Tale.09: Ryuzo - The Tragedy of the Straw Hat Ronin, a Friend Driven Mad by Starvation and Inferiority

Introduction: A Friend on the Borderline, the Tragic Mirror Image Named Ryuzo

The Mongol invasion, an unprecedented national crisis that struck Tsushima. This blood-stained historical tragedy is a grand philosophical tale that forces the ultimate choice between “Honor” as a Samurai and the lives of the islanders. At the same time, it strongly possesses the aspect of a cruel ensemble drama, depicting how fragile human morality and ethics can crumble in extreme situations. In this drama, the one who stands at the opposite pole of the protagonist, Jin Sakai, and exposes the most unrefined and human weaknesses, is Ryuzo, the leader of the Ronin group, the “Straw Hat Ronin.”

In contrast to Jin, who was born as the scion of the Samurai class and, while struggling within the absolute value of Honor, eventually awakens as “The Ghost” to save Tsushima, Ryuzo was always a “have-not.” His ambition to become a Samurai shattered, forced to lead Ronin tormented by hunger and cold, he is torn between the fundamental desire for survival, an insatiable need for self-display, and an inferiority complex toward his best friend.

In this article, by intersecting the texts and depictions in the main game, the metaphors of deep psychology revealed in the DLC “Iki Island,” and the view of life and death peculiar to period dramas, we will comprehensively and thoroughly unravel the causality of the tragedy that the man named Ryuzo followed. While strictly distinguishing between facts and the philosophical considerations inferred from them, we will approach the full picture of how the fires of war erode and destroy an individual’s soul.

1. Phantoms of Childhood and the Curse of Social Standing: Lord Nagao’s Tournament and Inferiority Complex

Ryuzo’s tragic fate was not suddenly brought about by the external factor of the Mongol invasion. Its seeds are deeply rooted in the “status disparity” between him and Jin from their childhood to adolescence, and the past event known as “Lord Nagao’s tournament.”

1.1 The Tournament as a Fact and the Wall of the Class System

As a fact explicitly stated in the in-game texts and dialogues, Ryuzo was Jin Sakai’s childhood friend. Although he did not belong to the nobility or the formal Samurai class, he possessed a certain degree of status, enough to associate with the head of a clan and invite other lords to a duel between himself and Jin. They also share the memory of an innocent adventure in their childhood, where they recklessly tried to cross over to Iki on a small boat.

However, the turning point of his life was “Lord Nagao’s tournament.” By losing to his best friend Jin in this tournament, Ryuzo forever lost the perfect opportunity to be formally taken into a Samurai family and improve his social standing. A fact deeply and distortedly etched in Ryuzo’s memory is that Jin showed him a “ferocity that could have broken his arm” during this match. With his path to becoming a Samurai cut off by this defeat, Ryuzo became a Ronin and threw himself into the Straw Hat Ronin.

Later, Jin states, “If you had asked, I would have begged my uncle (Lord Shimura) to make you a Samurai,” but Ryuzo rejects this pity, saying, “I didn’t want your charity; I wanted to make a name for myself by my own strength.” Furthermore, during a cooperative battle in the game, there is a scene where Ryuzo makes a sarcastic remark to Jin, “For someone who grew up in a castle, why are you sweating so much?“

1.2 [Consideration] The Thirst for Honor and the Paradox of Self-Deception

As a consideration derived from this, it becomes apparent that at the root of Ryuzo’s spirit swirled an intense ressentiment (resentment) against the unavoidable wall of the class system and a complex inferiority complex toward his best friend. In the strict hierarchical society of the time, opportunities for a Ronin to be formally taken into a Samurai family were extremely rare, and the tournament attended by lords was literally a “once-in-a-lifetime spider’s thread” for Ryuzo.

