Toppamono: Outlaw. Radical. Suspect. My Life in Japan's Underworld

by Manabu Miyazaki, Robert Whiting (Foreword by)

Shot, stabbed, and beaten, Miyazaki Manabu somehow emerged intact from his first fifty years to put his astonishing life story down on paper. Born the son of a yakuza boss in 1945, he grew up in a household of gang members and social misfits before his conversion to Marxism launched him into the violent world of 1960s student radicalism. After dropping out of university and spending a brief sojourn in South America, he became a reporter on a fast-rising weekly magazine. Called back home to Kyoto to take over the family demolition business, he was plunged into a maelstrom of bankruptcy and debt, forcing him to raise funds however he could. Along the way, he became the chief suspect in one of Japan's most sensational criminal cases----still unsolved----before getting caught up in the crazy years of Japan's bubble economy, when land speculators tipped their favorite bar hostesses millions of yen and Dom Perignon flowed like water. More than just one man's incredible story, unflinchingly told, Toppamono is a sophisticated analysis of Japan's postwar half-century that will astound and enlighten. Devastatingly critical of banks and bureaucrats, questioning of Japan's understanding of democracy, and cogent on the role played by the yakuza in Japanese society, this underground best-seller, first published in 1996, will keep you enthralled until the very last page.

toppamono a person with a devil-may-care attitude, who pushes ahead regardless.

Genres: Japan, Nonfiction, True Crime, Crime, Memoir, Japanese Literature, Biography

480 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2005

Reviews

[Miami University Libraries]

Banned/challenged in Japan

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

For some very unknown reason, I absolutely love all things yakuza. Actually, I like all things gangster, but there’s something about the Japanese yakuza culture in particular that appeals to me. Miyazaki is not yakuza. He just happens to know a few. The title leads you to believe that the book is more interesting than it is. Toppamono is a very long, autobiographical vanity piece written by someone who is very clearly not a writer. Toppamono does detail the political unrest in Japan in the 60′s quite well if you’re into that sort of thing.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to hear about old school yakuza gangs, Japanese student riots in the 60s from the perspective of one involved this is a pretty good read.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book after it was recommended in Yakuza Moon.

This book is Manabu Miyazaki's life story that he wrote. This book wasn't what I had expected and I really had a hard time trudging through it.

I ended up skimming the last 100 pages because I had already invested so much time I just didn't want to not finish it.

I had thought the author was part of a yakuza gang, but it definitely was not that. Yes he had ties to the yakuza but the overabundance of politics had my mind drifting.

I did learn some things about the past days of Japan and how businesses worked. How the yakuza became involved and what they would do to protect themselves and those affiliated with them.

I wasn't fond of this book. While the author had quite the interesting and dangerous upbringing and adulthood the story just wasn't what I had thought it would be.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A life story too disparate and weird to be fiction, Manabu Miyazaki's memoir is a fascinating first person account of the past fifty years of Japanese history by someone who always seemed to be in the middle of something huge.

Written for a Japanese audience, this book may not make much sense to anyone unfamiliar with modern Japan. It is also not the best written book, and doesn't have much of an overall arc, sometimes the narrative is interrupted completely to go on a tangential anecdote that would have been better placed elsewhere. (I've heard that Japanese editors are VERY hands off, and that a lot of Haruki Murakami's fiction has been heavily edited in translation, mostly because there wasn't much of an initial editing job. It shows a lot here.)

But what stories! Growing up the privileged son of a yakuza (Japanese mafia) boss in a Kyoto slum, his portraits of the neighborhood he grew up in are unforgettable, from the "Grandma undertaker" who had to break the legs of corpses to get them to fit into the only size coffin available, to the untouchable class so destitute they had to catch dogs to get any protein. Unbelievable stories of being a leftist radical in 60s Tokyo, fighting with other leftists and police, the skin-of-his-teeth work as a tabloid reporter, and his thirty odd years as the head of a demolition company, scrambling amid Japan's postwar boom. This is not to mention his being a suspect in one of Japan's most famous kidnapping cases and his involvement with real estate speculation in Japan's bubble economy.

[Yukio Nagato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miyazaki's insights into the various worlds in which he was a part of held me captive for most of the book. He lived during tumultuous and interesting times and have been a part of things that most of us only have read about.

The one part of the book that I wish Miyazaki or the editor would've pared down a bit was his involvement with the 60 student riots. It just went on for too long and in too much detail, which for me got a bit tedious. I'm very much interested in this time period and topic but there was just so much detail in it that it could've been a whole separate book altogether.

Miyazaki has always had an affinity for underdogs, outcasts and the chivalrous go-getters "toppamono." These characters that Miyazaki describes so well make this book hard to put down. I also find Miyazaki's way of thinking pretty close to my own. I just don't think I have the guts to back it up like he has.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir style book was a very interesting read. It gives a unique perspective on the life of an outsider in Japanese society. A significant portion read like fiction because of the grandiose telling of the story by the other. If even half of this book is true, Miyazaki would officially be the most interesting man in the world.

[Dillon Font · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look not only at the economics and lives of the Japanese underworld during Showa Japan, but also provides a backstage view of the student riots of the 60s