Yoshiki Kasukabe

Yoshiki Kasukabe is the father of the upcoming prime minister candidate, Toshiro Kasukabe and a long-standing member of the diet. His cognitive self is a leader of Legionnaires, the titular shogun of the Yoshiki Kingdom, and a major antagonist in Persona 5 Tactica. His legion is known as the Aizen Squad.
==Appearances==
*Persona 5 Tactica: Major Antagonist (Cognition), Supporting Character, Major Character (Real)
== Design ==
The cognitive Yoshiki wears a white kimono, haori with a deviation of the Tokugawa clan emblem on it, a golden haori himo, gold cuffs, and a hakama with gold patterns and multiple images of the Dharmachakra that folds up at the end to look like a lotus with heart-shaped petals.
He takes the form of a Gautama Buddha, with a split in the middle of his face, golden pupils, blue irises, magenta limbuses, and a chonmage hairstyle. This is actually a mask, and his face can split open to reveal a more menacing red face with red parting hair, along with black sclera, two yellow pupils, a third eye, and a wicked grin. His design is combination of his moniker "Bhuddha Kasukabe", his clean outwards image that hides piles upon piles of political scandals and Toshiro's perception of him as a controlling parent.
Yoshiki can also manifest multiple golden arms from his back, reminiscent of Avalokiteshvara.
The real Yoshiki is an old man with a bead-like mole on his head (replacing the third eye of his cognitive self) and large, black eyes with no visible irises similar to Mitsuo Kubo's, but much larger. His head resembles the unmasked face of his cognition. He wears a plaid-colored suit.
==Personality==
The cognitive form of Yoshiki is a deceitful ruler who claims to love everyone and only intended to spread love amongst his people. In reality, he is an abusive leader who has his subordinate Legionnaires send his people to labor camps. He also installs surveillance cameras all over his Kingdom to make sure his citizens don't speak ill against him. His personality is a manifestation of Toshiro's worst fears, with the real politician's corruption and controlling tendencies towards his son being exaggerated to constant surveillance and labor camps.
The real Yoshiki is on the surface, an unremarkable, yet long running representative of the Diet Building, but in actuality, is a power-hungry politician who does not want the power for himself. Instead, he molds his son Toshiro into a prime minister candidate and will do almost anything to make sure Toshiro goes to the top of the political ladder, even when it comes to shady acts such as blackmail. After Shido's downfall, he began to take the opportunity to participate in embezzlement and the recruiting of shady personalities to intimidate anyone who dare stand in his son's way to premiership.
As a parent, Yoshiki is extremely strict and controlling towards his son and would often slap him if he fails to follow what he says. In short, he is an extremely warped version of the "tiger parent" archetype. As a result, Toshiro greatly fears him as a parent when he was young. However, Yusuke speculates that he might not necessarily hate Toshiro, but was fulfilling a dying promise for his wife in a warped way, but as Toshiro was too scared to speak with him in an upfront fashion, the truth remains unknown.
==Profile==
Yoshiki Kasukabe is a long-standing member of the diet who is described as "unremarkable". His serene nature has earned him the nickname by the public "Buddha Kasukabe".
After his wife, Yuki Kasukabe died from her illness, he was his sole caretaker and was extremely strict and controlling towards him. He would even use physical violence against Toshiro if he didn't comply to his demands and reinforced his son's beliefs that he led his mother to her death. He controlled every bit of his career to become a upstanding politician, and Toshiro managed to enter the Diet per following his footsteps.
After the disqualification of Masayoshi Shido, Yoshiki took advantage of the resulting chaos to rig the elections for Toshiro to become Prime Minister. He recruited shady personalities to blackmail other candidates and their followers, and dealt with a large portion of Marie Anto's family's financial resources. Toshiro wanted to expose him of his corruption and had more than enough proof to out him, but can't, and rationalized himself as the only person fit for premiership. Toshiro also believes that Yoshiki rigged the votes for him.
As an attempt to eradicate Toshiro's mind, Salmael erected upon a cognitive version of Yoshiki that took the form of his worst fears about him.
===Repaint Your Heart===
Yoshiki and his son can be seen at the end of the campaign where they watch a news report about Guernica's vandalism against a government building and discussed about it.
===Persona 5 Tactica===
At the start of the game, he and Marie Anto (both silhouettes) discuss about his son's disappearance. He reassures Marie that he will be safe and the incident will be over soon. 
