The Last Yakuza
life and death in the Japanese underworld
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4.7 • 22 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before.
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 “The 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.
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 a yakuza, through post-war desperation, to bubble-era optimism, to the present. Including a cast of memorable yakuza bosses — The Coach, The Buddha, and more — this is a story about the rise and fall of a man, a country, and a dishonest but sometimes honorable way of life on the brink of being lost.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Adelstein (Tokyo Vice) parlays decades of reporting on Japanese organized crime into a propulsive history of the yakuza. Drawing on interviews with both his yakuza and Japanese law enforcement contacts, he examines how yakuza groups obtained power, "why they were tolerated, how they began, and how they have changed over time," framing much of the account through the experiences of Makoto Saigo, who became a yakuza in 1976 and gradually rose in power and prominence from a "juvenile delinquent and motorcycle gang member" to become a leader of the Inagawa-kai crime syndicate. In the process, Adelstein explains the frightening national and international influence of the yakuza—the politicians they controlled, according to Adelstein, included several Japanese prime ministers, and their role in transnational crime led President Obama, in 2011, to declare them "a threat to the national security of the United States and the world." Without diluting his fascination with the lives of Saigo and other gangsters, Adelstein is careful not to romanticize their actions: while some yakuza leaders touted a code of honor, Adelstein highlights how often that code's directives, such as not harming civilians, were violated. He's especially good at tracing the yakuza's political influence in Japan, explaining how they bribed and blackmailed legislators into opposing bills that would have curbed their influence. Painstakingly reported and paced like a thriller, this is a must-read for anyone interested in organized crime.
