Last Yakuza, the: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld [non-booktrade customers]

Author: Jake Adelstein
Written with the insight of an expert on Japanese organised crime and the compassion of a longtime friend, investigative journalist Jake Adelstein presents a sprawling biography of yakuza Makoto Saigo – through postwar desperation, to bubble-era optimism, to the present. Including a cast of memorable yakuza bosses – Coach, the Buddha, and more – this is a story about the rise and fall of a man, a country, and a dishonest but sometimes honourable way of life on the brink of being lost.Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force — the yakuza. Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realises that even within the organisation, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.The internal politics of the yakuza are dizzyingly complex, and between the ever-shifting web of alliances and the encroaching hand of the law that pushes them further and further underground, Saigo finds himself in the middle of a defining decades-long battle that will determine the future of the yakuza.
ISBN 9781925106817. Scribe Publications. pb. 416 pages. 23.4 x 15.3 cm.
available