Kazuma Sohma

Tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome, Kazuma has reached his early forties yet is often taken for someone younger. For much of the story he kept his dark brown hair long, bound into a back ponytail with a plain white tie, before cropping it to nape length and keeping it short from then on. Messy bangs drape across a face set with slightly sharp but gentle, composed brown eyes. He dresses traditionally, rarely appearing out of a simple dark blue kimono cinched with a black belt.

Kazuma is a deeply wise, even-tempered man, courteous and warm, and ready to gamble or give something up for the sake of a greater good. That readiness feeds a quiet insecurity, since he faults himself as selfish for pressing his own wishes onto Kyo. Even so, his empathy and steadfast support explain why Kyo cherishes him and takes his counsel to heart as a guide through life.

Fearlessness runs through him as well: he is determined to spare Kyo the lonely fate that broke his grandfather, however much of the family, Akito included, he has to stand against. For all that learned wisdom, he is comically inept at everyday tasks, and his cooking is so hopeless he cannot even manage tea, though he stubbornly believes he can.

Kazuma was permitted to live on the family's 'inside' because his late grandfather had been the Cat. He met the man only once in childhood, when the gentle old Cat offered him candy and Kazuma refused it as 'cursed,' only to be smiled at and forgiven. At the grandfather's deathbed, Kazuma overheard his grandmother confess she had stayed with the Cat purely out of pity, an admission that haunted him for years. When Kyo was born as the next Cat and Kazuma watched the same cruelty close in around the boy, he grasped how monstrously he had once treated his grandfather, and after Kyo lost his mother and was cast off by his father, Kazuma took him in as an act of atonement.

Living together, Kazuma raised Kyo with steady love despite the family's scorn, taught him karate for discipline and strength, and came to feel like the boy's true father, though he kept a slight distance, afraid his affection was a burden. When Kyo spiraled into guilt after Kyoko's death, Kazuma spent months trying to draw him out of the darkness before leaving on a training sabbatical. Returning, he was stunned to find Kyo smiling beside Tohru, and he set a bold plan in motion: by removing the rosary and exposing Kyo's true form to Tohru, he wagered that she would accept the boy and save his heart. The gamble paid off, and afterward he confided both his atonement and his genuine love to Tohru while reconciling fully with Kyo, who vowed to grow strong enough to earn the right to call him father.

Kazuma later confronts Kyo's biological father, refusing to let the boy be locked in the Cat's Room, and takes in the hospitalized Rin so she can recover outside the compound. Once Kyo's curse breaks he pulls him into an embrace, and when he muses that he could die without regret now that Kyo's future looks bright, Kunimitsu's teasing reminder that grandchildren might follow spurs him to keep working hard instead. In the epilogue Saki joins his dojo as a cook, and in Fruits Basket Another his grandson Hajime notes that Kazuma remains in good health, still running the dojo he loves.