The cruel contradiction in Ryuzo’s psychology is expressed in his very words. While showing his pride to Jin by saying, “I don’t need your charity (recommendation through connections),” deep down he continued to harbor the indulgent thought that “Jin should have let me win and lost on purpose (or held back).” This is a clear self-contradiction. If he truly wanted to make a name for himself by his own strength as a true Samurai, a victory where his opponent held back should be worthless.

However, it can be inferred that Ryuzo barely maintained his ego by turning a blind eye to the harsh reality of his own lack of ability and shifting the blame to a victim mentality: “My life was ruined because Jin went all out.” A quiet hatred toward Jin, the castle-raised scion, for being oblivious to the desperate feelings of someone without status. This “escape into blaming others” is precisely what formed the mental foundation when he later succumbed to Khotun Khan’s sweet words and made the fatal choice to betray Tsushima.

2. The Straw Hat Ronin Fallen into the Preta Path: The Paradox of Honor and Starvation

Following the battle at Komoda Beach, the environment surrounding Ryuzo transforms into something desperate. Past ambitions such as Samurai Honor and worldly success are blown away before the overwhelming violence of the immediate “hunger.”

2.1 [Fact] Starving Ronin and the Pressure of a Leader

In the battle at Komoda Beach, the Straw Hat Ronin suffered a devastating blow, losing their original leader and half of their unit. Ryuzo ended up leading the survivors, but as a result of the Mongols’ invasion cutting off logistics and food supplies across Tsushima, they face severe starvation.

As a fact within the story, when Ryuzo reunites with Jin, he is in the middle of failing to hunt for food in the forest near the Kishi Grasslands. Jin seeks the cooperation of the Straw Hat Ronin to rescue his uncle, Lord Shimura, from Castle Kaneda, but Ryuzo makes “providing food for his men” an absolute condition. The two attack Fort Ohira in search of food and even raid a Mongol ship, but they fail to obtain food, only managing to acquire maps of the Mongols’ supply routes and battle plans instead. At this point, some of the Straw Hat Ronin have begun to desert the unit, unable to endure the hunger, and Ryuzo is pushed to his limits as a leader.

Regarding why they were starving in Tsushima, which is blessed with abundant nature, there is a factual cultural background that animals such as deer and foxes were revered as messengers of the gods (shinshi) in Shinto, and hunting and eating them was a taboo.

2.2 [Consideration] The Conflict Between the Samurai Ideal and Mud-Covered Reality

The theme of starvation is a crucial device in this work that highlights how “Samurai Honor” is a luxurious ideal of the privileged class. The reason Jin can speak of “Honor to save the people” is none other than because he was raised as the heir of a lord with guaranteed food, clothing, and shelter. In contrast, for Ronin like Ryuzo, who cannot even secure their daily rations, morality and great causes do not fill their stomachs. They had fallen into the “Preta Path” (a world of suffering from constant hunger and thirst) in the Buddhist view of life and death.

What is considered here is the process by which Ryuzo is crushed by his “sense of responsibility” as a leader. Ryuzo is by no means a complete psychopath or inherently evil; rather, he was trapped by an obsession to keep his promise to “feed his men.” However, he lacked the absolute charisma to lead people and the superhuman combat ability of Jin (in fact, Jin has the power to slaughter dozens of Mongols single-handedly).

The organization known as the Straw Hat Ronin is not a Samurai band bound by loyalty, but a motley crew of mercenaries bound by profit and meritocracy. To command such roughnecks, physical rewards in the form of power and food were indispensable. It is presumed that behind Ryuzo’s feeling of “wanting to save his men” lay a deep fear that “if I don’t maintain my dignity as a leader, I might be killed by my men” or “if I am abandoned by my men, I will become a completely worthless existence.” For him, the position of leader of the Straw Hat Ronin was his sole and final stronghold to compensate for the “identity” he lost in the tournament.

3. Footsteps of Madness and Division: The Karma of Ronin Seen in Kojiro and the Six Blades

Indispensable for a deeper consideration of Ryuzo’s anguish as a leader is the internal collapse of the Straw Hat Ronin and the existence of the heretical Ronin, “Kojiro.”

