Josefumi Kujo

Josefumi carries a lean-to-medium frame at what seems an ordinary height. His look openly mirrors the Josuke of Part 4: bleached sides frame a pompadour combed into an Elvis-style peak, lending him a greaser edge, while metal pins shaped as peace signs and hearts stud his clothing. His usual outfit layers a checkered sweater above a shirt with a loosened collar, worn with dark trousers.

When he is first shown, his eyes hold several concentric, rippling irises that echo the pattern of Crazy Diamond.

Because he had already swapped body parts with Kira's corpse before the story opens, much of his nature is only hinted at. What stands out is his deep gratitude toward Holy Joestar-Kira, the doctor who once saved his life; he regards her almost as a mother and would do anything to help her.

He carries a wound of feeling overlooked, recalling how no one paid him attention and how his mother did not reach him when he was drowning as a boy. Tortured alongside Kira, he weighed betraying him, yet when Kira instead protected him, he was moved enough to try trading his own life away, showing how much he prized that friendship. He also grew fond of Karera Sakunami, one of the few people who noticed him. More openly emotional than the cold, calculating Kira, he could still turn savage in combat, as when he brutally routed the A. Phex Brothers.

Born in 1991 to Sadafumi and Kiyomi Kujo, Josefumi received his unusual name from a grandfather who found it carved on a geta sandal that a youthful Joseph Joestar had once worn. As a child he nearly drowned after cracking his skull against a rock, and was rescued by emergency doctor Holy Joestar-Kira, who had her son Kira use Killer Queen to remove a fatal clot from his brain. He later studied agriculture at T Academy, where he crossed paths with Karera.

Years on, a chance meeting in a ramen shop reunited him with Kira after Josefumi cleared spilled pepper from his bowl using his Stand, Soft & Wet, which could draw out or steal the properties of things and produced marking-free bubbles. The two schemed to lift a Locacaca branch and graft their own tree to cure Holy, his horticultural skill making the plan possible. Hunted down and tortured by Tamaki Damo alongside Yotsuyu Yagiyama, they fled; with Kira gravely wounded, Josefumi fed him a Locacaca fruit, fought off the A. Phex Brothers, then spent the last fruit to trade his own life for his friend's.

An aftershock opened a Wall Eye that buried the pair and mixed their bodies together, remaking Josefumi as the young man Yasuho Hirose would later dig from the ground. His prior self stayed hidden until Kei Nijimura explained the Equivalent Exchange and Karera recognized him, confirming that Josuke had once been Josefumi Kujo.