Kiyoshi Kawakami was a Japanese samurai in Predator: Killer of Killers, voiced by Louis Ozawa. He was the brother of Kenji Kawakami and a son of a samurai warlord. In 1609 their father ordered the boys to duel for the succession, and Kiyoshi won by cutting Kenji across the cheek. Twenty years later Kiyoshi had inherited the castle when Kenji came back and cut him the same way. The brothers then fought the Oni Predator together and killed it, and Kiyoshi died of his wounds beside Kenji.
Biography
Growing Up With Kenji
Kiyoshi and Kenji grew up together as the sons of a samurai warlord in Japan. As boys they played in the fields outside their father's castle, fencing with sticks among fallen ginkgo leaves. They folded paper boats, set them on the water, and walked the castle grounds side by side. When their father came to them under the ginkgo trees, the two boys bowed to him together. He was a stern lord who dressed in red, and he wore a suit of armor with a horned red crest that later stood between his sons in the castle hall.
Winning The Succession Duel
In 1609 their father called both sons into the castle hall and handed each of them a sword. His horned helmet and armor were placed between the boys as they faced each other, and the winner was to become his heir. Kenji lowered his blade and would not fight. Kiyoshi held back as well, then looked at his father, saw his disapproval, and attacked. He forced Kenji to the floor and cut a line across his cheek, and afterward he stood beside his father on the castle balcony while Kenji left the castle behind.
Ruling After His Father's Death
Twenty years after the duel, Kiyoshi's father died in the castle. Kiyoshi knelt beside the body on the balcony where the old lord lay, with his father's armor standing behind them. He then attended the funeral at the castle shrine, where a pyre burned in front of a red torii gate and armored retainers stood in ranks. With the warlord dead, Kiyoshi became lord of the castle and of the house his father had led. Around the same time, Kenji was approaching the castle in a straw hat and cloak, carrying a shinobi kit.
Facing Kenji In The Castle
Kenji entered the castle at night and killed the guards in his way. Kiyoshi walked the halls in a white kimono with his straw-hatted retainers, and when the alarm reached him he sent them against the intruder. Kenji cut through those men as well. When he finally reached his brother and showed his face, Kiyoshi recognized him. The two men drew their swords and fought through the castle rooms and out onto the walkways above the moat.
The fight went against Kiyoshi this time. Kenji drove him back to a wooden railing above the moat and cut his cheek in the same place where Kiyoshi had cut him twenty years earlier. Kenji did not kill him, but the damaged railing broke behind Kiyoshi, and he fell into the water below. The Oni Predator had watched the duel from the castle roofs without joining it. Once Kiyoshi was gone, the hunter attacked the remaining guards and went after Kenji across the castle.
Fighting The Oni Predator
Kiyoshi survived the fall and came out of the moat. When Kenji escaped the castle and crossed the water into a grove of ginkgo trees, Kiyoshi was there in his armor and attacked him. The brothers were fighting again when the hunter caught up with them. The Yautja came at both of them with its wristblades and a chain whip, and Kiyoshi and Kenji turned their swords on it instead of on each other. The hunter had followed Kenji from the castle, and it attacked Kiyoshi as readily as it attacked his brother.
The hunter knocked Kiyoshi to the ground and drove its wristblades into his body. He got up and kept fighting, and he cut the Oni Predator with his katana while Kenji learned how its weapons worked. Kenji knocked the bio-mask loose and wounded the hunter with its own mines. Badly hurt, Kiyoshi took a position at one end of the grove with Kenji at the other. The hunter, cloaked and bleeding, stood between them in the fallen leaves.
Killing The Hunter With Kenji
The two brothers charged across the grove from opposite ends. The hunter's cloaking device hid its body, but its green blood showed where it stood, and Kiyoshi and Kenji cut through it at the same moment as they passed. The Oni Predator died from the two blows and fell among the leaves. Kiyoshi's wounds from the wristblades were too severe, and he collapsed against his brother as soon as the hunter was dead. Kenji caught him and lowered him to the ground under the ginkgo trees.
Death In The Ginkgo Grove
Kenji held him while Kiyoshi spoke in Japanese, comparing brothers to leaves that grow side by side on one tree but fall alone. Kenji answered that he was not alone, and the two men stayed together as Kiyoshi weakened. Kiyoshi died of his wounds in the ginkgo grove with his brother beside him. Kenji survived the hunt, and other hunters later took him from Japan to the world of the Grendel King, where he was forced to fight in an arena.
Personality And Traits
Kiyoshi wanted his father's approval more than Kenji did. In the succession duel he held back at first, the same as his brother, and attacked only after seeing his father's stern face. He took the succession and held it for twenty years. When Kenji came back, Kiyoshi set his retainers on the intruder and then met him with a sword. Even after falling into the moat he went after his brother again in the grove, armed and in full armor.
That rivalry ended when the Oni Predator attacked. Kiyoshi fought beside Kenji at once, kept fighting after the wristblades went into him, and made the final charge with his brother. His last words compared the two of them to leaves on one tree, and he died holding on to Kenji. His motives in the duel and the castle fight are shown only through his expressions, because he has no lines until the moment of his death.
Weapons And Equipment
Kiyoshi fought with a katana, starting with the sword his father handed him for the succession duel. As lord of the castle he wore a white kimono with black panels bearing the family crest, and a suit of samurai armor stood in his rooms. In the grove he fought the Oni Predator in black lacquered armor laced with red cord, with a yellow crest on the chest. The armor did not stop the hunter's wristblades. He made his final cut against the cloaked Yautja with his katana, and the blade came away with green blood on it.
Behind The Scenes
Louis Ozawa voiced both Kiyoshi and Kenji, and the film credits him for both brothers. Kiyoshi appears in "The Sword", the second of the film's three chapters, set in Japan in 1609 and twenty years later. The chapter is almost without dialogue. Kiyoshi's only spoken line comes at the end, in Japanese, and the film shows it with English subtitles. Ozawa had earlier played Hanzo, a Yakuza enforcer, in Predators (2010).
Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung directed the film, and Micho Robert Rutare wrote the screenplay. Wassung's studio, The Third Floor, animated it in Unreal Engine. Rutare's first draft of the Japan chapter had a great deal of dialogue, and the directors removed most of it so the brothers' story would play out visually. The film began streaming on Hulu on June 6, 2025. Kiyoshi does not appear in the later arena story, which follows Kenji, Ursa, and John Torres.
Famous Quotes
- "The leaves of a tree grow side by side, brother. Yet when they fall, they fall alone."
Conclusion
Kiyoshi Kawakami was the samurai who won his father's succession duel in 1609 by cutting his brother Kenji. He became lord of the castle after his father died, and twenty years after the duel Kenji came back, cut him the same way, and Kiyoshi fell into the moat. Kiyoshi came out to fight his brother again, then joined him against the Oni Predator. The brothers killed the hunter together in the ginkgo grove, and Kiyoshi died of his wounds there with Kenji holding him.
Appearances
- Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Historical Predator Hunts | Predator Killer Of Killers Lore
