostitute, he was adopted by the Shangri-la soapland manager Jiro Kasuga, who named him "Ichiban". Jiro raised the young boy with various prostitutes and gave him a loving home in the red light districts of Kamurocho, up until his death. As a teenager, Ichiban ignored school and any semblance of a career, and instead opted to pick fights with punks and lift money off of them to help the locals. He eventually ended up biting more than he could chew after beating up the thug of a Yakuza, who then came for revenge. At the hands of their torture, he attempted to threaten them with a bluff by using the name of the Arakawa Family.
This worked all too well, and now believing they had a valuable hostage in their hands, the Yakuza contacted the Arakawa Family in an attempt to extort money from them. Ichiban was sure that this was the end of him... but then none other than the head of the Arakawa Family, Masumi Arakawa himself, showed up for the exchange. Instead of calling Ichiban out on his bluff, the seasoned gangster instead decided to help the young man out of his deadly predicament, and played along with the charade, even taking responsibility for Ichiban's actions by cutting off a part of his little finger without any hesitation. Humbled by this display of fearlessness, the Yakuza immediately released Ichiban with no further questions asked. Moved by Arakawa's sacrifice and strength, he insisted on pledging himself to the Arakawa Family, and approached Arakawa for a hundred days until the old man finally accepted him into the family. Despite that, Ichiban failed to be a successful Yakuza due to his goodhearted nature, only spared from the worst due to his claim as a member of the Arakawa, and Masumi's constant leniency towards him.
However, on December 31, 2000, the Arakawa Family became implicated in a murder of a member of the Tojo Clan. Not only that, the murderer was Arakawa's own son, Masato, who was a civilian with no ties to the Arakawa Family but Jo decided to take the fall hoping Ichiban would make the sacrifice to protect Arakawa's son. If this case went the way it was going, the Arakawa Family would have to be disbanded. In order to keep the family alive, and seeing the event as an opportunity to finally pay back Masumi Arakawa for saving his life, Ichiban agreed to take the blame for the murder. The next day, January 1, 2001, his 24th birthday, Ichiban Kasuga turned himself into the local police.
Eighteen years later, Ichiban's sentence was up and he was released from prison, expecting a grateful reunion only to be met with silence and his Patriarch taking control of Kamurocho as the clan captain of the Omi Alliance and Masato had passed away. Meeting his father-figure for the first time, he was met with a gun aimed at him and was shot...
The next morning, he wakes up in Yokohama's Isezaki Ijincho red light district in a dumpster, surprisingly alive but now exiled from his home. Determined to rise to the top again, he and an unlikely band of misfits must now take over Yokohama and get the happy ending he hoped for.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon[]
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Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth[]
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