Masataka Kiyomizu (Kiyomasa): The bully who staged fights so other kids would bleed for his bets

July 2005. Takemichi Hanagaki opens his eyes in the middle of a fight, surrounded by shouting students, and a punch knocks him down before he understands where he is. When he comes to, they explain the problem: people had bet money on him. Kiyomasa, the organizer, complains that he gathered a big crowd for nothing and orders one of his boys to beat Takemichi as punishment. Then Takemichi makes a worse mistake: he asks whether he can meet Manjiro Sano and Tetta Kisaki, the gang’s leaders. The room goes silent. Kiyomasa asks for his bat and beats him so savagely that even his own boys get nervous. When Takemichi wakes up, after dark, he gets a warning: if he says Sano’s name again, he is dead (manga chapter 2; anime episode 2).

Masataka Kiyomizu, known as “Kiyomasa,” is one of the first antagonists of Tokyo Revengers: a ninth grader at a Shibuya middle school, tall, with a scar on his eyebrow, and a member of the Tokyo Manji Gang (Toman), the gang of Mikey and Draken. With his group of older boys he has turned Takemichi and his friends from Mizo Middle School into his “slaves” and into fodder for an underground fight ring with betting. He appears in the opening arc (chapters 1 to 4; episodes 1 to 3) and returns in the arc of the August 3 festival (chapters 19 to 27; episodes 8 to 10), where he stabs Draken. All of it happens in the 2005 past that Takemichi relives. (Warning: this text reveals who was behind the stabbing.)

// The theoryToughness as a way of life

In 1958, the anthropologist Walter B. Miller published “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency” in the Journal of Social Issues, drawing on his fieldwork with youth gangs in working-class neighborhoods of Boston. Against Albert Cohen, who in Delinquent Boys (1955) saw the gang as a resentful reaction against middle-class values, Miller argued that street culture has a life of its own and is organized around six focal concerns: trouble (getting into scrapes and getting out of them), toughness (strength, bravery, never showing weakness), smartness (outwitting others without being outwitted), excitement (seeking action and risk against routine), fate and autonomy. His most uncomfortable claim is that the violent youth is not rebelling against norms: he follows those of his own surroundings too well. Miller insisted he was describing, not judging, and explaining is not excusing.

// The subjectThe king of the ring and his slaves

Three moments define him. The first is the fight between the king and the slave. The day after the beating, it is Takuya’s turn in the ring, the frailest of the group. Takemichi stops it and challenges Kiyomasa one on one (chapters 2 and 3; episodes 2 and 3). Kiyomasa pounds him, but Takemichi gets up again and again, and when he shouts that he will only admit defeat if he dies, Kiyomasa calls for the bat once more. Some of the crowd, who came to see a fistfight, start to look at him with disapproval. At that moment Draken and Mikey arrive. Kiyomasa gives a shallow bow and Draken kicks him so he will bow properly; Mikey asks whether he is the one organizing the fights and, when he admits it, knocks him out with two blows. Draken warns everyone not to drag Toman’s name through the mud (chapters 3 and 4; episode 3).

The second is the Musashi festival, on August 3, 2005. In the future Takemichi knows, Draken is stabbed to death that night in a fight between gangs (chapter 9). Now Takemichi sees a member of Moebius hand Kiyomasa a knife, and Kiyomasa announces that he is going to kill Draken; they catch Takemichi, beat him and leave him bound with duct tape (chapters 19 and 20; episode 8). While Toman and Moebius clash, Takemichi finds Draken on the ground right after Kiyomasa has stabbed him (chapter 23; end of episode 9). The third is the rematch (chapters 24 to 26; episode 10): while they wait for the ambulance, Kiyomasa comes back with his group, stabs Takemichi as soon as he tries to throw a punch and makes it clear that this is not a duel but an execution. Takemichi bites him, climbs onto his back and chokes him until he passes out. Draken survives. (Spoiler for the Tenjiku arc.) Much later, in chapter 149, Kisaki confesses that he was the one who manipulated Kiyomasa into stabbing Draken.

// The crackThe gang that did not buy his toughness

Miller described a fairly uniform culture, in which toughness brings status almost automatically. Tokyo Revengers adds an important nuance: inside the same gang there are two codes. For Kiyomasa, toughness means dominating those who cannot defend themselves; for Mikey and Draken, the ring is a disgrace that soils Toman’s name, and they punish him for running it. Even the crowd, which lives on excitement, turns its back on him when he trades his fists for a bat. And Kiyomasa’s toughness is selective: he preys on the Mizo kids, who cannot hit back, bows, however grudgingly, to those in charge and, when he finally wants revenge, goes after Draken with a knife in the middle of a mass brawl. None of Miller’s six concerns rewards that.

There are two more limits. The manga says nothing about Kiyomasa’s social class, and Miller’s theory was built to explain specific working-class neighborhoods in Boston, not any schoolyard bully. And the stabbing is not explained by his values alone: Kisaki used his humiliation as a lever. The focal concerns explain the ground Kiyomasa grew up on, not the decision to use a knife. Explaining Kiyomasa is not excusing him: his violence had victims with names, from Takemichi and Takuya to Draken, and he chose every step.