3.1 [Fact] The Division of the Straw Hat Ronin and the “Kensei Armor”

The Straw Hat Ronin was not a monolithic organization, but harbored severe internal conflicts behind the scenes of the main story. The prime example of this is Kojiro and his faction, who appear in the Mythic Tale “The Six Blades of Kojiro.”

As a fact, Kojiro is a member of the Straw Hat Ronin who was exiled from (or defected from) the main force led by Ryuzo because he possessed a madness that was too cruel and bloodthirsty. He repeatedly committed demon-like slaughters and wore the legendary attire rumored to be “blessed by the spirits of death,” the “Kensei Armor.” Kojiro, accompanied by five skilled Ronin (Yasumasa, Tomotsugu, Kiyochika, Hirotsune, and Kanetomo), wandered across Tsushima seeking duels to the death. Ultimately, Jin defeats all six of these Ronin in Standoffs, eliminating their threat.

3.2 [Consideration] The Contrasting Structure of Ryuzo and Kojiro

The existence of Kojiro’s faction is an important material for consideration to clarify the “boundary as a human being” of the character Ryuzo. Kojiro is the epitome of a “Ronin who completely abandoned morality and made violence itself the goal” in the face of starvation and societal collapse. They no longer live for food, but solely for the pleasure of slaughter and to show off their swordsmanship.

In contrast, Ryuzo clung to the social and collective justification of “feeding his men” until the very end. The fact that Ryuzo exiled (or parted ways with) Kojiro indicates that an ethical breakwater of “wanting to protect a minimum of humanity and order” still existed within Ryuzo. However, ironically, it is exactly this “half-baked humanity” that torments Ryuzo the most.

If he were Kojiro, who had completely given in to madness, he could have simply abandoned his starving men and run rampant on his own. But because Ryuzo possessed the conscience of an ordinary man and the vanity of a leader, he could neither abandon his men nor had the ability to provide for them, and as a result, he had no choice but to choose the path of selling his soul to the great evil that is Khotun Khan. If Kojiro is one who has fallen into the “Asura Path,” Ryuzo is the symbol of a foolish commoner struggling in the mire of the “Human Path.”

4. Foreign Rationalism and the Desire for Approval: The Usurpation of the Spirit by Khotun Khan

What sealed Ryuzo’s fate was his betrayal at Castle Kaneda. This choice was not a mere compromise due to food shortage, but the result of an extremely skillful exploitation of the inferiority complex nesting within him.

4.1 [Fact] The Truth of Fort Yatate and the Betrayal at Castle Kaneda

Just before the assault on Castle Kaneda, Ryuzo asks Jin to rescue his men who are captured in cages near Fort Yatate. However, what Ryuzo witnessed upon freeing them was the fact that the Mongols, far from abusing them, had given them plenty of food and treated them well.

Learning this fact, Ryuzo makes the decision to betray Jin under the pretext of saving his men from starvation and letting them survive. During the invasion of Castle Kaneda, he stands in Jin’s way and declares that the Straw Hat Ronin have sided with the Mongols. The two cross blades, and Jin emerges victorious, but despite being betrayed, Jin pleads with Ryuzo, “Come back to save Tsushima.” However, severely wounded and once again defeated by his best friend, Ryuzo brushes that hand away, shouts a warning to the surrounding Mongols, and makes his escape.

4.2 [Consideration] The Fusion of Rationalism (Violence) and Jealousy

It is important to consider what kind of mental shock Ryuzo received from the fact that his men were being “fed” at Fort Yatate. The existence of Khotun Khan is the embodiment of thorough Rationalism. He ridiculed the irrational spiritualism of Samurai “Honor” and offered a direct and physical reward (food) for the enemy’s weaknesses (in this case, the hunger of the Straw Hat Ronin and Ryuzo’s vanity).

