Kenji Kawakami was a Japanese shinobi in Predator: Killer of Killers, voiced by Louis Ozawa. His brother Kiyoshi scarred him and drove him into exile, and in 1609 Kenji came back to face him. They killed the Oni Predator together, and Kiyoshi died of his wounds. Hunters later put Kenji in an arena with Ursa and John Torres. The Grendel King took Kenji's right arm, and Torres flew him off that world.
Biography
The Succession Duel
Kenji and Kiyoshi were the sons of a samurai warlord in Japan, and their father ordered them to duel so one of them would succeed him. Kenji would not raise his sword against his brother. Kiyoshi attacked anyway, beat him, and cut a scar across Kenji's face. The loss marked Kenji as unfit for the house, and he fled rather than stay under his father and the brother who had cut him.
The scar Kiyoshi cut across Kenji's face stayed with him through the years he lived away from the castle. Their father died during that time, and Kiyoshi became lord of the region their father had ruled. Kenji spent those twenty years in exile as a shinobi, and he came back only when he was ready to face the brother who had marked him and taken the succession Kenji had refused.
Return From Exile
By 1609 Kenji had lived outside the castle long enough to come back as a shinobi rather than as a son of the house. He did not know a Yautja hunter was already following him. He went in quietly, past Kiyoshi's guards, and worked his way through the castle until he reached his brother. The hunter waited through that approach and did not strike while the brothers were apart.
Kiyoshi held the region their father had left, and he ruled it as the son who had won the succession duel. Their father was dead by the time Kenji came back, and Kenji entered the castle as a shinobi rather than as a son of the house. The return ended in the fight he had refused as a boy. Kiyoshi's guards fell to him on the way in, before the brothers crossed swords, and the hunter on the roofs watched that work without joining it.
The Castle Duel
Kenji and Kiyoshi fought with swords inside the castle, and this time Kenji did not refuse the fight. He beat his brother and cut Kiyoshi's face in return for the scar Kiyoshi had given him twenty years earlier. The cut was the answer to the succession duel their father had ordered, and it ended with Kiyoshi falling from the fight into the castle moat.
The Oni Predator moved as soon as that duel was over. He killed the guards who were left in the castle and went after Kenji across the roofs and halls. Kenji got clear of the first rush, then went back for Kiyoshi, who was hurt and in the water under the castle wall. He pulled his brother out of the moat, and the two of them faced the hunter together instead of finishing the duel between themselves.
The Oni
Kenji learned the hunter's kit in the middle of the fight, after the chase through the castle had already killed the guards who were left. He knocked the bio-mask loose and turned the Oni Predator's own mines back on him. Kiyoshi fought beside him even with the wounds from the moat and from the sword. The brothers killed the hunter between them.
Kiyoshi did not survive the injuries from the sword, the fall into the moat, and the fight with the hunter. He died after the hunter was dead, with Kenji beside him in the castle where they had grown up. Hunters later took Kenji and held him in suspended animation with other people who had killed a Yautja. He stayed there until he woke in the arena on the Grendel King's world.
The Arena
Kenji woke in a cell with Ursa and Torres, each of them taken after killing a hunter in their own century. None of the three shared a language. He spoke Japanese, Ursa spoke Old Norse, and Torres spoke English, with only a little Japanese from his Navy training. Handlers fitted all three with explosive collars and marched them into a gladiatorial arena on the desert world of Yautja Prime, where the Grendel King was waiting to make them fight.
The Grendel King ordered them to fight to the death, and the winner was to fight him. Ursa went at Kenji and Torres first. Kenji fought her until Torres got the plan across without a shared language: reach a ship and leave. A huge alien beast was then turned loose in the arena and swallowed Torres. Kenji and Ursa killed it from the outside, and Torres cut his way out of its belly.
The Grendel King
Torres stole a hoverbike, took Ursa and Kenji with him, and shut the collars off when the Grendel King tried to detonate them. The warlord smashed the bike with a thrown bone axe before they reached his ship. Kenji and Ursa fought him on the ground and wounded him, including a cut Kenji put in the warlord's leg with a katana, while Torres tried to fly the ship.
