Daigo Dojima (born 1976) was a Japanese yakuza crime boss who served as Sixth Chairman of the Tojo-kai from 2007 to 2019, succeeding Yukio Terada (with his mother Yayoi Dojima serving as interim chair from 2006 to 2007). Daigo was the son of Dojima-gumi patriarch Sohei Dojima and Yayoi Dojima, and, under the tutelage of Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima, Daigo assumed the chairmanship of the Tojo-kai following the conclusion of the 2006 Tojo-Omi war.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Daigo in 1988
Daigo Dojima was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1976, the son of Dojima-gumi yakuza boss Sohei Dojima and Yayoi Dojima. His father was a violent and lecherous man who spent most of his time managing his yakuza family's affairs and pursuing other women; as a result, Daigo was raised mostly by his mother. The young Daigo was never disciplined due to his father's might, and, as a result, Daigo grew up a privileged and arrogant child. In 1985, he befriended Kazuma Kiryu on Kiryu's induction into the Dojima-gumi, and, even amid the violence of the 1988 Empty Lot dispute, Daigo continued to seek Kiryu's company, even as Kiryu was at odds with the rest of the Dojima-gumi, having been expelled from the Tojo-kai. Kiryu rescued Daigo from three former friends who kidnapped him due to Daigo ditching them, and Daigo realized that his family name and wealth was not enough to earn him the respect of his peers.
Daigo went on to attend Kabukicho West High School alongside Tatsuo Shinada, and he was an intelligent student with good grades, although he frequently got into fights. He was expelled from high school in 1993 after he hospitalized several members of Kabuki Tech School's baseball team for harassing and bullying his school's baseball team members to demotivate them for the finals, and Daigo became a school legend as a result.
Delinquent years[]
Daigo at a bar
However, in 1995 - upon hearing rumors that Kiryu had killed his father - Daigo went into a frenzy. In response to the Omi Alliance's attempts to goad the Tojo-kai into a war, Daigo flew out to Osaka in 2001 to confront Ryuji Goda in a one-on-one fight, only to be set up, as he was arrested at the airport and caught possessing a weapon. Daigo was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the illegal possession of a firearm, and, on his release in 2006, he was cut off from his family and the Tojo-kai, causing Daigo to become a heavy drinker and partier, and becoming the head of a small but devoted gang of wastrels, hoodlums, and yakuza wannabes.
Daigo in 2006
Following the assassination of Tojo-kai chairman Yukio Terada in December 2006, a leadership vacuum emerged in the Tojo-kai, and Daigo's mother Yayoi stepped into the position of acting Chair of the Tojo-kai. Before his death, Terada persuaded Kiryu to temporarily rejoin the Tojo Clan in order to help him broker peace with the Omi Alliance and prevent a war. Kiryu met up with Yayoi Dojima and proposed that they bring Daigo back into the fold to unify the weakened and splintering Tojo Clan and assume the chairmanship when the time was right. On returning to Kabukicho, Kiryu was surprised to see Daigo's thugs harassing passers-by on the streets, and he managed to track Daigo down to a hostess club and attempt to convince him to rejoin the Tojo Clan. Daigo initially refused, expressing cynical views towards the Tojo Clan and Kiryu, but Kiryu beat some sense into him in the adjoining alleyway and persuaded Daigo to rejoin the clan, with Daigo agreeing on the condition that Kiryu help him settle his score with Ryuji Goda.
Daigo addressing the Tojo Clan
Daigo thus accompanied Kiryu to Osaka for a meeting with Omi Chairman Jin Goda, and he was vocally hesitant about the idea of a Tojo-Omi alliance, as he believed that they killed Terada. When Ryuji and armed men arrived to seize control of the Omi, however, Kiryu and Daigo came to Chairman Jin's aid. Daigo was defeated in a one-on-one fight with Ryuji as Kiryu rescued Chairman Goda, and Kiryu had the wounded Daigo escort the Chairman to safety in Kabukicho as he fought off Ryuji. Daigo and Chairman Goda were able to escape Osaka, only to be kidnapped by the Jingweon Mafia once in Tokyo, and for Daigo to be taken to the Shangri-La love hotel, tied up, and deprived of food and water. However, Kiryu tracked Daigo down with the help of the Florist of Sai, and he fought his way through the Goryu-kai guards and rescued Daigo, ensuring that he was hydrated and fed. Daigo went on to attend Terada's funeral at Tojo headquarters, only to again be held hostage when Nishikiyama-gumi patriarch Koji Shindo attempted to seize control of the Tojo-kai in a coup. Kiryu thwarted the coup, and Daigo shot Shindo dead to avenge Shindo's sexual harassment of his mother. Afterwards, Kiryu and the Tojo-kai worked to thwart the Omi-Jingweon invasion of Tokyo, with Daigo giving a stirring address to 300 Tojo-kai men and calling on them to defend their beloved city. This speech ensured that Daigo earned the respect of his clan, and all but assured that he would become the next Chairman. Kiryu had Daigo and his men defuse the Jingweon Mafia's bombs across Tokyo as he confronted Ryuji. In the end, the bombs were defused, and the Omi and Jingweon conspirators all died violent deaths.
