| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Intro -- About the Author -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Author's note -- Timeline -- Main characters and organizations -- July 2008 -- PART I -- 1 A half-American yakuza -- 2 Driving past the point of no return at full speed -- 3 Gimme Shelter -- 4 Giri -- 5 Shinogi -- 6 Pig box -- 7 Back in The Shaba again -- 8 Tattoos hide fear -- 9 How to make 50 million yen with a fistful of yen and some pussy -- 10 The professor: Susumu Ishii -- 11 You've been naughty boys: the first anti-organized crime laws -- 12 Tourist trap -- PART II -- 13 Lean on me |
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14 Driving Mr Baseball -- how to be a yakuza -- 15 Less than a beggar, better than a thief -- 16 The white Mercedes of Armageddon -- 17 For whom the chimes toll -- 18 Relapses and the rules of the game -- 19 Coronation -- 20 Ice-cream dreams -- 21 Death at a funeral -- 22 Proper greetings -- 23 Swimming with sharks -- 24 "We once were gamblers ..." -- PART III -- 25 One gang to rule them all -- 26 Taxing matters -- 27 The one-digit solution -- 28 Refrigerator Man and the honest yakuza -- 29 One thing leads to another -- 30 Goodbye and get out -- 31 Haunted houses and hearty homes -- 32 Hotel Gokudo |
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33 When everything falls apart, it falls apart at once -- Epilogue -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments |
| Summary |
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 postwar 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 honourable way of life on the brink of being lost |
| Subject |
Yakuza -- Japan
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Gangsters -- Japan -- Biography
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Gang members -- Japan -- Biography
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Organized crime -- Japan
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Organized crime.
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Press & journalism.
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Biography & Autobiography - General.
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True Crime / Organized Crime.
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Language Arts & Disciplines - Journalism.
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History - Japan.
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Travel - Asia - Japan.
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Gang members
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Gangsters
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Organized crime
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Yakuza
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Biography: general.
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True crime.
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Reportage & collected journalism.
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Asian history.
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Travel & holiday.
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Japan
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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Biographies
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Biographies.
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Biographies.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
1925307220 |
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9781925307221 |
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