If you consider yourself part of the yakuza/like dragon community, you'll know a lot about who Teruyuki Kagawa is. Joe is not, he is the Japanese actor who was hired to play Goh Hamazaki in Yakuza Kiwami 3, after Ryu ga Gotoku Studios dropped George Takahashi, the character's original actor.
Upon learning of the news, Yakuza fans began a campaign to remove Kagawa from the role, as the actor was embroiled in a high-profile sexual harassment controversy in 2022, after he admitted to groping a hostess on a night out in 2019. Kagawa admitted that he had made a mistake, and said that “there has been a lot of trouble for the world”.
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However, Yakuza fans have taken issue with the casting of Kagawa due to the overall nature of the series, who plays a protagonist who takes a strong stance against violence against women. Over the past few months, Sega has managed to further anger fans by completely ignoring the Kagawa situation, despite responding to concerns about Yakuza Kiwami 3's performance.
A big question that surrounds the whole debacle is why Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios would work with such a notorious actor, who even brands like Toyota cut ties with after Kagawa's sexual misconduct allegations came to light. Apparently, the reason is that director Ryosuke Hori needed a bad guy to play Hamazaki, and Kagawa fit the bill.
Yakuza Kiwami 3 features Kagawa because the director needed a bad guy
This information comes from a Game Watch interview that was published back in January, but has recently resurfaced due to fan efforts to recast Kagawa. There are a few different translations floating around the internet at the moment, but the general gist of it is that Kagawa was hired specifically because they needed someone blue and scary to play Hamazaki's character. The first quote is a machine translation performed by ourselves, while the second comes from Yakuza fans.
“Of course, since he also appears in '4' in the original work, this casting was made with that in mind. Hamazaki, after all, is a persistent and dull, martial arts-oriented yakuza. He's not a decisively acting Kanda-like character; he's the kind of person where you think, 'This is the guy. So, when I thought he could embody it, it had to be Kagawa-san.'
“Hamazaki is a flexible, persistent and combative yakuza, right? He's not an explosive character like Kanda, when we tried to make you think 'this guy's a creep', naturally it was Kagawa-san.”
Of course, it is not a clear admission that Kagawa was hired because of his accusations of sexual abuse, since the actor has starred in horror films in the past, but it is a strange statement that the controversy surrounding him is not even that old, and at the time of the interview he was known by Yakuza fans. Finding a scary guy to play a scary character, and hiring someone notorious for sexual misconduct, is definitely a choice.
- issued
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February 11, 2026
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, In-Game Purchases
- developer(s)
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Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
