Tokushirou Tsurumi

"You should think of me as your personal Grim Reaper. At any moment I should desire it, I can extinguish the candle of your life."

- Tokushirou TsurumiTsurumigrimreaper_00.oga

Tokushirou Tsurumi is one of the antagonists in Golden Kamuy. He is the 1st Lieutenant of the 7th Division.

In the anime, he is voiced by, who is also the voice of Jiraiya in Naruto and Yazan Gable in Gundam. In the English Dub, he is voiced by.

Appearance
Tsurumi is a man whose most distinguishable physical trait is a metal plate that covers his forehead, with brain ooze leaking out sometimes. He has his hair slicked on the back of his head and has a handlebar moustache and goatee. He is of average height and has a lean build.

Tsurumi usually wears his officer uniform with a coat to protect himself from the cold.

As Kouichi Hasegawa, Tsurumi sported a buzzcut hairstyle and wore round fake glasses. He would wear a fur suit, a pair of boots, and carry some of his photography tools in a handbag and a briefcase. While at home, Tsurumi also wore a dark vest over a light long-sleeved button up shirt as well as straw shoes.

Personality
Tsurumi has an unpredictable, mildly histrionic and erratic behaviour. However, in the past, Tsurumi was normal and even a brave Japanese officer who fought at the front during the Russo-Japanese war.

Receiving a shrapnel in the head and the general bitterness at the poor treatment his division has received after the war has made Tsurumi psychotic and violent, though some of his manipulative tendencies may have been present even before the injury. He is prone to threatening people and personally inflicting physical injury on his enemies but hides his brutal tendencies under a veneer of sophistication and sympathy. He also genuinely admires the macabre work of Edogai and develops a friendship with him. Tsurumi never becomes angry, but coldly manifests his rage with a brutal gesture, perhaps due to his brain damage.

Tsurumi aims to take over Hokkaido and is very ruthless in his methods. He kills anyone in his way or threatens his plan. He seems to still hold the men under his command in high regard but hates traitors. He has shown a level of care for his subordinates as seen when he tries to get Nikaidou to eat his food and provide prosthetic limbs for him.

Tsurumi is also a very charismatic and manipulative man that can sway the minds of other people with a powerful and explosive speech. As a result, he is not above lying to other people if it is to get what he desires, such as loyal and strong followers.

Under the identity of Kouichi Hasegawa, Tsurumi was a humble and compassionate man who loved his family and was also kind towards strangers who had come to him for help. He was also a very observant man as he easily noticed how other people would behave and any other unique traits that they displayed. Though they were part of his guise while on a spy mission, Tsurumi truly seemed to care about his family as he spent time with them in their final moment and became disillusioned with the Japanese government as a result of their deaths.

Tsurumi likes sweets and is regularly seen chewing on dangos.

Quotes
"We will form a Military Republic. I will be its leader and you will be my elite guards. We can't just pass out the gold to everyone. Instead, we will use it to open up a Weapons Factory here, in Resource-Rich Hokkaido. Children who have lost their fathers, fathers who have lost their sons, and wives who have lost their husbands. We shall offer them all stable employment. We'll save them from spending their lives, starving in this frozen land. We will provide them salvation. Although it won't bring them back, this is the least we can do to honor our fallen comrades."

- Tokushirou Tsurumi

"The 28 cm Howitzers were gorgeous, I'd never seen anything like them, I could go on and on. But the most interesting part was that the fire support they gave didn't discriminate between friend or foe. It ripped apart the bodies of young men and made the skies pour with blood. I'll never forget running through that glorious, bloody rain. It was one of the perfect sights I'd ever seen in my entire life."

- Tokushirou Tsurumi

Trivia

 * Tsurumi likes Japanese sweets but dislikes alcohol.
 * The quote Tsurumi had said towards Sugimoto about being his Shinigami, capable of blowing his 'candle of life', is a reference from a rakugo story titled Shinigami. Rakugo itself was a form of verbal Japanese entertainment emerging in the Meiji period (1868–1912), where Golden Kamuy timeline is supposedly set.
 * The gestures he did in one of his speeches were identical to those of Adolf Hitler in "Triumph of the Will".