Whether this was done because SEGA simply decided to play it safe and avoid keeping Hiroki Narimiya or because he declined to license his likeness again is not known.īecause we stand against both censorship, we've decided to create a patch for the Western version of the game that would restore Hiroki Narimiya as Masayoshi Tanimura's actor in the game. The game was later re-released on PS4 and XB1 in 2019 and PC in 2021 with Masayoshi Tanimura recast with a new actor, Toshiki Masuda. Narimiya was eventually absolved when he undertook medical tests proving he wasn't taking any drugs and further proved that the powder in question was actually a special form of candy called 'Neruneruneru' which comes in form of white powder that needs to be poured into a glass of water, upon which it hardens and creates a candy.ĭespite this, his career was substantially damaged and the following week Narimiya announced he'd be going into early retirement as a result of the fake allegations. This resulted in companies and employers of Narimiya starting to cut ties with him. The game came out on PS3 in March of 2010 in Japan and March of 2011 in the West, many years later in December of 2016, Hiroki Narimiya was accused of inhaling cocaine by tabloid newspaper 'Friday', as a result of Narimiya's 'friend' selling them a photograph showing Narimiya preparing white powder on table that to uneducated eye could be mistaken for cocaine. Originally, famous Japanese actor Hiroki Narimiya portrayed Masayoshi Tanimura, who is one of the playable characters in the game. To explain the reason for this patch existing you'll need to understand the history of what happened with production of the game.

The purpose of this patch is to restore Masayoshi Tanimura's original appearance and Japanese voice to the likeness of the actor that portrayed him in the original PS3 release of Yakuza 4, Hiroki Narimiya.