The following is a small collection of headcanon which I’ve extrapolated greatly from tangible canon happenings within the main series. Mileage may vary, and I don’t mean to present these points as fact, so please don’t take it as such.

Neurodivergence

This is something you can say for most characters in this series in some way, but Kashiwagi in particular has a few interesting points to make:

• He has an interesting relationship with food - not just limited to what he eats, but the way he eats
• Shown beginning to infodump on several occasions
• Hardly, if ever, switches up what he wears (colours at most)
• Flat affect/resting bitch face/"autism stare"
• Hires extra staff at his bar so that he doesn’t have to speak as much to his customers
• Pure conjecture, but behind his intimidating mask he has this awkward kind of energy that reminds me a lot of my own experiences with being a bit not-normal.

I like to think he has an oral fixation and some light sensitivity issues, the latter being based entirely on his reaction time to the helicopter light turning on compared to Kiryu’s:

On Kazama

I’m shamelessly stealing Inoue’s reasons for joining the Shinsengumi and applying that to Kashiwagi because, while I don’t really think of them as the same guy, there absolutely has to be a reason they chose him specifically as Inoue’s “faceclaim”. I don’t have many ideas as to what Kashiwagi might have done before swearing up, but he seems to place a lot of value on loyalty, duty and repaying debts, so I believe Kazama must have saved him or turned his life around in such a way that he felt he could do nothing but pledge himself to him.

Hands

I think in the 80s he was a beginner hobbyist keyboard player. Mostly looking at the Judgement karaoke cinematic where he’s not plugged in and playing a little out of sync BUT still doing whatever fucked up fruity little dance he’s doing. The presence of the piano at Survive makes me think he got into it properly in his newfound free time, as something else to keep his hands mobile as he ages and recovers from getting beehived. I still love the little anecdote we get from Iroha where she says he’s good with his hands.

Related: I think he taught himself to blend traditional medicine for residual chronic pain relief.

Explosion Trauma

Firstly: Kazama's death. Where is Kashiwagi when Kazama dies? I choose to believe he was there, because I don’t see any reason for him to just drop the family off and then leave. I’m not going to turn this into a post about all the reasons I fucking hate Yakuza Kiwami, but what I will say is that they had every opportunity to make him actually relevant to this scene and then didn’t do it. So, that’s strike one.

Strike two comes not long after, when Nishikiyama blows up Ares with Yumi, Haruka and Kiryu still inside. I don't imagine he’ll have seen this one happen in person, but I have no doubt in my mind that he knew at least Kiryu was up there. I don't want to imagine the thoughts going through his head with this coming so soon after his boss (partner? father figure?) had his life claimed by an explosion protecting the same damn child.

Strike three… The following year. His own office. With him in the vicinity. It’s less obvious (read: entirely omitted) in the remake, but in Yakuza 2 he shows up to the meeting in chapter 5 with bandages on his head, ostensibly because he was there when the Jingweon hit his office. Maybe not inside the office, or he’d be dead for real, but close enough.

Which brings me to chapter 14 of RGG 7. The hero’s party confront Ishioda and Mirror Face in a building a stone’s throw from Survive Bar. I suppose there is the possibility of Kashiwagi having closed up and gone home for the night after Ichi & co left, but if he didn’t, and that bomb went off while he was still behind the counter…

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say he dislikes fireworks.