In January 2007, Daigo Dojima assumed the chairmanship of the Tojo-kai, while his mother retired to private life. Kiryu himself retired to Okinawa and persuaded Goro Majima to step in as Dojima's new right-hand man. Dojima also befriended the promising financier-turned-yakuza Yoshitaka Mine, a white collar criminal whose Hakuho-kai would become the prime breadwinners for the Tojo-kai in short time. In 2008, Daigo's political connections in the LDP attempted to pressure Daigo to acquire land on Okinawa for the construction of a resort and the expansion of a military base (secretly part of a Japanese government-CIA plot to lure out the Black Monday arms trafficking group), but Daigo refused to evict Kiryu and his adoptive children from the Morning Glory Orphanage. In 2009, CIA agents Joji Kazama and Andre Richardson confronted Daigo at his office and attempted to force him to hand over the land; when Daigo was spooked by Kazama reaching into his pocket and drew a gun on Kazama, Richardson shot and critically wounded Daigo, who fell into a comatose state. Daigo was taken to Touto University Hospital, while his lieutenants Mine, Tsuyoshi Kanda, and Goh Hamazaki each conspired to take over the Tojo Clan in the event of Dojima's death. This resulted in a brief civil war within the Tojo Clan, resulting in the deaths Kanda and Osamu Kashiwagi and the destruction of the Hamazaki-gumi. This left Mine in sole position to take over the clan on Daigo's death, and, after destroying the Morning Glory Orphanage with the help of the Tamashiro-gumi, Mine returned to Tokyo to kill Daigo at the hospital. Kiryu arrived just in time to prevent Mine from performing a mercy killing on Daigo and inheriting the chairmanship, and he defeated Mine after an intense fight, depriving Mine of the strength to finish the job. Daigo emerged from his coma in time to find several rogue CIA agents from Black Monday preparing to kill Kiryu and Mine, and Daigo used a gun hidden on his stretcher to shoot several of the rogue agents, while Mine, against the wishes of Daigo and Kiryu, sacrificed himself to throw himself and Black Monday's leader Andre Richardson from the rooftop. Dojima then asked Kiryu if Mine had betrayed the Tojo-kai, but Kiryu lied and said that there was no chance that Mine was the traitor.
Dojima in 2010
The dissolution of the Hakuho-kai led to the Tojo-kai nearing bankruptcy, enabling Isao Katsuragi's Uenoseiwa-kai to exploit the power vacuum and experience a resurgence in its power. Daigo sold out Majima to the police in exchange for a partnership with Katsuragi and the corrupt TMPD deputy commissioner Seishiro Munakata in rebuilding the Tojo, but Kiryu later returned to Kabukicho with several associates and thwarted Daigo's plot, even defeating Daigo in a fight atop the Millennium Tower. After Munakata's suicide and Majima's release from prison, Dojima was present at the inauguration of the Saejima-gumi and the grand opening of the Kabukicho Hills building led to the Tojo-kai's finances being revived.
Daigo and Naoki Katsuya rescuing Majima and Saejima, 2012
In 2012, the ambitious Daigo took advantage of the rival Omi Alliance's decline to expand the Tojo-kai across Japan by partnering with regional yakuza syndicates from Kyushu to Hokkaido. With the help of his old friends, including Kiryu, he was able to fight off Omi chairman Tsubasa Kurosawa's plot to unify the Omi and Tojo under the leadership of his son, Daigo's bodyguard and Omi infiltrator Masato Aizawa, as well as ally with the Yamagasa-gumi. Kamon Kanai shot and injured Dojima during his final confrontation with Kurosawa and was treated at Touto University Hospital for a second time.
Daigo at Touto University Hospital, December 2012
In December 2016, Dojima was imprisoned after taking the fall for a fire in Little Asia, but he was released from a month later, alongside his advisors Majima and Taiga Saejima. Kiryu persuaded Daigo against going to war with the Yomei Alliance before handing Daigo his last will and testament and faking his death to protect himself from the violent punishment for revealing the "Secret of Onomichi". However, the Tojo-kai's troubles continued to grow from 2017 to 2019 as Tokyo Governor Ryo Aoki implemented the Kabukicho 3K Plan to crack down on organized crime in Tokyo, specifically targeting the Tojo-kai. Dojima and his Omi ally Masaru Watase accepted defeat and decided to allow the 3K Plan to succeed in order to force the Tojo and Omi to disband and bring a peaceful end to the age of the yakuza. The Tojo leadership was arrested as the Omi Alliance became the more powerful of the two clans and took over Kabukicho. In 2019, Watase and Dojima met in Osaka and announced the joint dissolution of the Omi Alliance and the Tojo Clan, and Kiryu (serving as Watase's anonymous bodyguard), Goro Majima, and Taiga Saejima protected the two men from an assassination attempt. After Aoki's murder, Daigo attended his and Masumi Arakawa's joint funeral service in Isezakicho, and he and Watase decided to form a private security company based in Dotonbori for former Omi and Tojo yakuza.
Gallery[]
