Based on a novel "The Battle Of The Yanagawa-Gumi" by Koichi Iiboshi, it tells the story of criminal Jiro Yanagawa. Released from prison, Jiro joins the notorious Yoshimizu Yakuza family as a member. Not long after however, he sets out to form his own Yakuza clan in Osaka. This sparks a bloody territory war with the Devils Dragons.

In 1970s-era Japan, three children, Kazuma Kiryu, Akira Nishikiyama, and his younger sister, Yuko Nishikiyama, are raised together in Shintaro Kazama's Sunflower Orphanage. In the summer of 1980, Yumi Sawamura, a young girl whose parents were accidentally shot and killed during a gang's shootout, joins them in the orphanage. Following a yakuza tradition, the honorable Kazama secretly raises orphans whose parents he has directly or indirectly killed. In return, the children love him as a father and he eventually inducts the teenage Kiryu and Nishikiyama into the Dojima Family, a Tojo Clan affiliate of which he is a senior officer.