Kashiwagi is very highly strung. He’s described as “old-school”, resorting to violently punishing his subordinates in his younger years, but both times we see this actually happen it is under truly exceptional circumstances, and not without build-up or reason. Even after he ages another ten years and mellows out somewhat, there are still many other times where he’s shown bubbling over and losing his composure in response to someone else stepping out of line, though in these cases he only squares up and raises his voice. It’s very clear to me that being in the Tojo Clan is something that puts immense stress on him, but he’s nothing if not dutiful: he never actually makes any moves to leave the clan himself until he’s “killed” in the line of service.

Despite (or maybe because of?) his high stress levels during his time as a yakuza, he seems to devote a not insignificant amount of his time and resources towards rehabilitating people who want to return to civilian life. He already tends Kamuro Castle in 0, and he clearly knows his stuff by that point, though the way he talks about it has me thinking that he hasn’t actually started the process of rehabbing anyone yet. His tone makes it seem a lot more hopeless than the existence of the HLA in Yakuza 3 would suggest, but at that point he’s had more than 20 years to get it off the ground.

Saying this, though, his intense care towards the people he’s close to definitely contributes in part to the stress he’s under, especially in Yakuza 0. He punches Kiryu because he’s convinced he’s going to get himself killed by leaving the Dojima Family, but we don’t actually find this out for certain until later. Every time I try to summarise the in-game conversation where it's brought up it comes out weird, so please read this post so you know what I’m talking about.

It’s immediately apparent upon meeting him for the first time in RGG 7 that he’s much happier living as a civilian. One of the first things he says is that running his bar is a hobby to him. Even the way he speaks is much less restrained, and he gets his first real laugh tracks in this game. He does, of course, have his moments, but the main ones that come to mind are when he gets fake-mad at Adachi…