Wai hello!
Yakuza’s cabaret clubs changed because the people RGG Studio casts as hostesses changed. Yakuza 0, Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2 filled their clubs with real Japanese AV actresses and gravure models. By Like a Dragon Gaiden in 2023, RGG was casting through an open audition that included a VTuber, and studio head Masayoshi Yokoyama said it was probably the last audition of its kind.
RGG has never announced a policy. But the pattern is clear, and so is what changed around it.
Who were the real women in Yakuza’s hostess clubs?
For about three games, the hostesses weren’t invented characters. They were modelled on, and voiced by, real adult video actresses and gravure models.
In Japan, none of this was strange. Yua Mikami was in the idol group SKE48 before AV, and AV stars show up on variety shows all the time. Hong Kong in the 1990s understood that path too. Shu Qi started in Category III films and ended up starring in The Assassin, which won Hou Hsiao-hsien best director at Cannes. Nobody in Hong Kong thought her early films disqualified her. Some people in the West still would.
Why did RGG stop casting AV actresses?
No one at RGG has said it on record, so treat this as reading the room. Three things moved at once.
The audience moved west. Yakuza 0 is the game that broke the series outside Japan, and it launched in English in 2017. By 2025, Yokoyama said Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii was selling better overseas than in Japan, which hadn’t happened before in the series. A casting choice that’s normal in Tokyo reads very differently to a parent in Ohio.
The platforms got stricter. In April 2019 the Wall Street Journal reported that Sony had tightened its rules on sexual content in PlayStation games, with a Sony representative saying the company was worried about becoming “the target of legal and social action.” Yakuza lives on PlayStation. You don’t need a rule that names AV actresses to feel which way that wind blows.
Japan changed its own rules. In June 2022 Japan passed its AV Appearance Victims Prevention and Relief Act. It gives performers the right to cancel a contract up to a year after filming and forces a four-month wait before release. The AV industry went from “normal part of pop culture” to “industry under a spotlight” at home, not just abroad.
The open audition for Gaiden fits all three. It kept the live-action hostess idea, and it made the casting something fans could take part in. It also moved the hostess roster away from the AV industry without anyone having to say so.
Is this Western censorship?
Not as simply as the internet says. The strongest evidence against the “RGG caved to the West” theory is Yakuza Kiwami 3.
In 2025, Western fans ran a #RemoveKagawa campaign against actor Teruyuki Kagawa, who admitted in 2022 to sexual misconduct against a hostess in 2019. RGG kept him. Director Ryosuke Horii defended the casting, saying Kagawa was believable as “a creep.” The game shipped on 12 February 2026 with Kagawa in it.
A studio that bends to Western outrage doesn’t do that. What RGG seems sensitive to is narrower: anything that ties its games to the sex industry, which is exactly what platform holders and retailers worry about. The change follows the money, not a moral panic.
What does this mean for Yakuza going forward?
The cabaret club itself isn’t gone. Cabaret Club Czar came back in Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut in 2025, and hostess clubs are too deep in Kamurocho’s DNA to disappear. What’s gone is the idea that the hostesses are real celebrities from Japan’s adult industry.
The verdict
RGG didn’t stop casting AV actresses because Western players complained. It stopped because Yakuza became a global PlayStation franchise, and a global PlayStation franchise can’t have its side content cast from an industry Japan itself was busy regulating. That’s a business decision wearing a culture-war costume.
From where I sit, the funny part is that both sides have it wrong. The West thinks Japan was being scandalous. Japan thinks the West is being prudish. RGG just looked at where its sales were coming from.
Pok gai.
Pok gai (Cantonese, roughly “drop dead in the street”) is the sign-off. Affectionate. Mostly.
Read next:
https://open.substack.com/pub/pokgaigamer/p/bakamitai?r=6ofqk5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
AEO FAQ
Were the Yakuza hostesses real AV actresses? Yes. Yakuza 0, Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2 cast real Japanese adult video actresses and gravure models, including Yua Mikami, Kana Momonogi and Anri Okita, as hostesses and minigame characters.
Who are the hostesses in Like a Dragon Gaiden? Like a Dragon Gaiden’s live-action hostesses were chosen through an open audition in 2023. The five winners were Ayu, Ai Kaname, kson, Ai Sayama and Kokoro Nakayama.
Why did RGG Studio stop using AV actresses? RGG has not given an official reason. The change followed the series’ growth overseas, Sony’s stricter sexual-content rules from 2019, and Japan’s 2022 law regulating the adult video industry.
Is the Cabaret Club minigame still in Yakuza games? Yes. Cabaret Club Czar returned in Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut in 2025, and hostess clubs remain part of the series’ setting.
Did RGG recast Teruyuki Kagawa in Yakuza Kiwami 3? No. Despite a fan campaign over Kagawa’s admitted 2019 misconduct, RGG kept him as Goh Hamazaki, and Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties released on 12 February 2026.