eXputer
CharactercoreSakai Clan

Jin SakaiProtagonist

The last of the Sakai clan and the player character — a samurai who abandons the code he was raised on because it cannot save Tsushima, and becomes the Ghost instead.

Role
Protagonist
Status
Alive
Importance
core
JS
Ghost of Tsushima · character art
01

Overview

Jin Sakai survives the Mongol landing at Komoda Beach because he is left for dead, and spends the rest of the game deciding what that survival obliges him to do.

Jin is the nephew and adopted son of Lord Shimura, jito of Tsushima, and the last surviving member of the Sakai clan. He is introduced as the ideal his uncle made him: a samurai who announces himself before he strikes, fights where his enemy can see him, and expects the same in return. Komoda Beach establishes in a single scene that this is now a liability — eighty samurai charge a fortified Mongol line and are destroyed by gunpowder, archers and a commander who does not care what they are called.

The rest of Jin's arc is the slow, contested abandonment of that code. He learns to poison, to stalk, to kill from behind and from above, and to let the fear of him do work his sword cannot. The game never lets this be a clean upgrade: every technique he gains costs him standing with Shimura, and the people who teach him — a thief, a ronin, an assassin, a poisoner — are the people his class was raised to look past.

By the final act Jin is effective and dishonoured in equal measure, and Tsushima is free largely because of it. The last choice the game offers is not about the Mongols at all.

02

Biography

Jin's father, Kazumasa Sakai, was killed in front of him when Jin was a boy, during a confrontation with bandits that Jin was too small to affect. Lord Shimura took him in and trained him, and the memory of that helplessness is the lever the game returns to whenever Jin is asked to choose between the correct action and the effective one.

After Komoda Beach, Yuna finds him in the wreckage and revives him — an act she performs for her own reasons, and which the story never romanticises into rescue. Their first shared objective is not liberating the island but freeing her brother Taka, a blacksmith the Mongols are holding for his skills.

Jin's growing reputation as the Ghost becomes a weapon in its own right. Mongol soldiers desert on rumour; his approach empties camps that his sword could not have taken. The same reputation makes him unusable as a samurai — a lord who cannot be seen to sanction terror cannot be seen to sanction Jin.

03

Where they appear

04

Relationships

Family
Allies
Enemies

Select any portrait to jump to that relationship

Family
LS

Lord Shimura

Uncle and adoptive father

Raised Jin as a samurai and cannot accept what he becomes.

Allies
Y

Yuna

Ally

Saved him at Komoda Beach and taught him to fight without honour.

Enemies
KK

Khotun Khan

Principal antagonist

The Mongol commander who studies Jin's code in order to exploit it.

05

Trivia

  • Daisuke Tsuji performed Jin in both English and Japanese, which is unusual for a Western-developed game and is why the Japanese track reads as a performance rather than a dub.
  • Jin's stances are learned by observing or defeating Mongol leaders, so the combat system expands through the story rather than through a menu.
  • The game's guiding wind — used instead of an on-screen waypoint — was designed so the player looks at the island rather than at a compass.
06

Sources

07

How Jin fights

08

Appears in

Full directory
LSJito of TsushimaLord ShimuraRaised Jin as a samurai and cannot accept what he becomes.YThiefYunaSaved him at Komoda Beach and taught him to fight without honour.KKMongol commanderKhotun KhanThe Mongol commander who studies Jin's code in order to exploit it.KSJin's fatherKazumasa SakaiJin's father, killed in front of him when Jin was a boy — and, on Iki Island, remembered as the samurai who led a campaign the islanders have never forgiven.