However, if it were simply “for food,” Ryuzo could have discarded his personal grudge against Jin after the betrayal. Why did he obsess over Jin so much at Castle Kaneda and later reject reconciliation? The answer lies in “another bait” he was given by the Khan. As pointed out in community analyses, it is highly likely that the Khan whispered sweet words to Ryuzo that perfectly satisfied his desire for approval: “You do not need to live in Jin’s shadow. Become a legend with us.”

“If I defeat Jin, I can build a solid position within the Mongol Empire as the best swordsman in Tsushima.” It is presumed that this distorted desire for honor was the true driving force that drove Ryuzo to betrayal. After his defeat at Castle Kaneda, Jin’s merciful words, “Come back,” must have been the ultimate humiliation for Ryuzo. Just like in Lord Nagao’s tournament in the past, he was once again shown “charity” by an overwhelmingly stronger person. To protect his petty pride, he had no choice but to make a decision that would plunge him into hell.

5. The Hellfire of Innocent People and Self-Deception: The Line That Must Not Be Crossed

After defecting to the Mongols, Ryuzo can no longer even maintain the justification of “protecting his men,” and sinks into an abyss of irreversible guilt and madness. There is no phase where the collapse of an individual’s ethics on the battlefield is depicted so vividly.

5.1 [Fact] The Burning at the Stake at Castle Shimura and Complicity in Taka’s Death

Khotun Khan does not abandon Ryuzo, who failed to defend Castle Kaneda, but brings him along as a pawn for the capture of Castle Shimura. However, the role the Khan gave Ryuzo was of the utmost cruelty. To make up for his failure, Ryuzo was forced to tie up innocent farmers of Tsushima and burn them alive to pressure the defenders of Castle Shimura into opening the gates. In the story, immediately after carrying out this act, Ryuzo is depicted breaking down in tears, tormented by severe trauma and guilt, unable to bear his own actions.

Afterward, ordered by the Khan to kill Jin, Ryuzo advises setting a trap for Jin, avoiding a head-on duel based on the realistic judgment that “Jin is superior in swordsmanship.” Due to this stratagem, the innocent blacksmith Taka, who was traveling with Jin, is captured at Fort Koyasan. The Khan presses Taka, offering to spare his life if he strikes Jin, but Taka refuses, turns his blade on the Khan, and is brutally executed. Although he did not strike the blow himself, Ryuzo becomes an accomplice who participated in this series of traps and tragedies.

5.2 [Consideration] The Necrosis of the Soul and Pitiful Self-Defense

The trajectory of Ryuzo’s downfall is typical of “moral corruption brought about by compromise.” His betrayal, which began with the somewhat humane reason of “filling his men’s stomachs,” transformed into the act of selling off his own ethics piece by piece in the face of the absolute violence that is the Khan.

His wailing when burning the farmers alive shows that the “conscience as a citizen of Tsushima” still remained within Ryuzo. In Shinto, fire is a pure thing that purifies impurities, but here it functions as the hellfire of the Avici hell that burns compatriots to death. However, these tears themselves can be said to be the ultimate in his self-deception. By crying, he is attempting to defend himself, thinking, “I am not doing this from the bottom of my heart; it couldn’t be helped.” Fundamentally, Ryuzo neither had the “Honor” to defy the strong (the Khan) and choose an honorable death with his men, nor did he possess the “madness” to completely paralyze his heart and become a cold-blooded demon like Kojiro.

Furthermore, his attitude toward Taka’s death proves that he has completely degenerated into a “coward.” The man who once dreamed of making a name for himself as a Samurai in a tournament had fallen so low as to personally suggest Assassination and foul play. What can be inferred from this fact is that for Ryuzo, the existence of Jin had passed beyond being an object of jealousy and had turned into a “symbol of absolute fear and guilt” that he could not even look straight at.

6. The Contrasting Downfall Structure of Jin Sakai and Ryuzo (Comparative Analysis)

Here, based on facts and philosophical considerations, we will organize into a comparison table how the two, who were best friends, followed opposite paths amidst the fires of war.