The party first encounters cognitive Yoshiki, known as Lord Yoshiki after saving Yuki and retreating to the Yoshiki Kingdom's Café Leblanc. He is seen staging a meet-and-greet accompanied by an army of Legionnaires. All of his citizens bow down to him with fear as he reaches them, and he asks them if they are happy, for the ones who aren't are injurious to his country. One of his fellow citizens try to speak to him only to be met with rudeness from his Legionnaires, but Yoshiki allows the citizen to speak. The citizen tells him that his parents had been thrown into the "Labor of Love" and had not came back for a long time, so Yoshiki promised to throw him into the Labor of Love as well so he could reunite with his family. In actuality, the "Labor of Love" is a labor camp where Yoshiki's citizens are enslaved to do hard labor, and anyone who gets thrown there never come back. He also has spycams all over the place to look for people who don't like him and get rid of them under the pretense of safety and protection. All of these are (self-proclaimed) displays of "love" to his citizens and are exaggerations of the real article's overbearing attitude towards his son.
Yuki is his consort who learnt of his crooked ways and escaped the castle, bringing whatever few people she could away from his clutches. Despite initial hesitation, the Rebel Corps and the Phantom Thieves agree to assist her in freeing the prison camps.
The operation to free the prison camps was successful thanks to the teamwork between the Rebel Corps and the Phantom Thieves and footage of the prison camps are broadcasted through the Kingdom, but at the meantime Lord Yoshiki shows up in front of the party and confronts Toshiro, taking an interest at him. He claims that he is Toshiro's father, and his mood changes from serene to raging between sentences. He screams at Toshiro that he will not forgive him for "that" (presumably about exposing his corruption). Toshiro is sweating nervously throughout the uneasy conversation. When a Legionnaire reports to him about the sabotaged monitor prior, he yells that he doesn't care, but as soon as it reported to him that there's not much time left before his scheduled Haiku broadcast, he gives up the confrontation and runs away. Once the party returns to the base, Toshiro deducts that this Yoshiki is likely a fake as his real father was very confident that he will not leak his corruption records to the public, and that this Yoshiki is likely based on his worst fears about him.
The party eventually manages to reach and confront him. He first blames them for starting a war and starting meaningless bloodshed while his country is peaceful, then offers Toshiro his "love," both of them which are met with swift rejection. This angers him, and he fights the party shielded by an elevator-and-switch puzzle with spycams. When his spycams make it hard to reach him, Yuki and the rebel corps show up and turn the path to him into a straight path so long as the Maiden-types shielding him are defeated. After his defeat, Yoshiki blames Toshiro for fanning up meaningless conflict and bloodshed through his hypocritical self-righteousness, something that mysteriously unnerves Toshiro. He then reprimands Toshiro for "killing his mother," causing his face to go pale and driving him into despair. As a last ditch-attempt to get rid of Toshiro, he unleashes a laser beam from his forehead, only for Yuki to take the hit and die in his arms. He gloats and laughs at Toshiro, telling him this is the end result of his asinine idealism, before vanishing for good.
During the descent to Salmael, he erects a monochrome version of Lord Yoshiki to stop the party. Unlike the previous Lord Yoshiki, this one does not make any attempts to act like a good guy and screams like a raging maniac. The party defeats him, and he vanishes into feathers and white light.
When Toshiro returns to the real world, Yoshiki requested him to read a cover-up script he wrote for the press. On the day of the press, despite Yoshiki's instructions, Toshirou confesses and indicts his father for corruption in front of the media. As the result, Yoshiki, along with Marie presumably, is arrested for fraud.
==Gallery==
P5T Yoshiki 2.jpg|
P5T Yoshiki 3.jpg|
P5T Yoshiki 4.jpg|
P5T Yoshiki Kingdom.jpg|Yoshiki Kingdom
P5T Yoshiki Kasukabe concept art 1.png|Concept art
P5T Yoshiki Kasukabe concept art 2.png|Concept art
P5T Yoshiki Kasukabe concept art 3.png|Concept art
==Trivia==
* During Toshiro's high school days, Yoshiki asked him to experience becoming a public figure to ensure he could take up his family's work (a.k.a. have the track records to be qualified for premiership). This led to Toshiro becoming Student Council President because it will look good on his college application. 
* It's suggested by Toshiro that Yoshiki silenced the student body from tarnishing his son's track record when they were lynching him over the incident involving Eri Natsuhara and Ichiro Nakabachi.
* When Toshiro was a student, Yoshiki would force him to write a reflective essay if his grades ever dropped. Furthermore, he would sometimes drill him on how to govern people.
==References==
Category:Persona 5 Tactica Characters
Category:Persona 5 Tactica Enemies
Category:Legionnaires Leaders
Category:Cognitive Existences