The Last Yakuza by Jake Adelstein

The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it’s never been told before in this gripping, true-crime story by the author of Tokyo Vice.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese, living in small-town Japan. He has two talents: playing guitar and picking fights. When his dream of being a rock star fails to materialize, he turns to the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer performance, loyalty, and brute force—the yakuza.

Saigo, nicknamed Tsunami, quickly realizes that even within the organization, 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 organized 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—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.

Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shinbun, Japan's largest newspaper, from 1993 to 2005. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. Considered one of the foremost experts on organised crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. He is also the public relations director for the Washington, DC-based Polaris Project Japan, which combats human trafficking and the exploitation of women and children in the sex trade.