7. The Ghost Wandering the Land of Iki: The Eagle’s Poison and the Causality of Deep Psychology

Ryuzo’s existence continues to cast a dark shadow over Jin’s spirit even after his death. The causality of this is most strongly expressed in the depictions in the DLC “Iki Island.”

7.1 [Fact] The Eagle’s Poison and Ryuzo’s Hallucinations

Upon landing on Iki, Jin’s mind is eroded by the “Sacred medicine” (a hallucinogen) manipulated by the Mongol shaman, The Eagle (Ankhsar Khatun). This medicine has the property of drawing out the victim’s deepest fears, guilt, and trauma as hallucinations.

As a fact within the story, in the process of Jin exploring Iki while afflicted by the poison, the phantom and voice of the supposedly dead Ryuzo appear numerous times. When finding a specific straw hat, when finding a corpse by the water, or during conversations with The Eagle, auditory hallucinations of Ryuzo condemning Jin echo in his mind. Also, as Jin’s own recollection (fact), an innocent past episode is told where “as a child, he attempted to cross from Tsushima to Iki on a small boat with Ryuzo.”

7.2 [Consideration] The Double Exposure of the Friend He Couldn’t Save and the Father He Couldn’t Save

The deep philosophical consideration derived from this is that for Jin, Ryuzo has become a symbol of intense guilt, being both “a friend he killed with his own hands” and “an existence driven mad by his own privileged obliviousness.”

Iki is a blood-stained land where Jin’s father, Kazumasa Sakai, conducted a gruesome pacification campaign and was assassinated by someone’s hand. Jin harbors a deep trauma from his childhood, where he watched his father being killed right in front of him, unable to move his body out of fear, effectively letting his father die. It is highly suggestive that in the hallucinations drawn out by The Eagle’s poison, the guilt toward Ryuzo and his father, Kazumasa, intersect as flashbacks. The sense of guilt of having “let his father Kazumasa die” and the sense of guilt of having “cut down his best friend Ryuzo with his own hands (unable to save him).” These are two sides of the same coin, forming a desperate self-denial within Jin’s heart that “I cannot protect those I love.”

The memory of the innocent adventure where the two tried to cross over to Iki in their childhood is a symbol of a pure era when the walls of status and inferiority complex did not exist between them. However, what awaited him in the reality of Iki was the curse from the ghost of his brutally dead friend. This contrast tells how ruthlessly war and the class system strip “innocence” from an individual’s soul.

8. The Silent Philosophy Embedded in the Final Battle: The Discarded Scabbard and the Finishing Blow with a Tanto

In the battle to retake Castle Shimura as the story approaches its climax, the fateful bond between Jin and Ryuzo meets a gruesome end. The depiction of this final battle contains a silent philosophical message that perfectly follows the context of period dramas.

8.1 [Fact] Discarding the Scabbard and the Plea to Fake Being a Spy

Infiltrating the main keep of Castle Shimura, Jin searches for Khotun Khan, but the one waiting there was Ryuzo. The Khan had already advanced his army to the north, and Ryuzo was left behind as a sacrificial pawn “to take Jin’s head.”

Just before this final battle, there is an extremely important direction (fact). When the two draw their swords, Jin takes his stance leaving the scabbard of his sword in his sash, but in contrast, Ryuzo throws his scabbard to the floor the moment he draws his sword. This is in stark contrast to Ryuzo’s action of returning his scabbard to his waist during their first battle at Castle Kaneda.

Cornered, Ryuzo refuses to fight and pleads with Jin, “Lie to my people (the remnants of the Straw Hat Ronin) and tell them that Ryuzo was a spy sent by Jin.” However, unable to forgive the repeated betrayals and Taka’s death, Jin demands that he surrender and pay for his crimes. Knowing that he will be immediately executed if judged by Lord Shimura, Ryuzo refuses this, and the two cross blades. After a fierce battle, Jin speaks words of farewell to the defeated Ryuzo and simultaneously takes his life by thrusting his “tanto” (short sword) deep into his abdomen, not from behind, but from the front. With this, the Straw Hat Ronin, which had been a powerful Ronin organization, also met its practical end.

