The Yamagasa Family (山笠組, Yamagasa-gumi) is a yakuza group featured in Yakuza 5.
Background[]
The Yamagasa Family is the ruling yakuza family in the city of Fukuoka, led by its second patriarch Tadashi Madarame. The family's lower-ranking members are easily identified by the citizens of Fukuoka due to their habit of wearing bright red tracksuits while patrolling the city streets; a fashion-choice instituted by the family's tracksuit-loving captain, Yahata.
Yakuza 5[]
In 2012, the Yamagasa Family are courted into an alliance by Sixth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, Daigo Dojima. Dojima fears that the impending death of the Seventh Chairman Tsubasa Kurosawa of the Omi Alliance will end the fragile truce between the Tojo and the Omi, so he seeks to make alliances with smaller yakuza groups from other cities in Japan in order to dissuade the Omi from trying to invade Tokyo.
During negotiations between Dojima and Madarame for this alliance, Dojima learns of traitors within his own organization conspiring with Chairman Kurosawa of the Omi to have him killed in Fukuoka. To avoid this, Dojima appeals to Patriarch Madarame, requesting that he help smuggle him out of the city without anyone within his Clan knowing; to which Madarame agrees.
Daigo's subsequent "disappearance" is used by the Chief of Tojo HQ, Minoru Aoyama, to start a war against the Yamagasa. Aoyama intended to lead the Tojo against the Fukuoka family to steal their city from them and use the resources extracted from this new territory to have himself crowned as Seventh Chairman. In order to weaken the Yamagasa Family as part of his war plan; Aoyama shoots Madarame during an alliance negotiation meeting and then bombs the Yamagasa Family headquarters. Unfortunately for him, he fails to kill either Madarame or any of his major officers.
As it so happens, former Tojo Fourth Chairman Kazuma Kiryu was living in Fukuoka under an alias at the time and, after Daigo's disappearance, he became embroiled in the escalating Tojo-Yamagasa conflict. After the bombing of Yamagasa HQ, Kiryu's girlfriend and Madarame's daughter, Mayumi, took Kiryu to meet with her father in his hospital bed. Madarame explained the truth of Daigo's "disappearance" to Kiryu and revealed that he intended to dissolve the Yamagasa Family and surrender Fukuoka to Aoyama, since his family couldn't possibly take on the Tojo Clan and he did not want any of his men to die needlessly. However, Kiryu dissuades him from proceeding with this plan and offers to intervene on his behalf to prevent a war.
With collaboration from Captain Yahata, Kiryu covertly arranges a brawl between Yamagasa and Tojo forces in the Fukuoka docks at night. When the two organizations meet to square off, Kiryu makes his presence known and threatens the Tojo members into standing down, leveraging his legendary status to intimidate the Clan's soldiers. When several dozen of Aoyama's loyalists refuse to surrender, Kiryu takes them on in battle singlehandedly and winds up beating close to fifty men by himself. Once all of Aoyama's goons have been beaten, Kiryu attacks Aoyama himself, who reveals that he'd been acting on someone else's orders. However, Aoyama is killed by Yu Morinaga, another Tojo traitor, before he can reveal his master's name.
Later on, when its revealed that Chairman Kurosawa had been masterminding the conflicts in Fukuoka, Sapporo, Osaka and Nagoya that occur throughout the game, Masaru Watase of the Omi Alliance betrays his own boss and rallies his family, the Yamagasa and the Kitakata Family to fight against his army. Madarame and Yahata lead Yamagasa Family forces into battle against Kurosawa's men in Tokyo in order to put an end to the Omi Chairman's plot to centralize control of Japan's underworld beneath his family.
Notable Members[]
- Tadashi Madarame - Patriarch
- Yahata - Captain