The Grendel King recovered from those wounds and nearly killed both of them on the ground beside the ship. Torres blasted him away with the engines as Kenji and Ursa got aboard. As the ship tried to leave, the warlord threw a spear that severed Kenji's right arm, the arm that had carried the sword through the castle and the arena. The warlord's guards then hooked the hull with a harpoon launcher and held it on the ground.
The Escape
Ursa told Torres and Kenji not to avenge her. She rode her shield down the harpoon cable, reached the launcher that was holding the ship, and destroyed it so Torres could lift off. The Grendel King captured her on the ground and put her back into suspended animation with the other captives who had killed hunters. Kenji, missing his right arm, stayed with Torres in the ship as it left Yautja Prime.
The warlord called a hunting party after the fugitives as soon as Ursa was down. Kenji and Torres were off the ground by then, in a ship Torres was flying by what he knew from a Wildcat. Kenji had come to that world as a captive who had killed one hunter in Japan, and he left it alive, with one arm, beside the pilot who had killed another.
Personality And Traits
Kenji cared about Kiyoshi, and he also carried a grievance against him. He would not kill his brother when their father ordered the succession duel, and twenty years later he cut a matching scar instead of killing him. He went back for Kiyoshi when the Oni Predator came, stayed with him through that fight, and was beside him when Kiyoshi died of his wounds. The loyalty and the old injury were both part of how he treated his brother.
He was an honorable fighter, and a skilled one. He refused a duel he would not accept, then fought Kiyoshi directly when he came back, and he fought with his brother against the hunter instead of leaving him in the moat. In the arena he met Ursa's attack, then fought beside her and Torres once they had a shared plan. That same skill let him help kill a Yautja in Japan and wound the Grendel King, and he left with Torres when Ursa told them not to avenge her.
Weapons And Equipment
Kenji carried a samurai sword in 1609, with a shinobi kit beside it: a straight chokuto, a short wakizashi, throwing knives (kunai), a chain-and-sickle kusarigama, smoke bombs, and a blowgun (fukiya). Against the Oni Predator he knocked the bio-mask loose and turned the mines back on the hunter. On Yautja Prime the handlers gave him a katana for the arena, in place of that kit. He used it on the beast beside Ursa and put it into the Grendel King's leg, and the warlord's thrown spear then took the right arm that had held the sword.
Behind The Scenes
Louis Ozawa voiced both Kenji and Kiyoshi in Predator: Killer of Killers. Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung directed the film. Micho Robert Rutare wrote the screenplay from a story he shared with Trachtenberg, based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Kenji's chapter is called The Sword, and his lines in that chapter are in Japanese.
The Third Floor, Wassung's studio, animated the film in Unreal Engine as its first full-length feature. 20th Century Animation, Lawrence Gordon Productions, Davis Entertainment, and Toberoff Entertainment produced it, and Benjamin Wallfisch wrote the score. It began streaming on Hulu in the United States on 6 June 2025, and on Disney+ outside that market, with a running time of 85 minutes.
Louis Ozawa had already played Hanzo, a Yakuza enforcer, in Predators (2010). That film gives him no surname. In 2022 Ozawa wrote "Kyodai" for Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, and that story names Hanzo's brother Eiji Kawakami. Killer of Killers then uses Kawakami for Kenji and Kiyoshi. The shared name and the shared actor are what later accounts use when they call Hanzo and Eiji descendants of Kenji. The two films leave them as separate men.
Conclusion
Kenji Kawakami was the shinobi who came back to his brother's castle in 1609, scarred Kiyoshi in return, and helped kill the Oni Predator before Kiyoshi died of his wounds. Hunters stored him after that kill and woke him on the Grendel King's world beside Ursa and John Torres. The warlord severed Kenji's right arm during the escape, Ursa stayed behind, and Torres flew Kenji off that world.
Appearances
- Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Historical Predator Hunts | Predator Hunt Survivors | Predator Killer Of Killers Lore