8.2 [Consideration] The Resolve for Death and a Curtain Fall “Without Honor”

The act of throwing away the scabbard is a classic and ultimate metaphor in period dramas, including the works of director Akira Kurosawa, indicating that one “has no intention of living to sheathe the sword again,” that is, “the resolve for death (or the will to fight to the death).” In their first battle at Castle Kaneda, Ryuzo still harbored the ambition to “defeat Jin and become a legend” and intended to return alive, so he kept his scabbard. However, at Castle Shimura, he completely understood the cruel reality that he was a sacrificial pawn abandoned by the Khan and was absolutely no match for Jin. He realized his own death before even fighting, and drew his sword in despair. Here lies the bottomless sorrow of a man who has lost all ambition and hope.

Furthermore, what is particularly noteworthy are Ryuzo’s final words. “Lie and say I was a spy”—this plea symbolizes the smallness of the man named Ryuzo, and at the same time, his tragically human nature. Until the very end, he could not face the responsibility for his actions (betrayal and massacre) head-on. He lacked the resolve to accept an honorable death as a Samurai (seppuku), yet he also lacked the spirit to proudly fall into hell as a villain. It was merely an attachment to an overly miserable and petty vanity: “I wanted to be a fine leader, if only in the memories of my men.”

Jin’s judgment in response to this is also symbolic. Jin did not bury Ryuzo with a kaishaku (an honorable death as a Samurai) using a Japanese sword, but killed him in an extremely practical and ruthless manner by thrusting a “tanto,” used for Assassination and the techniques of The Ghost, into his abdomen. This means that Jin judged his former friend not as a “Samurai,” but as a “Raider” who harms Tsushima, or as a pitiful “beast.” At the same time, it was also the moment when Jin himself made the irreversible decision to completely step out of the traditional world of “Honor” and walk the blood-stained path of The Ghost.

Conclusion: The Philosophical Proposition Left by the Tragic Mirror Image Named Ryuzo

Ryuzo is an extremely multifaceted and tragic existence in this work, one who cannot be dismissed with mere words like “villain” or “traitor.” His downfall was not caused by any special malice. A sense of responsibility to save the starving, a universal jealousy toward a best friend superior to himself, and despair at the irreversible absurdity of the class system. It is nothing other than the result of these “human weaknesses that anyone could possess” being amplified to the limit and running out of control due to the extreme situation of war and the violent Rationalism of Khotun Khan.

While Jin Sakai walked a story of sublimation, destroying the curse of “Samurai Honor” himself and becoming a “demon (The Ghost)” who saves the people even if it means being covered in mud, Ryuzo embodies the story of an “ordinary man” who drowned in the mire, unable to sever his lingering attachment to “Samurai Honor,” yet unable to martyr himself for it either.

In the absolute hierarchical society of the Samurai class, a young man deprived of the opportunity to make a name for himself goes mad from starvation and vanity, eventually falling into an evil demon who burns innocent people to death. The feeble wish he left at the end, “Lie to them,” sharply indicts the fictitious nature of the concept of honor itself. What Jin felt before Ryuzo’s corpse was not just hatred. It must have been a deep fear and wailing toward “another fate” that he himself might have followed had he taken one wrong step.

The wind of Tsushima blows through, carrying the blood and tears of nameless Ronin. The way the man named Ryuzo lived and died is driven like a wedge into the center of the view of life and death depicted in the work “Ghost of Tsushima,” continuing to thrust a heavy question upon the player. What is justice, what is Honor, and in the midst of extreme starvation and despair, can a person maintain the nobility of their soul to the very end?