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Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, Expanded Edition
Known for their striking full-body tattoos and severed fingertips, Japan's gangsters comprise a criminal class eighty thousand strong--more than four times the size of the American Mafia. Despite their criminal nature, the yakuza are accepted by fellow Japanese to a degree guaranteed to shock most Westerners. Here is the first book to reveal the extraordinary reach of Japa...more
Paperback, 422 pages
Published
February 1st 2003
by University of California Press
(first published 1986)
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I have to say that I found David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro's book on the yakuza, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, a fascinating alternative modern history of Japan. The book is framed in relation to what was seen as a growing yakuza threat in America, which I suspect has faded as the bubble has burst and Japan has stagnated. It's fascinating to see how they evolved from professional gamblers who were trying to recoup salaries from landowners through gambling in the early days to running insid...more
A bit dry for a book about the Yakuza, which I think would make for fascinating reading. Alas, the fault is mine, I believe. What I would have found exciting would have been a book drawing heavily on the field of cultural anthropology, and a quick perusal of the authors' qualifications would have told me that they are investigative journalists - good ones even, with a lot of research - but that doesn't change the fact that we are interested in two different things. This book focused a lot (so...more
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Kaplan has to be the leading authority on the yakuza in Japan. His book looks at the evolvement of yakuza from the tekiya and the bakuto through postwar japan and their profiteering on the black market to modern day scandals like Lockheed. Their pervasiveness yet taciturn in Japan is astonishing which makes the yakuza so interesting a study.
I read most of it -- it's great and fascinating -- how, post-WWII, America rather shittily made it easier for right-wing anti-communists (and with them the Yakuza) to have their way with a battered occupied nation seeking re-birth. I also liked the tattoos and the decriptions of Western-style excess on the part of oyabuns and their subordinates -- huge cars, giant steaks, etc. But, it was a lot of information about a subject in which I have only a passing interest. SO, I put it aside momentar...more
It is an interesting book if you are one interested in Japan and its culture history and all you should defntly give it a try
damn good book. a great primer on postwar japan, with the yakuza focus providing great narrative momentum for what really is a broader survey of contemporary japanese culture, economics, politics, and more. and it is telling of the book's accuracy+worth that, initially, the yakuza successfully had it blacklisted by japanese publishers, and that the ucal press eventually picked it up from a commercial house for the 2nd edition.
This book is amazing. The corruption in Japan is unfathomable! My view of Japan has changed after having read this book. Not finished yet, but the extent of the influence of the Yakuza is chillingly horrific! How can one of the world's leading economic powerhouses allow itself to be intimidated by criminals?
An in-depth look at the development of organized crime in Japan from feudal to modern times. When I lived in Japan we kids used to joke around about yakuza but I had no idea just how ingrained they were in politics and Japan Inc.
This turned out to be far less lurid than I would have hoped. It's more a political history of modern Japan as it pertains to these gangsters, not so much a Pacific Rim Goodfellas.
Best book for know who are governer in Japan
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